This is chilling and mesmerizing at the same time. The way you explore denial and the deep, creeping truths we avoid it’s terrifying and somehow painfully familiar. I felt it in my own skin reading this.✨
“I did neither. I sat in the dirt beneath the red moon and watched. The ground opened. The marked poured into it like water down a drain.”
To me, this is the mystery. When everyone is either marching into the void singing, or ripping themselves apart to avoid it, you simply sit, wait and watch? True, the lesson later learned says no one is spared the awful realization—yet composure in the face of everything observed remains unexplained. I speculate there was more than one, quietly waiting and watching. Perhaps even celebrating with the others who seemed to have gamed the system—until it became clear that they had not. The story as written is horrifically scary. Horrifying. To me, you, as always, display amazing writing talent. But my brain got caught on that one niggling detail and refuses to let it go. Just saying: I hate when that happens!
Another excellent October tale. Kept me reading to the end, though I also needed to stop and scratch at my arms at points.
Thanks for taking time to read it. I felt the itch when I was writing it
I can imagine. It creeps up on you more as it goes on.
This is chilling and mesmerizing at the same time. The way you explore denial and the deep, creeping truths we avoid it’s terrifying and somehow painfully familiar. I felt it in my own skin reading this.✨
Scary since that comet approaches
This could make a cool horror series.
“I did neither. I sat in the dirt beneath the red moon and watched. The ground opened. The marked poured into it like water down a drain.”
To me, this is the mystery. When everyone is either marching into the void singing, or ripping themselves apart to avoid it, you simply sit, wait and watch? True, the lesson later learned says no one is spared the awful realization—yet composure in the face of everything observed remains unexplained. I speculate there was more than one, quietly waiting and watching. Perhaps even celebrating with the others who seemed to have gamed the system—until it became clear that they had not. The story as written is horrifically scary. Horrifying. To me, you, as always, display amazing writing talent. But my brain got caught on that one niggling detail and refuses to let it go. Just saying: I hate when that happens!
Your comments are always great. Thank you
Wow. Just WOW. The "And I understood" made me shiver. What a terrific story with deep meaning!
Thanks for the kind words.