Unholy Trinity: Behemoth, Damsel, An Ocean Not So Deep

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Behemoth

The ancient creature awoke, casually stirring the ocean floor with the force of an earthquake.

A school of tiger sharks scattered like frightened silverfish as the towering mountain of muscle rose from centuries of slumber to reveal its nightmarish appearance.

Needle-sharp, spear-length teeth lined its lamprey-like mouth.

Eight eyeballs, bobbing slowly on the ends of fleshy stalks, gazed above, while six elephantine tentacles pushed its girth upward.

For a moment, the spiny-backed beast paused mid-climb as if sensing a disturbance above.

It accelerated and continued its ascent to the water’s surface.

The behemoth was about to introduce itself to humanity.

Damsel

Kara stared at her broken image in the cracked mirror.

The scars on her wrists matched the scars on her heart.

Orphaned at birth.

A childhood of drudgery at a nunnery.

An adulthood of depression and dead-end jobs.

Beaten and battered by every man she tried to love.

For comfort, Kara wrapped her hand around the aquamarine gem inside the pendant hanging on a silver chain around her neck.

Her only memento from a forgotten childhood.

Was it a gift from her mother? Her father?

No matter.

She had decided her fate.

Kara drove to the ocean one last time.

An Ocean Not So Deep

Kara stood on the edge of the cliff, naked except for the pendant around her neck.

She closed her eyes and listened to the ocean’s waves like a lullaby, trying to muster the courage to take the final leap.

For once, Kara felt in control of her life.

And death.

Kara noticed the waters roiling beneath her.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as Kara gazed in awe at the colossal creature cresting the water’s surface.

The gem in her pendant glowed a warm, bright blue.

Ecstatic, Kara no longer felt alone as she greeted the behemoth with one word.

“Mother!”

Lionel Ray Green

Lionel Ray Green is a horror and fantasy writer, an award-winning newspaper journalist, and a U.S. Army gulf war veteran living in Alabama. His short stories have appeared in the anthologies Alabama’s Emerging Writers, The Heart of a Devil, Fifty Flashes, How Beer Saved the World 2, Graveyard, Frightening, Tales from the Grave, In Creeps the Night, and 22 More Quick Shivers. His short story “Scarecrow Road” won the WriterWriter 2018 International Halloween Themed Writing Competition All Hallows’ Prose and his short story “A Tale of Two Shards” was third runner-up in the WriterWriter 2018 International Fantasy Competition Phoenix Rising. His work has also appeared in The Poet’s Haven Digest anthology It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, in Issue 1 of Cross+Decay magazine, and in the 2017 issue of From the Depths magazine as well as in Trembling With Fear, an online feature of the Horror Tree website.

You can find him at Lionelraygreen.wordpress.com

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2 Responses

  1. Thank you! I love that you loved it!