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(Hi! I thought this looked like a fun contest, so here is my entry! It has minor fantasy and romance elements, but is mostly horror. It’s not super well written, but if minor gore/horror bothers you, consider this a warning. Also, I know this isn't a full short-story, but it's over 1k words, so it technically counts :)
Enjoy!)
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I dropped the corpse.
Thud.
It landed in the deep cavity, thick snowfall already beginning to cover the crimson remains.
I wiped the blood off my hands onto my trousers, thin lines of crimson staining the leather, most of it already beginning to freeze.
It wouldn’t be difficult to cover the evidence, considering the blizzard that swirled around the graveyard. Dancing the thin line of convenient and smothering.
While it did help cover evidence, it was cold.
So cold.
Forever cold.
Deathly cold.
Through the veil of snow and ice, I squinted, considering the body. He was barely recognizable anymore, Annora had made sure of that. Peering down at the mass of marred flesh and fractured bones, I almost felt sorry for the man, or what was left of him.
Almost.
Wasting no time, I started shoveling snow on top of the body. Dirt and blood swirled together, staining the heaps of glistening snow as I flung it onto the corpse.
Shovel after shovel.
Pile after pile.
Heap after heap.
My muscles ached after the hole had been liberally covered, hands cramped, and sweating despite the weather. I rolled my shoulders back, trying to ignore the anxiety buried deep in the pit of my stomach. I took deep breaths, watching my exhales dissolve into the bitter wind.
A hand tapped my back.
I whirled around, breathing a curse.
“Miss me?”Annora chimed, barely recognizable beneath a thick layer of snowflakes.
“It’s funny how you always seem to show up after all the dirty work is done,” I returned gruffly, stretching out my back.
She smirked, “Isn’t it? It really is quite hilarious if I do say so myself.”
I grunted.
“Oh, don’t be like that, you’ve always been better at stuff like this anyway. Assassination and whatnot.”
“Assassination, yes. Hiding bodies, no.”
“Didn’t they train you in stuff like that? Do you just kill people and ask somebody else to take care of the body for you?” She smirked, “C’mon, you’re an assassin for heaven’s sake, this shouldn’t be a big deal for you.”
I gave her a hard glare, she knew she'd struck a nerve.
“You really shouldn’t be so cheerful, not when we’ve just killed a man,” I said between my teeth, anxiety building as the snowstorm intensified.
“You want me to be reverent around him? I know you're supposed to be respectful of the dead, but him? Heavens, I thought you’d be dancing on his grave by now.”
“I don’t know, It just doesn’t feel right. I feel like it’s.. just wrong, you know? Plus, you’ll draw attention to us,” I shiver, thinking of what would happen if we were caught.
Annora glared at me, her smirk dying on her face.
“Do you really mean that?”
“Yeah, I guess. He was still a talented magician, despite it all. C’mon, brutal murder, hiding bodies in the middle of a blizzard - it just doesn’t feel right. Don’t push, I’m not in the mood to test my faith.”
Annora glares again, when I don’t relent, her face drops, hardening into a bitter frown. She sneers, grabbing me by my cloak and pulling me close to her.
“God, Enir. This is testing your faith? Ridding the world of a tyrannical monster? I don’t think I have to remind you who we just murdered, do I? This man has killed hundreds of people, enslaved people, exploited people, exploited us! This man never thought about what felt right, or wasted a second on faith. What we did to him was merciful compared to what he deserved,” Annora hissed, her anger practically melting the crust of snow caking her body.
She gave me a hard glare, and I knew I’d struck a nerve.
She shook her head, gesturing toward the curtain of blizzard surrounding us.
“You of all people should know what that man did. So don’t say ‘it doesn’t feel right’. Nothing in this world does, so don’t you act all high and mighty with that stupid reverence or ‘drawing attention in a raging blizzard.”
I bowed my head, nodding.
I’d struck a nerve alright.
It was not that I disagreed with her, God, I knew the magician was practically the devil reincarnated, and had tampered with unspeakably dark magic, but I suppose I just liked hanging on to what little valor I had left. I liked clinging to the scraps of honor that I managed to keep a grip on.
Ever since I left the city, I suppose I felt like… I needed to preserve something I learned there, or I’d be worthless, pitiful, a shell of who I’d been. But Annora didn’t need to hear that, Annora couldn’t stand pity.
Looking into her tired, glassy eyes, I thought about what the magician had done to us, had done to her. Heavens, she was right, he was headed straight to the heart of damnation, and he deserved every minute there.
She stood there, a few feet in front of me.
Fuming in the cold.
Scared.
Angry.
Hurt.
All because of me, and the impact of the man the snow had just buried.
I cleared the space between us, pulling her into a tender hug. I muttered a soft “I’m sorry,” into her hair as she relented, returning the embrace. I squeezed her thin shoulders, pulling her closer to me, the heat of our bodies cutting through the desolate storm around us.
“He’s gone now, we’ll make it out of here,” I muttered, the cold biting my throat.
“We're free.”
“Yeah,” Annora whispered, her voice cracking.
“Yeah.”
After a few glorious moments of warmth, Annora pulled away, her eyes no longer glassy, now standing taller, more composed.
“Enir, we should get moving, you know, before we freeze here.”
“Right,” I blinked, composing myself.
Annora grins. “Ready to get out of this blizzard?”
“Yeah, I really am,” I said, the pain in my lower back resurfacing. Burying bodies in the middle of a snow storm was certainly a strenuous feat indeed.
I sigh, looking out into the sea of snow dancing around us.
Was I ready for this?
Was I ready to abandon my whole life, again? After all, I had just killed and buried one of the most influential dark wizards in the kingdom, and that would definitely warrant a ‘new life’ so to speak.
Unsure of myself, I looked into Annora’s eyes, bright irises shining a defiant green, screaming mischief, screaming a promise.
Screaming adventure.
Yes, I was ready for this.
I reached for her hand, preparing myself for the road ahead, but before I could take hold of it, a curtain of white snow slammed into me, sending me careening face-first into the snow. The storm had begun to turn violent and frigid, now swallowing the world up in sheets of suffocating ice crystals and gusts of sleet.
With much effort, I wrenched myself from the snow bank, the movement making me slightly dizzy, and I stumbled on my feet, nearly tripping.
“Annora! Annora, where are you!” I screamed, now running in the direction I thought to have seen her last. Dizziness still enveloped me, and my sense of direction had been completely skewed due to the intensity of the storm.
“ANNORA!”
I screamed until my throat turned raw and hoarse, inhaling more than my fair share of ice. After running around helplessly for a few moments, I heaved in the snow, spitting up sick. Anxiety and exhaustion had begun to swell within me so intensely, that I felt physically ill, nauseous and on the verge of collapse.
I dropped to my knees, hitting the snow sharply. I steadied myself as more gusts of sharp wind threatened to blow me completely over. Too exhausted to stand, I began crawling through the wintry tempest, ignoring the numbness climbing up my fingers and toes.
As I crawled deeper into the storm, a flash of red caught my eye. I gasped, discovering a trail of smeared crimson leading away from me, blood no doubt. Panic took hold of my entire body as I followed the trail.
Part of me tried to convince myself that it was residual blood from when Annora and I had disposed of the magician, but that had been almost half an hour ago, and the wind had already covered any remaining stains of the man, if there had been any at all.
What if Annora had-
A soft touch pulled me out of my thoughts, grasping at my shoulder. I turned, breathing a sigh of relief. “Heavens Annora, I thought I’d lost you-”
The lifeless corpse of the dark magician stared back at me, tilting its ruined face sideways, as if it was asking a question. The sight of it nearly made me heave again, all bloody and torn, skin hanging oddly off of its stiff bones, which jutted out in sharp, unnatural directions. The snow storm had probably accelerated the process of rigor mortis, which was not a comforting thought.
Horrified, I jumped away from the magician, but my legs collapsed at the strenuous effort, and I crumbled to a heap at the corpse’s feet. He leaned down, audible ‘cracks’ sounded from his joints and split ligaments as he lowered himself.
The noise made me flinch, and I prepared to crawl away from the undead magician, but before I could, he was upon me, pinning me to the ground. I screamed as he dug his jagged fingernails into my arms, waves of pain traveling up my biceps.
“Yo-u- u y- o- u- u,” the corpse croaked, each syllable raspy and disjointed, as if his voice box had been damaged.
“Y- uo - y - o -u, k-ih–i- ll - l -ed m-m -e -h,” he grunted, pressing his nails deeper, drawing blood.
I writhed under his grasp, kicking against the corpse and flailing my limbs wildly, but the undead magician wouldn’t budge, and I was far too weak to fight him. A numbness was creeping up all of my limbs, rendering them immobile and useless.
Without warning, I felt myself being dragged by my legs across the snow. The corpse was terrifyingly strong for- well, for whatever it was. I didn't have much time to think about what exactly the magician was, only that he, or rather it was a threat.
As I was dragged along, I attempted to dig my fingers into the snow to slow the process down, but I only managed to further freeze my hands and fingers, rendering me even more useless than before.
After I had given into the corpse's grip, I felt myself being grabbed around the shoulders, thrown downwards, and then I was falling.
Thud.
I landed in the deep cavity that I had dug for the magician. When I landed, I hit a hard mass, a shape that felt like another body. I began to cry as I released who it was.
Annora.
God.
Annora.
But I couldn't move, and she was likely already dead, frozen and lifeless. I looked skyward, pleading with whatever gods would listen as thick snowfall began to Annora and I, burying us until I felt nothing at all, and my breath began to die in my throat.
But no gods answered. They didn't care.
The world went dark, and then, there was nothing at all.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
