He dipped a finger into the pool of blood. It was a casual gesture, dabbing at it lazily like paint in a paint cup. Careful not to drip the crimson wetness from his finger tip, he brought it to the canvas. Gently and with great care he spread the blood about the canvas, creating a brightly splashed picture.

He didn’t know who’s blood it was, nor even if it were human, animal, or something else. Where the blood came from didn’t matter. It was the magic, the life that once throbbed through the veins of something living and feeling; that is what mattered. The odor of the blood filled his nostrils. It was a little sharp, kind of salty. If he tasted it, he knew it would taste salty, red, and a little bit like iron. It smelled good, fresh. It had to be fresh or the magic would have faded away.

The canvas he painted always changed. Sometimes it was large, an entire field of battle. Sometimes it was smaller, a group of marauders falling upon a caravan, or an attack in the dark dirty recesses of a city’s worst areas. Sometimes it was tiny, the sweet breath of an infant drifting through tiny pouty lips.

The canvas he worked today with such care was the rocky crags of a mountain. As he painted, the canvas vibrated with a dull rumble as of a thousand distant hooves stampeding. This was no stampede, however; at least, not one of living creatures rushing across the ground in a frenzy of fear. A few pebbles clattered across the rocky terrain, kicking up tiny puffs of dust as they went.

The group travelling low on the side of the mountain paused, looking around with startled eyes. They felt the faint vibration of the ground, their ears barely picking up the distant rumble. A child stared curiously at a small rock that rolled and clattered past.

With a deliberate and practiced hand, he painted the mountain side, coloring bright red trails down the rock face. The rumbling grew louder, the ground shaking with increasing fury. The pebbles and rocks were chased downhill by larger rocks, boulders, and clouds of billowing un-breathable dust.

The small group, related families forced to relocate, began to scramble in a frightened panic. They grabbed at children, dropping some belongings, keeping only that which was essential for survival. They ran this way and that, growing confused with fear, running for their lives. One woman tripped and fell, her infant clutched protectively in her arms, scraping her arm and leg on one side on the sharp rocks. A little stunned, she lay there breathing hard, staring at her husband who had been hurriedly picking through their meager belongings, discarding anything they couldn’t eat.

He gently dabbed a spot of red upon the head of the man.

Looking almost bewildered, the man stared at his fallen wife, pleading with his eyes for her to hurry to her feet and run. A boulder seemed to be hurled from the mountain as if by a giant invisible hand, flying past between the two with unstoppable momentum. After it had passed by the man’s headless body stood there, wavering slightly, his head a small red smear being painted down the mountain by the rolling boulder.

So intent were the terrified people on fleeing the rockslide that most of them didn’t even notice the dark and terrible winged creature that swooped down silently from the sky, its tattered cloak flapping like the rotting sheet wrapped about a corpse. The creature seemed somehow indistinct, as though only a shadow of it could touch this world.

The man’s wife watched in horror, a terrible scream tearing from her throat as she watched the monster swoop down, grab her husband’s headless shoulder with the long fingers of one taloned hand, reach down into the new orifice that used to be his neck, and tear away the shadowy shade of the man writhing and fighting to remain sheltered inside the dead body. The creature’s blood red eyes remained motionless and locked on her as it stole her husband’s soul. With incredible speed it lifted off, swooping away into the sky with its still struggling cargo. The man tried to scream as he fought the powerful monster that spirited him away, but couldn’t. He was but a shadow, without form or a body. On the ground his body still stood there, wavering slightly, then slumped slowly to the ground, its heartbeat slowing, slower, stuttering to a stop. Perhaps half a minute had passed.

He continued to paint his canvas of rock and lives. Very few would survive.

The mountain shook violently, those who were not crushed by the falling rocks found themselves gasping and choking on air that had been replaced by dust, unable to breathe, suffocating.

The black creature swooped down from the sky again and again, stealing souls from the broken bodies as their life ebbed away. Always it moved swiftly and silently, with deadly precision.

When at last the violent shaking of the ground stopped, the rumbling faded away into the past, and the dust began to clear on the soft breath of the air, the aftermath became apparent. An ugly gash scraped down the mountainside, a trail of broken debris showing the path the rockslide had taken. Red smears of blood marred the scene, a gruesome testimony to the death and destruction, matching exactly the red smears of blood he lovingly painted on his canvas.

A child wailed. A woman’s hand poked feebly from the ground, waving weakly.

He had a name once. It has been so long since he’s heard the name uttered that he could no longer remember it. Most called him by another name. Death.

His dark cloaked shoulders shook, the rotting fabric shreds moving as though its tattered remains were made of delicate gauze. He wept for the newly collected souls.

___

© 2009 L.V. Gaudet

L. V. Gaudet is a fiction writer. More samples of work can be found on the blog site at http://lvgwriting.wordpress.com

The naked figure crouched low to the ground as though trying to hide in the short stubble of the freshly harvested wheat field. Her hot steamy breath wafted out in a white mist between lightly parted lips as she exhaled gently into the chill fall air. The crisp coolness of the night enveloped her body in a silky blanket of frigid darkness. Alone in the center of the field, she raised up from her crouched position on the ground to her full height. Pale face reaching for the sky, she watched as the moon danced out from behind a bank of slowly roiling clouds to bathe her in its eerie white glow. A cold breeze tickled across her bare back, making her shiver, catching her long flowing ebony hair and teasing it up into the air like the swirling skirts of a dancing lady.

From a far distance her form was breathtaking, surreal beauty as you would expect it to appear in a nymph or a fairy that you just discovered, real and in the flesh. Glimpses of pale flesh through a cloak of thick shiny black hair that trailed all the way down to her knees teased with a promise of what this creature might look like up close; an exquisite being that had just walked flesh and blood out of the mists of myths and legends. If, however, someone had been present to witness this creature from a distance far enough to leave details to the imagination only.

Up close her appearance was different. Very different.

All alone in the field not so much as a field mouse dared to invade on her solitude. Even the crickets would not have made a sound had they not been already slumbering from the cold.

Turning slowly like a broken carousel, wobbling slightly, face to the sky, she raised her arms like elegant featherless wings as she turned. Barely moving, she turned slowly, silently, ethereally. Turning and turning in one spot, ever so slowly quickening her pace. Faster and faster she turned, spinning like a slowly winding up top. Faster and faster she turned, trampling the wheat stubble beneath her feet to a flattened nest. Faster and faster she turned, dizzily, spinning wildly; face reaching for the sky, staring down the moon and the stars. Faster and faster she turned, a wild shrill cry erupting from her throat, getting louder, higher, as she turned faster. It was a bone chilling, spine tingling shriek of someone who has just lost everything that ever had any meaning to them. All at once, devastatingly; all loves, hates, needs, wants and thoughts; the high wailing howl of death.

Silence and stillness crashed into the field at once when she suddenly stopped still, silent. Her dark eyes blazed with such intensity they should have glowed in the silvery light of the moon. Violence filled that heated glare. All the rage, hatred, fear, and loathing a world could hold filled those all too human eyes at once. Breathing heavy, her breath rushed out to meet the cold night air; a cloud of mist roiling out like the dust from a battle field as hot moist breath clashed with the freezing air.

Her face twisted into a demonic grin of hatred, a death’s mask. She dropped to sit on her haunches, unable to stand any longer. She was not accustomed to being able to raise herself to more than a low crouch due to the limiting confines of the cages she was cruelly kept in.
On hands and feet like a four legged animal, she fled. Racing from the field with a surprising grace and agility similar to a long legged lanky wolf, her hideousness bathed in the moon’s glow. The long flowing hair was not a wondrous mane of human hair, but a scraggly pelt of longish dirty fur covering much of her body as well as her head. Bald patches gave her the appearance similar to an animal with mange. She was a creature that walked on two legs with a human-like body and very human eyes, with the face of a creature spawned from a cesspool of genes not of this world. Lesions, welts, and deformities twisted her body and features into a Frankensteinian creation. Hideous. Evil. Terrifying.

Frightened, she cowered in the little crawl space under the stairs of the house on the edge of the woods. The darkness of the night was a small comfort to her. She had already discovered that her senses were keener than most of the creatures she has encountered so far.

She raised her head alertly at the sudden sizzling sound in the distance. An acrid smell she couldn’t identify that made her nose tickle drifted to her on a breeze. What could this be? What are those two-legs gathered in a large herd across the open space up to? Was it dangerous for her? They didn’t act like they knew she was here, but her experienced had taught her these creatures could not be trusted.

There was a popping sound on the ground on the other side of the open space. Something leapt into the sky with a shrill whine.

Curiosity took over where fear climaxed. She cocked her head, listening, scenting, and watching.

Suddenly the sky exploded with an earth shattering crackling boom, and a flash of bright colorful lights.

She cowered lower to the ground, screaming in terror, eyes wide. Her nostrils flared with the pungent smell, her night vision was shattered by the bright blinding light. Blinded by the colored spots that danced before her eyes, she struck out with a hiss at a foe that wasn’t there.

Another pop and hiss. The sky roared with another boom as more lights erupted in the sky, the ground beneath her trembled with its shock.

She screamed again, trembling violently.

Hairy four-legs from all sides began barking and howling.

She recognized that they too were crying their fear.

___

© 2008 L.V. Gaudet

L. V. Gaudet is a fiction writer. More samples of work can be found on the blog site at http://lvgwriting.wordpress.com