Here’s another. This time some something I wrote for the first round of the nycmidnight.com 500 word flash fiction competiton. I didn’t get through the round, unfortunately, but I did get a nice honourable mention.
The darkness of our cavernous hall was broken only by the skylight above Martin as he led us all in this final step towards promised enlightenment. The gilt hems on his burgundy robes shone. This was a man to follow. We’d built the very podium he stood upon now, to honour him in his moment of triumph.
We congregated in groups of three: one enlightened, two assistants. I lay back into the rich leather of my reclined ceremonial chair, while my assistants busied themselves with the steel electrodes.
“Breathe,” Martin said. “In a moment, you will be charged with great fervour. You will take your next and final step towards grasping the heavens.”
We’d worked towards this for months. It was a great honour that Martin should choose us to go first, putting himself at the back of the line. And for him to have chosen me personally? My heart was full, my body pure, my zeal electric.
“Assistants,” Martin paused, waiting for attention. “Begin.”
In the gloom, assistants frantically flicked switches. A great buzzing filled the hall like a swarm of wasps. My own assistants seemed distracted, whispering to each other and peering at the machine. What was taking them so long?
But then, opposite me, I saw the sparks.
Blue-white cracks pierced the darkness as the men thrust their electrodes into the enlightened, stabbing their temples.
The screams. The screams!
Theirs was not the exaltation of enlightenment. In the flashes of lightning, I could see their tormented faces under their hoods. Dark lines crossed their skin, a spiderweb of burns. Their eyes swelled from their sockets, pleading to me from grotesque caricatures of their former selves. Teeth burst, muscles spasmed, and one by one they collapsed into their chairs. Dead.
My assistants still struggled to work the machine.
Martin’s deep cackling laughter echoed as the screams of his victims died out.
“No!” I shouted. It could not be. I stood to run.
“We have some cold feet!” Martin roared.
All the assistants rounded on me. I snatched the two electrodes just as the hum of the machine clicked on, but by then the group was on me.
Thrusting left and right, I fought to free myself. The air was thick with sweat and burning skin; the sour musk of my panic. There was an opening in the crowd and I lunged towards it, past a man clutching his burned arm and another who’d collapsed, unmoving on the stone floor.
But there were too many.
Where my electrodes failed, their fists succeeded. They dragged me to the podium, throwing me prostrate upon the flagstones.
“Our first failure,” Martin said. His gilt robes were crass and his arrogance seeped from every greasy pore as he sneered down upon me. “But do not fear. You will be charged. You will reach enlightenment like all the others. I have promised you this and I am merciful. Do it.”
Electrodes penetrated my temples and my eyes melted into my head.