Miscellaneous Prompts

Museum Date

This is the second day of Promptober.

TW: Death, gore (decidedly much more than normal)

I stare at the giant painting hanging above the entrance to the exhibit. It's a beautiful landscape filled with trees turning different shades of scarlet, umber orange, and deep saffron for the fall season. A flock of majestic birds glide over two children dressed in Puritan clothing that are walking hand in hand through the growing piles of crinkling leaves. I can almost smell the wet earth, the falling leaves, the sweet wind through the branches that will never become bare. It's all just a picture, moments frozen in time for all eternity, and yet it inspires such memories and feelings, it puts it on the cusp of becoming real.

"Darron? Where are you?"

Oops. I had probably been staring at the painting for so long, my girlfriend must have moved on and I didn't notice. I turn and follow her voice, careful to keep my hand on my hat so it doesn't fall off. "Coming!"

I round the corner and find her in the center of the art exhibit waiting for me. This is only our first date, but it already feels like we're meant for each other. We have similar tastes, similar jobs (she's a photographer and writer for the local newspaper, I'm a commissioned artist with woodworking jobs to make ends meet), and we already love each other. At least, I hope she loves me. She's the nicest and prettiest woman I've ever met, but she also has some spice to liven it up.

"Oh, there you are. I almost thought I had left you behind in the entranceway."

"No, no, you're fine. I just couldn't help but look at that painting above it for a moment longer. There's just something about it. Something magical."

She nods and smiles. "I could feel it too. It's almost like it draws you in-"

There's a loud bang that comes from the front desk, and the lights go out. She screams and I gasp. There are others around us that are doing the same thing. I take out my phone and turn on the flashlight. She quickly follows my example, and others follow her own.

Suddenly, a scream echoes through the darkness as a man falls forwards and drops his phone. It clatters on the ground as he screams bloody murder. Children are crying, their mothers unable to hush them from their own fear.

Then the screaming stops. Not slowly, but in an instant, like he had been silenced by a weapon. There was no gunshot though, no sound of metal tearing through flesh.

I hold my girlfriend close to my chest as she trembles with terror. I'm frightened too. Whoever took that man and executed him, they certainly don't have any mercy to spare for the rest of us.

Another scream, this time a child. Their mother cries out as they're dragged away by the ankle. A sickening crunch resounds from above our heads. The murderer is probably on the beams supporting the ceiling. But then how would they be able to grab that poor child?

The exhibit is full of chaos now. People stampede through the rooms, pushing and bumping the two of us along with them. At one point, I almost lose my girlfriend in the flood of people desperate to escape, but she holds my hand tight and makes it back.

We reach the front of the group at the front doors and push on them. They don't budge. With a jolt, I realize that someone must have locked everyone in here, since these are push and pull doors. But there must be an alternate exit somewhere nearby. I had seen one earlier in that same exhibit we had previously been in. It'll have to do; it's the closest exit anyway.

I pull my girlfriend out of the mass of people and we run back to the exhibit. It's now empty. A few glowing phones are scattered on the ground, the only remains of the ones that had been lost to this murderer.

My heart pounds as we run through the sinuous halls. The paintings, once calming and inspiring, are now eerie in the light of my phone. Faces of aristocrats are twisted and misshapen, their beady, emotionless eyes trailing us as we flee. Sprawling landscapes become destroyed wastelands without order, colors mixing together with the shadows to create a malformed disaster. Abstract pictures form strange shapes, seeming to depict something similar to what we're running away from.

The exit sign is right there. I run towards it with the woman I love with all my heart, then feel that same heart stop as her hand slips out of mine. She screams, and I turn back to grab her, the one thing that really matters to me in this moment.

But it's too late. Her fingers just barely graze mine and she disappears into the darkness. I cry out her name, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. Her fingers grasping at the empty air are the last I see of her as she's dragged away.

I can't leave her behind to die. So, even though my gut had already tied itself into a tight knot, I chase her voice until it stops abruptly. No, she's fine, I think I hear her over there, calling out to me with a choke in her voice. Wait, no, that's a dead end. I have to go around; they must be above me. Hold on, I just went in a big circle- there's the exhibit entrance over there. No, that's a painting. Oh, there it is over there. Wait, that's just a dropped phone. Huh-

My thoughts, jumbled like a box of puzzle pieces in a blender, come to a halt as I find her. Or, at least, what's left of her. The large landscape that I had been examining earlier is leaning against the door, blocking it. In the center, covering the children and the birds, is the woman that I love, torn to pieces. Her remains were only being held up by shattered pieces of various pottery that had been stabbed through her flesh into the painting. Her slender limbs have been forcefully separated from her torso. Her blood soaks the canvas, staining the skies and trees a dark crimson. Her auburn hair, which used to be so soft and pretty, is now sticky with her own blood, arranged around her face in a sickening halo. She had been mutilated beyond belief.

"Alicia," I whisper. It's all I can manage as a sob builds up in my throat. This level of violence is immoral. Insane. Awful. The injustice...

I hear a squelching sound behind me and quickly turn. What I'm faced with is almost indescribable. A black blob with many, many eyes looms over my head. Tendrils dripping foul-smelling gunk hang on the beams, curling around the paintings and support pillars like ivy. It's larger than what I can handle at the moment. All of its eyes stare at me hungrily, blinking rapidly.

It leans closer to me. A deep groaning sound accompanied by high-pitched whistling comes from above, almost like it's trying to communicate with me. Wait, no. It's smelling me. Deciding whether I'm fit to be its dinner.

I'm frozen in place. There's nothing I can do anymore. As it readies a singular tendril to pierce my heart, I accept my fate. There's nothing left for me now. No parents. No girlfriend. No friends in general. No coworkers.

Nothing.

And that's all I feel as it absorbs my life force directly from my core.

Nothing.