“The Writ” was written in October 2021 for a 250-word flash fiction competition where I was assigned a genre (Suspense), word (Ride), and action (Folding a Piece of Paper).

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     He took his time. Left me stood there, clenched fists, nails cutting into my palms. Between the quill carving across the hoary page, when he drew from the ichorous well, I heard bloated beads drop damply on the boards. The world darkened at the edges, painting an eternal vignette: him sat in that chair behind that desk silhouetted by the flickering of that barren hearth; his bony hand mechanically scrawling line after line in wide scything repetitions; his hunched frame greedily inspecting dried parchment. I barely felt the two brutes flanking me anymore. It was him and me and passing time.
     Thick panes dimmed the world outside, but the sky was brightening in the east as he lifted the note. Mouthing the words he read, sharp shadows fell across his face, a skull mâchéd in flesh, dark eyes catching candlelight in their sockets. He snorted and folded the letter’s top and bottom to the middle, snatching his seal, scraping it over the creases to make them take. Spinning it a quarter, he tucked the bottom flap into the top and hit the new folds. Warmed wax dribbled, red and thick, into a pool of crimson, then pressed and sealed. He splashed the warden’s name across the front and held it out.
     He grinned, toothy and wide, “Ride and ride fast, lest daylight beat you there.”

     Hammering the gate of the keep, the sun, blanketed by a veil of mourning clouds, rose overhead and I heard a trap door swing open.

Catch-all