This week Chuck got us to check out each other's images we have to upload and write a story about an image we have picked out... I've chosen the Standing Stones.
Enjoy.
Thunder cracked
overhead.
It was time.
Erica watched as the
moon moved overhead.
The dagger poised
above the struggling white rabbit as the eclipse was almost done, the moon was
almost blood red, time of opening the pathway home was to happen.
But would somebody
here stop her before she could finish the ritual, or would she be able to do it
right?
Lightning flashed
across the low, dark clouds; illuminating the open fields surrounding her as
rain poured from above. This was time,
the right time, for this to happen!
Erica plunge the
dagger into the chest of the rabbit, feeling its pungent fear fill the air as her
arm came down, as its blood first oozed over the blade, then ran more freely as
the tip struck the stone she was holding it onto.
Tears filled her
eyes as she felt and saw its life slip away, knowing she had killed something
she wished she didn’t have to, ‘Oh, dammit, you big sook, let’s just get on
with it.’ She muttered as she bent over the rabbit, opening the tiny carcass up
and cutting out its heart for what she needed to do.
The massive dark
stones stood nearby, blackened and slick by the rain now pelting down from the
skies around them. This made them
terrifying. But 1650 was no time for
Erica to be in – especially seeing she was a practicing Witch back home in the Twenty-First
Century; the witch hunts were just beginning around this part of the country
and if she was caught, she’d be burned at the stake, or worse, and never get
back to her own time.
Besides, the Wise
Woman had told her about these Standing Stones and given her directions to them
– even walked her to this very spot two weeks ago – and told her about the
ritual she had to perform to get back home.
So, here she was, doing this very thing…
…praying to the Gods
above that she wasn’t going to get caught…
…hoping that this
worked…
…wishing she didn’t
have to kill an animal to get back home…
The clouds cleared
for a moment and she found the moon was completely red.
It was time to use
the animal heart!
She knelt right by
the stones with the heart in one hand and the bloodied dagger in the
other. As the rain poured down, she
quoted the Latin the Wise Woman had been teaching her for months and drew the
pattern in the mud hoping this would work.
Then, she heard it…
a rumbling beneath her… behind her…
‘No… it can’t be.’ She
turned from her spot with the dagger still poised and the tiny heart in her
hand to find the hilltop behind her lined with torchlight. Lightning flashed and it lit up the township
of people who lived over the hill, ‘Oh crap… they’re gonna kill me.’ She turned
back to her ritual and started to speak faster, draw faster. As Erica did, something amazing happened!
The drawings in the
mud began to show silver and glisten in the darkness. When she spoke faster, it showed the diagram
she was drawing, until she no longer needed to draw it; instead holding the dagger
up to the heavens with the tiny heart as it began to beat on its own.
This was what the
Wise Woman said would happen!
Erica smiled as
tears of happiness blurred her vision and she felt positive that she was going
home!
At long last, she
was going to be able to watch television, listen to modern music on the radio
and watch YouTube! Yes! This was starting to sound like a wonderful reality!
In the next flash of
lightning, she heard the people from the township screaming, thundering down
the hillside.
Fear tightened in
her gut as she looked up to find the doorway between the massive black stone
light up, and she saw daylight!
Rising from her
knees, she stepped over the diagram, kept a hold of the rabbit’s heart and
dagger and walked through the brightly-lit doorway.
As soon as she was
through, she felt the sun on her face, the warm breezes of a nice Spring day
and she looked at her hands where she still held the heart and dagger.
Turning, she sliced
the heart into four, chanting a closing mantra, stabbing the dagger right in
the middle of the doorway. Then took two
pieces of the heart in both hands and smeared them into the rockfaces as hard
as she could from top to bottom. As she
did, a brilliant flash emitted from the doorway and the storm that had been occurring
in between those stones before was now gone.
Erica sat on the
ground soaked to the skin, her hands and arms covered in blood looking at the
dagger. She had to leave that
there. So, with all her strength, she
shoved it into the ground up to the hilt… hoping it would stay there.
Turning, she looked
around. The hillside was exactly as it
had been hundreds of years ago… so had she been sent home? Looking over the valley, she rubbed her hands
on her long dirty dress, wondering if it had all been a bad dream… wondering…
‘Erica?’ a familiar
male voice called out behind her.
She turned to find
her boyfriend running up to her from the hilltop, ‘James?’
He pulled out an
iPhone, ‘Hey, yeah, I found her… she’s covered in mud and muck, and drenched as
though she’s been in a storm, but she’s here!
We need the trucks… we’re at the Standing Stones, dude.’
‘What year is it?’
‘Why?’
‘I just came from
1650.’
He took a few steps
back, ‘Well, we’ll have to get you checked out then. And the year is 2015.’
‘Are we together?’
‘Of course… why?’
‘When I left, you
were mad at me.’
‘About what?’
Looking back at the
stones, Erica wondered what the hell happened to change their relationship, ‘In
what way are we together?’
‘We’re married.’ He looked
at her hands, ‘And who’s blood is that?’
‘I had to kill a
rabbit to get here.’
He turned away, ‘Dude,
we have a witch… it’s burnin’ time.’
