Writing Prompts x3

Reluctantly, he handed over the key
He had waited twenty years to return it
The accident wasn’t her fault

Bre’s Story

Reluctantly, he handed over the key.

“I really won’t do this if I were you.” He said to the boy standing in front of him. The key looked huge in his small hand, like a it belonged more to a giant than man. Its teeth jutted and cut into miniatures blocks at the end, like a forked ax ready to strike. Its long, straight spine shone with a dull brass sheen indicative of use and age.

The boy just gave the old man a sharp look, full of all the arrogance a ten-year old king could muster. Which unfortunately, was quite a substantial amount.

The boy stuck out his chin high in the air, as if the extra quarter of an inch would make his glare more impressive.

“Wizard, I am King. And as King, I must have access to all which is under my domain.”

The wizard cocked an single brown eye brow and said, “As you wish.”

The key, which until that moment, had remained still and inanimate, hummed in the boy’s hand, it vibrated until it was hard to see it clearly. Fear drained the color from his pale face, the wizard noted the key now seemed to be growing, extending even further past the boy’s head. The weight of the key dragged the King’s arms down and with a thump, it landed on the ground.

“Make it stop!” The boy King cried. The wizard watched as the boy tried to pull his hand away, but the key did not let go. The brass seemed to melt off the key and seeped onto the boy’s skin.

A horrible shrill filled the room, it came from the boy as the brass skittered up his arm, and then his neck, and spread over his body like a film.

“Sorry, your Majesty. The Key of Kings listens to no man.” It was only with a bit of detached pity that the wizard watched the boy’s body fold in on itself, one bend followed another, then another. A acrid order emanated from the key and one of its bumps burned red, then white and the former boy king melted with his ancestors.

Tami’s Story

He had waited twenty years to return it.

He stood at her gravestone now. Alone, in the rain. It seemed fitting. It had been raining the day he’d lost her forever.

He lifted the necklace, its delicate crystal butterfly spinning crazily through the air, almost as if she waved to him. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it gently.

Such a tiny thing to have held on to for so long. Such a delicate thing to have kept his soul soothed.

She had been so perfect. His one true only. He’d told her so every precious moment they’d been together.

He started to speak, but his voice broke and it took him a moment to find it again. “I know that you would want me to be happy. I hope you forgive me. I found someone else. Someone who makes me feel the same way that you did. She’s even got big blue eyes, just like yours. Didn’t I always say you had the most beautiful eyes?”

No answer, except a dance of light from the pendant.

“I will always love you.”

Lifting her necklace with a shaking hand, he gave it a final kiss before folding it into a crumpled handful of torn lace. He lifted the cloth to his nose and inhaled, remembering her scent for the last time.

“Time for me to live again,” he said, and left the tiny package on the gravestone.

The first body appeared less than a week later. A woman. Blue eyes, wearing an expensive wedding gown, brutally murdered, wearing all her jewelry except a necklace.

Bluebeard had returned.

Perry’s Story

The accident wasn’t her fault. It totally wasn’t fair of them to sit there, all high and mighty, slinging around the blame as if they had any idea what had happened that night.

For starters, she was still wet behind the ears, as her Nana used to say. How was she supposed to know that mogwais were to be kept dry? Nobody had ever told her she’d be dealing with fictional beasties when she signed up for the course.

In retrospect, of course this seemed obvious. After all, one doesn’t enter the prestigious Miskatonic University of Fictional Realities and expects to be taught dry lessons of Chaucer and Earthly geography, do they?

Still, at the time, it was a surprise. It was SHOCKING, to walk into her first class, 21st Century Mythology, and see a cylon standing docile next to blue police box, a baby dragon, and some sort of creature that looked to be made of black smoke.

They really did do things hands-on in the city as compared to the sticks where she’d grown up.

But she’d loved the university. Loved the practical experience and the research into the creation of these fictional worlds and how to create her own fictional worlds, with monsters and creatures and characters that lived and acted of their own volition.

She blamed her roommate.

Her roommate who’d come home one night to tell her of the surprise seminar that was being held at Massey Hall at midnight. The seminar would cover the breaking of Creation Laws during the previous century. She’d gone along, her roommate always knew where the coolest hidden secrets were to the Miskatonic and had never steered her wrong before.

And the mogwai was there on the table, looking so cute…she didn’t mean to knock over the cup of water that was standing next to the cage. And she most certainly didn’t mean to leave the mess for someone else to clean up.

But she was in a rush. Her roommate had told her that they’d managed to pull Jareth the Goblin King from the Labyrinth as a special treat. THE Jareth. And was she going to miss a chance like that?

Hell no.

So if she left the wet little mogwai alone in the cage, reproducing like an asexual bunny? Well…surely, there was some leeway that could be provided, right?

After all, she certainly didn’t feed the damned things afterward. Though, it could be argued, that their cage burst because too many of them had spawned and that one could be tacked onto her bill…

So yes, they got free. But she wasn’t the one who fed them! They would have been fine as cute and cuddly little mogwais if they hadn’t gotten to the buffet table on the sly.

And certainly, she couldn’t be blamed for not stumbling upon them in the janitorial closet, in their cocoon phase, right?

It wasn’t her fault that the university had booked the Creatures of Horror guerrilla seminar just next door, right?

And surely, SURELY, nobody would think to blame her for the gremlins letting loose that nightmares they did.

And the morning after?

The morning after, when the two hundred gremlins (the buffet table had been huge) had finally melted away to that nasty green kludge; when six promiscuous teenagers had been killed in their sleep by Freddy Kreuger, before the seventh had killed him; when the homicidal leprechauns had been rounded up; when Pyramid Head had been sent back to Silent Hill; and Cthulhu had finally been banished by an extant copy of the Necronomicon had been found in the University archives (of course, this was AFTER the university had been reduced to rubble by the summoning of the Elder God); after all of that…surely, SURELY, they wouldn’t possibly try to pin all of that on her, would they?

Just on the basis of spilling a little water on a mogwai?

Yeah, no way. That was crazy talk. There was definitely no way they’d pin ALL of that on her.

But still, as she looked at their arguing faces, she felt the small scrabbling claws of fear scratching at the back of her mind.

They didn’t still burn witches at the stake, did they?

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