blogwithvalor

No new short from me today. There have been a little too many involving gods and it feels like I’m writing reruns. Of course, the prompt for the last story forced the idea of multiple gods. So, just accept it and keep on keepin’ on. A day break is a good way to try to reset.

Here’s an old short I wrote with my wife again, from July 26th of 2021. It’s another 5 topic short, where we pulled 5 topics from a hat and handed the story back and forth to write it. I think this one came out pretty fun. I can see it going in a Lovecraftian direction. I feel like I can usually tell who writes what, but in this story it’s a little hard to tell. Maybe you’ll see two voices in this better than I can.

Enjoy.

…

5 Topics: Fight Scene/Action, Summer, Horror, Romance, Religious/Spiritual

I can’t believe I’ve been running for the past 48 hours from a crazy religious cult. My new girlfriend turned out to be a government agent following them and learned that I was the next target for some summer sacrifice. It’d only been a month of dating but I actually thought I hit it off with someone. Even now as I watch her take out 3 of the cult members that found us at this midwest motel, I keep replaying our dates to find out how much of it was just a job to her. Did she manipulate me the same way she does this guy over her shoulders and through the window? Was our first kiss as easy for her as that roundhouse into the back of that guy’s head? I watch as she choke’s out the last one and can’t help but think about how I told her she took my breath away on our first date. She gets up and looks at me, giving me the same smile she used to give me every morning.

“Grab your bag, we need to get out of here now that they know where we are,” she says.

“I wasn’t anticipating that we’d be on the run from the Righteous Crusaders this summer. I still have condoms in my pocket because all I was hoping for was sex!” I screamed at her while we run past the lake to the parking lot.

“I need you to drive while I review my intel. Please don’t puss-out on me now.” She’s exacerbated with me and I feel like a child that can’t poke a hole through a Caprisun without mommy.

I take the keys and hop into the driver’s seat. “Which way?”

“We continue East. We’re getting closer to their leader’s hideout. Just like a video game right?”

I laugh, “You can tell you’re going the right way the more baddies you find.”

It was something we talked about a week into our relationship. Video games was one of the things we bonded over. She destroyed me at anything racing, but I always pulled out a win in fighters. Not that I could ever beat her in real life.

As I turn the key in the ignition a loud explosion rattles the car from behind and launches Katie and I into the windshield. My ears are ringing and I see Katie gently mouthed my name “Toby, toby…” I close my eyes for a moment and wake to my body being dragged out of my car. I can’t see Katie but I see that I’m lying down in an ambulance. I can barely hear its siren in the background and then I’m given in I.V. by a man in a white robe. This feels like the end.

Everything goes black.

I’m sitting at the café. I matched with this girl online. Her name is Katie. We’ve chatted a bit, but this is our first IRL meetup. I got here early and ordered us a couple cappuccinos and croissants. Good coffee and flaky buttery bread seemed like an easy first date.

I’m sitting at the table waiting and suddenly get nervous. Is she coming? Was she ever even real?

Then I see her standing in the doorway… But something is wrong. She’s wearing a white robe and chanting something in a language I can’t recognize.

I blink. Suddenly I notice my hands are tied to the chair. I shake my head while shutting my eyes harder. When I open them, I see Katie is actually tied up against a giant wooden pole. The woman in the white robe looks like some religious leader reading from some giant old looking book.

The chair I’m in is really cold and something wet is tied to my head. This is an electric chair. We’re outside and the chair has cables running to some giant arch the lady is standing under. As the clouds gather overhead, I hear the faint sound of thunder.

I try to scream, but whatever they’ve drugged me with hasn’t fully worn off, “…aaaugh…”

I see Katie’s head turn slowly towards me and I think she winks. I get hit in the head from behind and everything goes black again.

We’re in Katie’s living room. It looks so clean and perfect. Like she just moved in.

We’re playing Mario Kart and she’s just red shelled me right before the finish line. She’s ruthless, but we’re both laughing. We lean into each other for our first kiss… and she slaps me across the face.

“Fuckin’ wake up. Toby, wake up.” She slaps me again and I open my eyes wide. I’m in the grass and it’s raining. Two cult dudes are knocked out in the grass and the leader is tied to the same chair I was tied to.

She’s burnt to a crisp.

“Finally, I barely got you out of the chair and put her in before the lightning struck that arch. Look at what happened,” Katie says staring past me and pointing towards what I can only describe as a pitched black doorway that is somehow glowing with darkness.

Everything near it seems to be darker and I feel too close for comfort even at the 10 yards or so I am from it. I turn away.

“What do you think it is?” Katie doesn’t stop looking at it.

I turned back to take another peek. “Some kind of gateway to hell. These people seem crazy.”

Katie finds her phone with one of the knocked out dudes in the grass. The glow of her phone reveals a couple of bruises on her face. She looks at me and gives me a slight smile.

“It doesn’t hurt as much as you’d think. You get used to it.”

She must have noticed me staring at the large knot on her forehead. I blush a little.

She puts the phone in her jacket pocket. “Apparently this was what you were supposed to open, but no one back at headquarters ever believed it was real.”

“I’m not sure I believe it’s real and I’m looking at it,” I say as I cautiously pull my bag out from under the other unconscious cult member. He groans a little bit. “Was this their headquarters?”

“It’s around here. I think this is the same property. If the stories are true then this doorway wasn’t meant for us to go through, something else is coming here.”

She’s staring into the darkness of the doorway again.

“Was that lady the leader?” I ask, looking at the charred corpse in the chair.

“I don’t think so. She seemed more like a deputy than the sheriff.”