The Great Wattpad Write-off

Prompt # 1

   The storm outside raged against the old cabin, rattling its saber as it tried to come inside. Coming to take him for his sins. Sins that haunted him still today...

   The flames reflection from the fireplace licked haphazardly at the portrait above the mantle, daring him to deny his complicitous deeds.

   His hand shook from alcoholism and memories as he grasped the glass of whiskey desperately and brought the strong liquor to his colorless lips. Ahhh...she was a wretched woman, pretty, but wretched. Her and her temptress of a daughter.

   He threw the glass against the painting where it shattered into hundreds of angry pieces, while the amber liquid brought fresh tears to life in their eyes. In their hypnotizing green eyes...

   Dozens of times he'd taken the evil painting down, sick of their damning eyes, and wicked chants that still reverberated in his ears. Witches...bitches!!! But in the end he put it back up.

   Oh, they looked innocent in the picture. The picture perfect mother and daughter. He was a fool who ignored the mysterious rumors about the sultry barmaid at a local pub when he moved to Dublin from America. Her hair, when he first saw her glinted a fiery red beneath the heated lamps, making her appear on fire.

Oh, he should have listened. He took a swig of scotch straight from the bottle as the other hand gripped the revolver tightly in his hand..

    His bloodshot hazel eyes closed as the warm drink sizzled down his stomach. Why did I move here? To write,  his mind answered itself...His move to write in the picturesque countryside soon went sour after meeting Cara and her daughter, Brenna.

   He chuckled in a mad sort of way to himself, Cara and Brenna, the bane of his writer's block. Always whispering to each other, acting like he was crazy and couldn't hear it. Chanting, calling up long dead demons from the spirit world.

   He tried to ignore their voices, denying what he heard from the barn each night. Letting her cool hands and lips pleasure and deceive his body until he fell into an exhausted sleep.

   His eyes opened and narrowed as he stared at the picture and then pointed his gun at it, as if bullets could
reach them in the ground. He should have burned them alive, the precious sod of Ireland was too good for their blaspheming bodies.

   William Davis Rhodes stood up and placed another log in the fire, sidestepping shards of glass. He raised the bottle to the portrait in a silent toast and muttered, "Witches...bitches!"

He stared at Brenna, lying in bed within the portrait, so angelic. "Ha!" He yelled out, "Angel to Lucifer!" He stumbled to the chocolate brown recliner and fell into it more or less.

   His eyes fluttered closed again, thinking of Brenna, how she came to him while Cara was tending to her sick Mum. The night was much like tonight, stormy, waves crashing the fragile isle, washing away treasures and secrets.

   Her hands danced across his chest that night, feigning fear from the thunder and other nonsense. For a moment he thought Cara had returned early, until his eyes captured her nakedness above him, the tempting temptress.

   His eyes flew open, at the creaking, crying of the wooden door to the barn. His fingers caressed the trigger of the gun he held tight to his hip. Memories of chanting Druid whispers carried to his tympanic membrane.

   Cultural rituals Cara told him, nothing to worry about. His American ideals couldn't grasp it she would tell him teasingly as her dress tumbled to the floor letting her creamy skin soothe his questions.

   It was Brenna that gave it away, their Celtic history, over a bout of whiskey drinking. Of her grandmothers amulet that Cara wore around her neck and the strange symbols they both had tattooed on the back of their neck, hidden by flaming hair. The wuivre, two snakes intertwined eating their own tail. A Celtic symbol of power, war and evil.

   He stared at the picture...why was Cara watching Brenna so secretively in it? In the middle of the night? Did she know what Brenna and I had done? Was she plotting her daughters death at that moment or perhaps she sent her to me that night to test me, a test I failed that night and several times after.

   Oh, he wrote after meeting them, gibberish that was unreadable in the morning. He wrote of death, blood, carnage...words that he had never meant to write appeared in the morning.

   The barn where he buried them screamed into the dark night, their screams or just warped, sun bleached planks straining against the elements?

His seed buried inside Brenna's swollen belly quickly brought the truth out soon after the portrait had been painted. Cara seemed not dismayed nor shocked when she found out. And appeared pleased when a boy was produced, the first male in over a century in their family.

  It was when they started taking Colin, his son, into the barn at night that he knew he had to act, and fast, before his young mind was corrupted.

  William waited until Colin was out playing and they were in the kitchen washing and drying dishes side by side, wearing matching aprons. Then he took the very pistol that he now held so tightly in his hand, and shot them both in the back of the head. The ruby droplets cascaded into the dishwater and they fell side by side to the floor, where the wood planks soaked up the blood like a vampire.

   Then he buried their bodies beneath the Celtic symbols burnt into the barn floor. The barn he no longer went into, the barn he padlocked. He reported their disappearance the next day to the police, that was five years ago.

"Da?" Colin called from his room, breaking him from his trance and damned memories.

   William turned around and saw his son, now 16, standing in the doorway of his room. Behind him, the curtains fluttered from the storm and beyond he saw the barn door wide open with the lights on.

In Colin's hand, he saw him wielding a gun. "Colin, why do you have a gun? Put it down before you hurt yourself!And I told you to stay out of the barn, boy!" He replied gruffly and turned back around to face the picture.

"Da, Granny and Ma, said hi!" He blurted out casually as if they were talking about sports.

  William turned around and heard the chants from the barn, growing louder. "Witches...bitches! They are dead!" He muttered loudly.

"No, I brought them home Da, come say hi," Colin said with a sweet smile, seconds before he lifted the gun and shot William in the side of his head, the bullet ricocheted off his skull and into the aged, bottle of scotch that had kept him sane all these years from the madness of their voices.

   Colin dropped the gun and ran into the barn and hugged his Ma and Granny, drying his tears against the dirt soiled aprons they still wore. Then together they dragged Williams body and buried him where they had been. No longer tormented anymore.

The red, fiery hair of Cara and Brenna still can be seen on stormy nights...or so the legend tells...of two women's return from the abyss of hell...