Horror in a Flash - a collection of prompt based live-writting

Prompt: Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Ever wonder if a horror story can be created out of the prompt "The Fillpino revolt against Espana and how the US used that to gain a strategic foothold in the south China sea?"

This is a collection of flash fiction written on the fly. I asked for prompts and then wrote each piece right then, taking between 15 minutes to an hour. Some came out okay and some not so much.

Prompt:

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out.

Dave sat at his desk, twisting a pen on a blank sheet of paper. He wanted to draw, but nothing came to mind. Nothing ever did anymore. He looked around his den for inspiration, but only found the same old objects, dulled through familiarity and devoid of any character. The oak paneled walls just looked like dark patches of dirt, the brightly colored prints of landscapes seemed still and dead, even his antique desk, with its many cubby holes and drawers just felt like old junk.

He tried again and drew a head, just an oval without a face. He added a pair of ears, but they just looked like lumps to him. Dave was about to cross the whole thing out and get another paper, when something tingled in his fingers, urging him to continue. He’d never felt anything like it before, but any feeling was better than none, so placed the pen back down on the paper and continued to draw.

His fingers flew across the page, guided as if someone had grabbed his hand and started to draw. First he sketched eyes, oval and deep set, with dark lashes hanging down. Then he drew a nose, long and thin, yet delicate and smooth. The mouth came next, a set of full lips pulled up into smile. He finished with the hair, long thick curls stretched down to where the shoulders would have been.

Dave lifted the pen and took a good look at the drawing. The woman was beautiful, but the eyes narrowed, as if she was glaring at something and the smile seemed more like a sneer, teeming with gleeful anger. He’d never drawn something so expressive, so filled with emotion.

He reached for one of his colored pencils to give the sketch some color, but before he could grab one the picture started filling in with color all on it’s own. The face filled first, a pale dead looking white, more sheet than skin. Then the eyes turned a piercing green, with large dark pupils spreading out in the middle of each iris.

The mouth filled last, dark red bleeding across the lips until they were the color of wine. Dave sat there, transfixed, unable to move. He knew he should be afraid, but a sense of awe and belonging emanated up from the paper, drawing ever piece of him, making him want nothing more than to sit and stare at his creation.

The paper grew larger, taking up the whole desk and spilling onto the floor. The woman’s face grew as well, until it burst from the paper and into the open air. A body formed underneath her, the same deathly pale skin covered by blood red robes that flowed around as if a soft breeze had entered the room.

She climbed out of the paper and off the desk, landing on the floor silently. The woman turned around and touched Dave on the cheek. “You have been blessed,” she said, her voice both silky and harsh at the same time.

“I am Ithaca and I have chosen you. I am going to give you a marvelous journey. Without me, you would never have set out on anything, trying to regain your inspiration to draw when you never had the talent to begin with.”

Ithaca cupped Dave’s cheek and he looked up at her, smiling. This was his inspiration, the only inspiration he would ever need. He felt stupid ever thinking that drawing meant anything as wonderful as this.

“You are my champion, my destroyer,” Ithaca said. She flicked a wrist at Dave and a long blade appeared in her hand. “Go forth and cut down all who live, so that I may take this world for myself and my kind.”

Dave opened his mouth and uttered the only words he could think of, the only words that mattered. “Yes, mistress,” he said.

The End.