The Power of Two - @Gmuxx Art Prompt Writing Contest Entry

Augie hummed quietly as his light-duty truck cruised down the highway, headed for the tiny hamlet of Huntington, Texas and the magic at its heart.

He was a lover of nature, of all things bright and beautiful; all creatures great and small. The smell of rain was as exhilarating as the kiss of sun, and the life of the most distasteful arachnid as precious as that of the fluffiest kitten. There was no part of nature Augie didn’t treasure.

And there was no part he treasured more highly than Heaven’s Creek.

Anticipation building, he turned off the pavement onto the dirt path that led toward the place his soul yearned for all the hours he was away.

Finally his high-beams doubled across the glass-smooth surface of the creek. Shifting to park, Augie killed the engine and drew a deep breath. Now only the luminescence of the setting full moon touched the surface of this holy of holies.

Augie’s heart soared as he stepped out onto the grass. He could already feel the power of the place all around him. Cleansing him of the pollutants he absorbed while “out there.” The materialism, consumerism, and every other “-ism” the modern world threw at a man in order to drag him down. To make him first a dog, then an eater of other dogs.

Augie loved dogs; he’d never eat one.

Sighing contentedly, he headed toward the tailgate. A lot to do before sunrise.

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Gina felt like she was bouncing on the world’s hardest trampoline. Slowly awareness dawned: A truck bed. Traveling a rough road. Dim light filtered through a window and she realized it was fitted with a cab, presumably so passing drivers couldn’t ogle the latest victim.

Struggling to calm her breathing, Gina squinted at her bound wrists, already planning her escape. Even with Parris Island ten years in the past, the composure she’d learned as a Marine hadn’t left her.

Zip ties. Thank god.

Gina pawed at her throat. More deep breaths. Still. Still.

It seemed an eternity before her fingers grasped the small rose-gold cross she wore. She transferred the precious ornament to her mouth: long bottom sticking out from her lips, short top braced within her front teeth.

Fumbling. Shaking. Holding her breath until her chest ached and burned and screamed to be unleashed. Prodding the tiny shim toward the locking bracket of the zip tie. Hands and cheeks salty with sweat or tears--she didn’t know. Pressing in. Aiming. Missing. Then--

Shhhhp!

For a moment she gaped slack-jawed at her freed hands, cross stuck precariously to her lower lip. The gentle plunk of it landing on her chest broke the trance and she flew into action, confident the noise of tree branches and truck engine would cover her quiet preparations.

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This was his thirteenth full-moon visit, and he felt in his bones that this was the one. He could feel the skin between this world and the next stretching taut. It was so thin as to be nearly translucent. Twelve times before, he’d come to open the path and left with just one more dirt mound to show for it. But not tonight.

The thirteenth bloodletting was the final key.

The sacrifice was acceptable. She wrote a fluff column for some vapid women’s magazine. Another useless member of the human race who has lost her connection to the ancient knowledge and her appreciation for the power of the natural world.

He lifted the cab hatch, dropped the tailgate, and screamed with shock and pain as his candidate erupted from the darkness, grabbed his shoulders, and slammed her forehead down onto his nose.

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Bones crunched.

Good enough. Push him. Get out. Run. No chance in a fight. Still feeling dosed. Trees. Concealment. Time to recover your senses. Time to plan the next minute alive.

And the next.

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Before Augie could register that the crunching sound was his nose, he was shoved hard, staggering back, and watching the culmination of a year’s work flee into the pines.

Bitchcuntwhoreslutworthlessfilthyuseless pig! Find you, kill you, cut your throat. Gather at the river, bleed the whore, open the door…

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A strange pinkish orange light was bleeding into the sky as the sun overtook the moon and her attacker overtook Gina.

There had been no chance she would escape. She saw that now. Her body still ravaged by the drug, she was scrambling up a hill that jutted into the river when he caught her ankle and dragged her down.

Her hair was in one fist now, his other hand gripping her arm as he hauled her toward the bank.

He pushed her to her knees, angling her head down nearly into the water. It was so still. How could the world reflected in such calm be descending into chaos?

The sun-dappled river, lit by the hovering fireball of early morning sun, showed the beast that would end her life reaching around her throat just before she felt the sting of a blade close beneath her ear. But as her eyes fell shut against the horror to come Gina felt a ripple as if the very fabric of reality down to the atoms that comprised her body had shuddered, shifted, realigned.

A hollow, wet thud sounded, and the knife was gone; the fist in her hair was gone. Whirling around she saw...herself. She stood over the crumpled body like a warrior. Gore-soaked stone in hand, and grinned.

“What's happening?” Gina was dazed as herself dropped the rock, reached out to take Gina’s hand and led her toward the hill Gina had failed to summit moments ago. She followed herself up to the top and looked down at the crumpled remains of what appeared--by clothing only--to have been a man.

“I don’t understand…”

Herself smiled at Gina and replied, “That prick was right about the doorway, but he was wrong about you being the thirteenth. Let’s just say our luck with men isn’t any better on my side of the River.”

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Read what Gina was up to in her other world: Let us Gather by the River

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