This week, we gathered on Discord as Toronto Dark Fiction Writers. We were given 20 minutes to write and edit to a prompt, then moved on to the next one. Here is my second story I wrote that night. The prompt, as you can probably guess, was rust. And now for your reading pleasure...
Rust
Her hair was the color of rust. So was her skin. And nails. And the hollowed-out sockets where her eyes should have been. Her body flaked and disintegrated, leaving gouges in her once perfect form. My wife.
Our laughter once filled this home, before they came. Before they targeted us with their transmutations. Before humanity fell.
I hid her body under the floorboards to shield her from the elements, preserving her for as long as possible. A collection of letters, our memories, were stashed with her, collecting her cast off flakes. She will not be forgotten.
Grabbing my rifle, I peaked through the boarded-up first floor window that once had glass. The patrol should be around soon. With my wife safe, there was nothing left to lose.
A siren sounded, reverberating through my bones. Midsized crafts manned by these beasts hovered as they approached, their headlights flooding the abandoned street that had once been filled with cars and playing kids. The invaders’ unknowable occult magic fueled guns were aimed every which way. The planet was theirs the moment they landed and they knew it. All that was left was the clean up.
My eye looked down the sight of the barrel. Humans would not go down quietly. I took a breath and aimed between my heart beats. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Bang! Thump, thump. The bullet’s aim was true. Purple blood spurted into the air as the tall creature giving slithering orders toppled to the bed of the craft. One down.
I cocked the rife and took aim again, but to my dismay, I took in my last breath. The one I took the least for granted. I braced myself for the assaulting barrage of mystic mortar and shell.
Colors of hot light swirled around me, engulfing me, not harming a single board or glass shard that did not contain human DNA.
My eyes withered, dissolving as liquid was leached from my body. In terror I looked down to see my skin flaking and transmuting. Elements melted and realigned into different materials. Flakes of my body disintegrated into the air, blowing through the slats in the window to mingle with the nothingness my people had become.
The End