Bloody Quill from Jessica Colvin
Recently, the Christchurch Writers’ Guild held their first ever annual awards dinner. As part of the awards, our members were invited to share snippets of their writing. This is just one of the extracts that graced the imaginations of our membership.
This snippet was submitted by
Jessica Colvin for consideration for the Bloody Quill, stories about death scenes.
Once Were Angels
By Ami Hart (aka, Jessica Colvin)
Extract from her current Work in Progress
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
Odez pleaded with her silently for a moment, then whispered “Sam…” as his hand stole beneath the heavy coat. She froze at the mention of her real name, her face turning a deathly pallor. When Odez’s fingers touched the hilt of that finely carved bone knife, his strength of purpose flooded back and doubt fled.
I need this. There it was, justification in grave-digging spades.
“Please forgive me, but soon you’ll see. All this is necessary.” He drew the bone dagger with deliberate care. The alabaster blade seemed to glow with a light of its own in the dim room. Silence reigned and in that moment nothing else existed, just this room, her, him and the moment to come. An inevitable juncture loaded with dread and promise, blood and blessing.
Sam’s gaze trapped his— twin barrels, ready to fire— but she said nothing. Accepting her fate? That was when Odez felt a foreign, invasive presence and its sudden arrival threatened to syphon away what courage he had. A war drum raged in his chest and part of him simply wanted to run.
They were here already?!
He was out of time. If he didn’t do it now, she would be damned. He couldn’t let that happen to another one.
Odez stepped forward, lifting the weapon to strike. His action accompanied by Sam’s sharp intake of breath, a startled finality, one last gasp. Her eyes narrowed, drilling hatred at the weapon in his hand. He spoke the sounds, the song that would unbind hidden things. The resonance of his voice reverberating the air, the voice of an angel— stolen for this dark purpose. When he drove that point down she caught his arm.
Odez baulked at the sudden resistance, his face twitching in surprise. Sam’s grip was deceptively strong, even when the point of his blade jagged her arm, drawing a steady line of scarlet which spotted the front of her gown.
The window behind them rattled in its frame. He dared not divide his attention – maybe it was just the wind— no likely not.
He strained against her, his body cording with the effort. The knife’s mean tip inching down toward Sam’s sunken, sickly chest. Her desperate nails dug into his wrist while her ocean-wild eyes pleaded. If she had been able speak he imagined she might say: I don’t want this, I don’t want to die. The usual mantra of the death-bed where the biological imperative went about its urgent, final business. The fear of the unknown, the fear of becoming nothing, the forever-black that lurked behind one’s eyelids.
“Let go. You need to let go of this life.” He grunted.
The tip touched the front of her gown, an over-washed hospital grey stained with desperate patches of vitality. Just like this reality. It’ll never be clean again. The Great-See had tried to address the disarray but reality was inherently messy, biologicals were messy, and free-will made it messier. He leaned in closer, putting his weight over the knife. That was when her free hand found his face, striking him hard. Odez’s head snapped to the side and her nails raked his skin. Then those same punishing fingers groped beneath his chin, pinching deep as if seeking to strangle him, stoppering air that he didn’t actually need.
Human Futility.
Changing tack, Odez levered the knife sideways. The shift in momentum weakened her grip allowing him to angle the bone knife round, down and right into her side. Her blue green eyes watered and the age-lined face tightened with agony, twisting a mouth already enraged by defeat. He drove the knife deeper up between her ribs until the fine long tip reached her heart. Only then did he dare rasp, “It is done, it is done,” the words lacking his usual musical resonance.
Her grip around his neck slackened and he felt a peculiar sensation as her half-aware fingers traced the underside of his jaw. When her hand fell down with graceful finality she blinked slowly. Her eyes zeroed in and out of focus, from him—that murderous blot in her vision— to somewhere else, faraway.
Then something he hadn’t prepared for occurred. He felt the stutter of her dying heart, fluttering frantic like a butterfly stuck in a jar. Infinite black edges ringed his vision, while a deep pain ground within his own chest. It was all there, the harsh-cut reflection of what he’d done including the cold but simultaneously searing burn of the knife within, lodged deep against a background of screaming nerves and sundering cells. Odez struggled against it. Panic burst up and he cried out at the same moment that she whispered her last. The room swayed, swimming in pain, until it all flowed away, like a whirlpool were pulling it down to some black place. Sam’s strength was gone, her eyes had lost their focus, the ocean that they were, becoming still. Two, no, three deep gasps and that last exhale just kept going out and out, forever to its end
Odez was breathless as he pulled the knife from her body, hand trembling. A vital sickening warmth followed as the knife exited, flooding over his hand. He looked down stunned by the murder-redness of it.
It is done — those words fast losing their meaning in the face of the horror he had just experienced.
How? What was she?
About the author:
Ami Hart is the pen name for Jessica Colvin. She is a writer, artist, and mother of two from Christchurch, New Zealand. She lives in two worlds: one being post-quake Christchurch and the other is a fantastical place where dragons and space ships soar, sometimes side by side.
Ami is a member of SpecficNZ and the Christchurch Writers Guild. She has had several short stories published in various anthologies and is currently writing a fantasy novel. She blogs about her writing adventures here: http://www.amilibertyhartwriter.com/
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