The villagers held him while his wife burned. Her screams curdled the smoky air. Stretched lips, wild eyes, and clawing fingers flickered in the red dark of the flaming pyre. Shrieks and maniacal laughter swirled around the clearing. The aroma of roasted pig drifted over the ravening mob. He struggled until his guardians loosened their pinioning hands and raised him up to view what he had wrought.
An ecstatic grin split his face as, at last, his wife fell silent. He could return to his own century and his cabin in the woods, alone, to work on his inventions without interruption.
Creepy… Nice surprise twist at the end. Still thinking about the implications.
“Sure, you can work on your damn time travel machine for hours and days, but you can’t make time to stop this blasted door hinge from squeaking, and I’m sick of it! Do you even hear me? Sick of it!”
He had suffered the verbal attacks silently since they moved away from the suburb and their couple’s therapist.
Until he finally snapped…
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The author’s ability to evoke a complex story (the above being one possibility of thousands) in so few few words is a monument to syllabic efficiency and power.
Congratulations, and thank you.
Disturbing! He’s probably the “sorcerer” but, of course, it’s the woman who gets blamed!
Nice job.
What a clever ride of decription and invocation!
Imaginations galore – and as we all know – Human Wickedness Abounds.
A neatly crafted tale of the macabre with a nice – or is it nasty? – flourish at the finish line. I shall watch this wonderfully promising author’s work with the keenest interest in the future.
This story certainly may be short but is power packed, with a twist at the end which gets your imagination working overtime. Rather sinister and creepy.
Wow, so much conveyed in so few words. Such vivid words at that. What preceded, and what follows? Talk about prompting our imagination…
Wow! The author managed to paint an incredibly vivid and sinister picture in very few words. Excellent job!
It made me think of the Reformation and the Salem witch trials, and then, the last line blows that all away. Well done.