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

Prompt: Headaches

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:

Headaches

Sam stood on the pier, looking down into the murky depths of the water. The night leached the ocean of its blue green hue, making it look like a mass of shadow slowly churning, with bits brushing up against the pier’s posts like thick black fingers. Sam always wondered what it would be like to dive into the ocean at night, to swim around in the black, further and further out, away from the darkness of the small darkened pier and into the faint lights of the horizon.

It really didn’t matter, since he couldn’t swim. He would just sink to the bottom and breath in the darkness, like falling asleep in the coldness of space. Maybe he’d touch the bottom before he drowned and run his fingers along the gritty sand and rocks, as fish scurried around him, the larger ones waiting for him to stop moving, so they could begin the process of devouring his waterlogged corpse.

The water would be a blessing, cool and quiet, a balm to the roaring pain in his head. Sam put a hand to his forehead and rubbed gently, frowning at his weakness. The pain in his head was a blessing and he apologized to it for his moment of doubt. He looked down at the large red duffle bag nestled at his feet and reached down to hoist it onto the wooden railing of the pier.

The bag was old, with various bits of white peeking through the deep red color it had been dyed over its many years of use. He unzipped the bag and pulled its sides apart, like a butcher opening an animal’s stomach. Inside were several heads, all staring up at him with blank eyes, mouths opened slightly from being jostled during the ride up.

“I give this to you,” Sam told his headache, as the pain swirled around in his head, crafting words that beat against his skull like knives. The words were the same as always, sharp words like kill and blood.

Sam lifted a head into his hands, the remnants of a blonde man with a hint of beard. Its eyes stared up at him like two pale gems and he poked one, letting it squish slightly under his fingertips. Sam lifted the head high over his own, letting a few remaining drops of blood drop down onto his hair.

He tossed the head into the water and watched it bob around for a while, before slowly sinking into the darkness, thanks to the rocks shoved into a hole Sam had drilled into the back of its skull. The darkness of the ocean swallowed the head, leaving nothing behind but a small shadow that quickly faded away.

Sam repeated the motion with all the heads, until his duffle bag was empty, except for stains of blood. He zipped it back up and gathered it in his arms, then watched the darkness of the water, luxuriating in the beating pain of his head as it sang each new head to sleep with a sharp edged lullabye that echoed in Sam’s head.

The end.