The lonely sailor, with his arms aching and a sunburn growing slowly across his cheeks, slumped back onto the planks of his tiny boat and tossed his nets, free of fish, onto the deck in frustration. The sun glinted on the surface of the water, sinking under the horizon and painting splendid pinks, oranges and reds across the sky. The sun, an expert artist, who actually managed to do its job, unlike him. The sailor sighed quietly and simply sat, watching the sun sink and sink and sink, until the sky turned an eerie purple and the sea was permeated with an inky- black nothingness.
He woke hours later to the moon shining its otherworldly light on his face and the deck of his boat and... the sound of singing. A sound that sounded both like the tinkling of bells and the soft rushing of waves, and a muffled screech of pain. As he watched, a hand, slightly pink in the moonlight, grasped the edge of the boat. And then another hand appeared. And a head. And a torso. As the sailor watched, a woman materialized, nude from waist up, clinging to the side of his sad little dinghy, and watched him. Watched him with eyes as white and lifeless and the moonlight above. But, other than those haunting eyes, she was beautiful, soft and fair. She beckoned him over and he obeyed, crawling over the deck, entranced by her flawless face and... other charms. As he crawled the singing began again, and the boat creaked under the weight of more hands, and more bodies. All joined in one eerie, melancholy song. The original woman touched the sailors face with the tips of her fingers and smiled.
The woman suddenly became as still as a statue, smile slowly sliding off of her face. As he watched, her skin began to crack, turning dark grey and gaining the texture of rock. Pieces of her skin fell into the water, as she became a broken and cracked collection of colors and textures. With what seemed like the last of her strength, the woman wrapped her stony arms around the sailors neck and pulled him into the water.
It burned. For a brief second he resurfaced but the water in his lungs impeded all of his efforts to suck in air, clawing as his airways, and he was pulled under the water once more. The women whirled around him, screaming their song for all to hear, a hideous cacophony of moaning and screeching. The sailor fought for his life, fighting to reach to the surface, and the air that he needed to survive. But his attempts were futile, and this was a fight he would not win. The woman made of stone pulled him down to the depths, as the moonlight faded away. Just like the sounds of his heart.
The priest walked along the beach, watching the sun rise and humming to himself. The little crucifix he wore around his neck rhythmically thumped against his chest with his footsteps. That rhythm was interrupted when the priest tripped over something and went sprawling over the sand. Looking to see what was responsible for him tripping, he looked down and screamed. For on the sand, turning it bright red, was a severed arm, its hand entwined with the hand of a statue, never to let go.
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With a Keyboard Under My Fingers: A Collection of Short Stories
Storie breviMy Latin class, like any language class, does vocabulary tests. But these tests are not like regular ones, which ask about a word definition and you give an answer. Instead, they require you to write a short story completely in English except for a...
