Lest I be accused of not having my blog be sufficiently literary -- and, really, I do love my horror movies -- I'm taking part in a game of Consequences, where a series of writers writes 250 words, set in an abandoned landscape, each using the last line of the previous writer.
So far:
2. Jade Park
5. Anna Shapiro
6. Mark Krotov
8. Alex Chee
And now me. A little tardy.
Okay, a lot tardy.
But still...
***
He gripped her face in his hands, leaned in for the kiss. Quickly, before the other guards saw. Her eyes were blind with terror, but he had recognized her the moment she was brought here, in shackles. As children, they had once fished for catfish in Tonle Sap Lake, tying crickets to the end of long branches to lure the fish to the surface.
And now, she was a seditionist, a traitor. Who had implicated her, he didn’t know, but he had heard husbands implicate their wives, mothers denounce their sons. The people being questioned called out names of the half-remembered, of the already dead, of the loved and hated and feared. And then, maybe a month later, they were led to the room where the executioner waited with a heavy pickaxe in his hand, because bullets were scarce.
Strange to think that this had once been a school, that students had once strolled across the tan-and-white tiled halls. Now, instead of students sitting in long, orderly rows, there were the prisoners, sleeping head to foot, shackled to a long iron bar.
Now, it was her turn to confess. Her life lay on the sheet of paper before her, starting with her birth. It would take another day, at least, to reach her arrest. She did not speak as he held her face, and did not react as he placed a thumb-sized lump of rice in her mouth. It was a small mercy, a cold mercy, but a mercy nonetheless.
***
10. Lucas Green: porousborders.wordpress.com
11. Jedediah Berry: (manualofdetection.com): http://crshd.tumblr.com/
