“Words on a Wall” was written in November 2022 for a 250-word flash fiction competition where I was assigned a genre (Horror), word (Pass), and action (Removing Graffiti).

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     The black letters glistened in the flickering lamplight, ichorous words scrawled above the vacated scene. No living thing left here, only vespers leaking down from the abbey, rainbow glass glowing brightly. What are tender mercies offered the evening after evil? Had they heard the screams no one else did? Seen the blood strewn over paver and stone? The voices raised high sang on in mindless drone.
     Moonless nights in the dead midwinter saw the play repeated ten times already, each one a grisly encore and embellishment. Sylphic ingénues flayed in places the world could see but did not. As the conscience rejected the hand of man, the mind saw the care in the cuts. Pieces set aside, choice cuts secreted away. Not a beast, but a demon, bright-eyed and black-hearted. The legacy of Cain made flesh, a darkness in man thought alien to nature.
     The letters spelled the name of each starlet put on display, a showcase of cruelest jest or sickest pride. The authorities looked, but could not see, the methods of madness eluding them. The stranger passing through crowds skulked and stalked, growing his list longer, and daybreak held only the sight of laborers slapping the whitewash across the wall sloppily. Day after night after day after night, ceasing only with the whim of the hunter, and then into night the names went, into the past. The blemishless wall left like freshly driven snow. Let it pass away, the memory of it all, like a shadow into dark.

Catch-all