Short Stories Anthology

Waiting on a dead bird

It was eerily silent, the night was. Hollow and stagnant, like time itself had been frozen in place. Darkness cloaked the blackened sky, casting long expanding shadows over the crimson-lathered pillars, which themselves left spacious silhouettes on the stone pavement, segregated evenly by blocks of density. The hallway that was usually empty, save for the occasionally wandering humbly clothed servants, always in a perpetual rush to tend to their menial tasks, was awfully lacking any presences, making the already barren perimeter look even more abandoned.

The Red Palace, where the princess favoured greatly by the King resided, had decorations that were ultra extravagant. Along the branch of the canopy of the hallway were lined with exquisite lanterns, which were made of all sorts of colored glaze, transfixing dazzling patterns of light and color. Those multi-coloured lanterns gave off a dim shimmer, but gently blown aside by the breeze of the cold night, they briefly swayed, and their variants of mosaic light struck streaks of disturbed luminance.

They rattled with a faint sound, settled down, then rattled once again. Amidst the quiet noise, turning to the left corner of the pathway, traversing into a secretive entrance, the hush outline of a man could be discerned.

The man's back, sketched out by the imperceptible radiance of the lantern behind him, could not be fully made out, by taking a glance at his build, one could tell he was well-equipped with muscles. A gifted height that was rare in servants, but most commonplace amongst trained soldiers—but make no mistake, this man was both a servant, as well as a soldier. More than a soldier, he was like a blade that had been carved and wielded for personal usage. He was like a honed sword, sharpened countless times at the end to be penetrative enough to tear through stone, but having propped upon an erected wooden handle, this sophisticatedly crafted sword was inexperienced, clumsy, but an unseasoned sword was just as deadly, and this well-honed blade, drank its fair share of blood for the first time.

A streak of blood covered the tanned cheek of the man. It was like he didn't notice how the lower part of his face, from his nose to his completely blood-drenched mouth, was coated with an overwhelming amount of ichor, or it might've been that it was beyond his scope of care. But, with the available light-source in the room that dawned on one side of his face, leaving the other half angled towards darkness, one of his eyes revealed a coat of glimmering, transparent sheen, while the other was enveloped in darkness, creating a contrast that was like an amalgamation of a terrifying monster.

Clearly, the man was not a monstrous entity. However, his calm face and stoic countenance was like a sign of his foreignness. The man further turned his face towards the root of illumination. Now, his body was divulged, and a handsome face came into view.

"Princess..." His voice was at odds with his hefty appearance, soft-spoken, but barring any inflection and emotion, like grating rocks. A scarily emotionless voice. "The man has been rid of."

The princess peeked out from beneath the decorative beam of her bed. The grotesque sight she saw paralyzed her to the core. The handsome, tanned man held a severed arm in one hand, while the other separate one had been kicked away, now resting guilelessly at the foot of the doorway. In front of his black-toed boots, a body laid motionlessly in a pool of blood. With both arms having been disjointed, the cadaver didn't even seem like it belonged to a human, resembling more of a long pole of unidentifiable meat. However, what was more eye-catching than that disjointed body was the man who stood before it, unfazed, even serene.

A scream was about to crawl but her throat. She could feel bile rising up her esophagus, but fortunately, repressed the acidic lump by clamping a hand over her mouth. As she was dry-heaving against the floor, the bloodied man approached her, tossing the severed arm and the bloodstained blade aside, which clattered against the ground with an ear-rupturing, crisp clang.