Day 164 Writing Short Stories

Misery

“Misery will follow you,” she heard the words echo in her head. “It will seep into you and consume you.”

And she had thought fortunes were meant to be happy. The hag should have said that a dark, handsome prince was waiting for her, and it would be love at first sight. But no, the woman had said she would be dead by the end of the month. She had dismissed the words at first, but then things had started to turn bad. She had lost her job and her friends, had become clumsier, and misfortune followed her around. The words were coming true.

She had tried to find the fortuneteller, but the shop was gone. There was no trace of her offline or online.

Things were looking terrible, so bad that she was doing something she never thought she would be doing. But she had no other choice. She was sure that by the end of the week, she would be dead.

She stood at midnight in a graveyard. The Internet had told her it was the only way to get rid of a hex. That was another thing she was sure of, that what was following her was a hex or worse yet a demon, feeding on her pain.

She lit the candles around the grave she had chosen. She got down on the ground, in the middle of the candles. She had to trick the hex into thinking she was dead already. The woman lying six feet under was of a similar age and bore the same name. It had been a miracle that she had found the woman. There it had been, on the front of the newspaper, delivered to her soon-to-be foreclosed house. She had traveled to the other end of the country to be here over this exact grave.

She took a paper out of her pocket. It was a spell she was meant to read aloud.

She spoke the words and pricked her thumb, pressing her blood onto the paper. Then she burned the spell along with her blood, repeating the words aloud.

She waited for a sign to tell her that the hex had released her. She was sure it hadn’t worked when nothing happened, but then her body heaved. It was like something was trying to tear her out of her own body. Her body heaved again and again, pushing her out. She tried to claw herself back in. Keep hold of what was hers, but she was pushed out, watching her own lifeless body become alive again. Her face twisted, looking alien to her.

“My darling daughter,” came a voice behind her. The source of the voice stepped through her, gave a hand to her body, pulling it up. It was the fortuneteller.

“Yes, Mother,” her body spoke, sounding alien, sounding deeper and raspier than she had ever done.

“Didn’t I promise I would fix it?” the fortuneteller said.

“You did, Mother. I just wish you had gotten someone prettier.”

She watched as they walked away from the grave. She rushed after them, but the bounds of the graveyard rebelled against her, pulling her back in. She wailed after them, but neither of the women stopped.

Bank Robberies

It was all over the newspapers. The city was riddled with bank robberies, and the cops were baffled. The robbers hit the banks by night, and there was no record of their entry nor any image of them on the security cameras. The feed was never cut, yet nothing. The vaults were never damaged, yet the money and all the other valuables were gone. It was as if the money had vanished from the vault into thin air. That was what everyone was writing. But not here. There had to be an explanation, and she was going to find out.

She had been tracking the remaining banks, scouting them out every night. She saw the cops were doing the same. The city was running out of banks soon, and this had to be their next target. She readied her camera and watched the building from the next roof over. Last night, the cops had come and arrested her, thinking she was in cahoots with the robbers. They had let her go when they had called her editor at the newspaper.

She needed this. She wanted this.

She could feel it was going to happen here tonight. The cops were sure, too. She could see them hiding around the building, spooking the robbers away. She cursed the cops for being so careless. How obvious it was that they were there.

She moved closer to the edge of the building, looking at the bank’s roof. She was sure that was the way they entered. The street cameras from the other banks hadn’t caught sight of a car or anything around them. So it had to be the roof.

She expected robes. She expected airplanes. She expected something. But when the light lit from the divine light and she saw the money from the bank flowing through the walls up in the air to the UFO parked over the bank, she was sure she had gone mad.

Superhero And Villain

I find writing about superheroes difficult. I don’t know, but I never know what to do with them.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

Nothing to add today. Other than, thank you for reading! Please don’t let any hexes in ❤