Another completed story

The Prophet: A Day Remembered

A short short story written by Cory Kutschker


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.
In the early morning a silence overcame the globe. In the wilds there were no night calls of birds, or even the chirping of crickets or growl of nocturnal beasts. In the locales that already observed light and were into their day or perhaps just entering into evening, they also saw no activity. There was no cacophony of car horns or the loud baying of dogs or even the joyous laughter of children on the playground. The swing sets lay still making no squeaks and any cars were parked and silent, not an engine running. There was not even the light fluttering of a breeze dragging a newspaper along the pavement of the empty street. All that made noise drew still, as though in some anticipation.  Then came the noise. It was not earthly by any means, but every man distinguished it as a distant whine until it grew to a vociferous and monotonous din of a deep horn being sounded.
In the dawn, instead of the sun, he came, the effulgent terror. What words I have for that day are not enough, but it was as though the sky boiled and peeled. It scraped from the black folds, exposing us to the gloom, the monstrous and yawning cosmos, still and black, oddly giving little light from the stars. Every eye grew mad by that great blackness spread over and around them. The arbitrator was inattentive to the long pleas wailing from mouths and lungs being starved of oxygen. Caves were lined with nail marks as asylum seekers were withdrawn into his gaze wherein they wilted onto their knees in deluges of tears. All the 'scapes of the earth were tilled and plained as he walked with eyes aflame.
He had an odd effect upon the earth, for every step of his would command a most verdant growth of grass to spring forth from the ground. Long dead plants would regain vigor and limp trees emboldened their trunks as pillars. Queer shadows grew long and challenged with hissing maws but were easily slain by him as they were cast into that abyss that seethed and rolled over itself, hungry for more.
A city had descended, magnificent and radiant enclosed by four walls equidistant.
What of the jubilant you ask? The four walls were built for them. But outside, There were long lines as the gavel was swung making hard rapping terminations as they took the long walk into that same abysmal mouth, licking over them. There they remained writhing, tortured and screaming back through the eons, coming under my ink.

Another Teaser

still trying to think of a title for this one and trying to avoid cheddar at camp (cheesy and or campy)


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.