Hello and Happy New year to everyone! What with time zones many of you are probably into 2014 already but for me, I have another two hours till January 1st 2014.
Please forgive my long absence, I have been severely ill and just recently started to write again. The timing was terrible because usually my best stories come from the holiday months. I plan on posting part 2 of the pirate Halloween story before next Halloween. hopefully it will be soon. I feel like the winter months here set a creepy Halloween tone better than the sunny days of summer or spring.
I cannot guarantee that I will post every week starting now, but I will post as often as I can. hopefully getting back into the habit of posting.
anyway, please enjoy my new short story, Chains of Jerehn.
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Jerehn
shook and rattled his chains. He did not yell because calling out would be
pointless, but he did keep testing his strength against the strength of the
chains. He had to because he couldn’t afford to give up.
Chains were
wrapped around Jerehn’s body and kept him suspended in the air. Chains filled
the room from the floor to the ceiling. It was a giant room of white marble and
gold, with decorative pillars and heavy iron chains that hung down from the
ceiling and rose up from the floor. Jerehn wasn’t the only prisoner but he was
currently the only living prisoner. Corpses hung from chains and were being
pulled on in all directions.
The large
golden doors with the intricate symbols flung open revealing a great dark void
outside the room. Knights in dark armor marched in. their metal boots clanged
against the floor and the echoes rang out through the entire room. The knights
slashed at the chains with their powerful golden swords. The corpses were
released from their bondage and fell to the floor. Each body dropped ten feet
and broke apart on impact.
When a
chain was cut a new chain would take its place. These chains came from a small
hole in the ceiling. The chains seemed to be alive as they grew from this small
hole and moved along the ceiling until finding a nice place to drop down. They
were less like chains and more like fast growing metal ivy.
Jerehn struggled
and fought with every fiber of his being. His best chance to escape this golden
prison was to break free when the knights were there. When the knights leave
the room the golden door disappears. So Jerehn just has to break free from
unbreakable chains, get past large knights carrying magical swords and open a
magical door designed to keep people in. then He needs to survive whatever
howling abyss that is waiting just outside. No problem.
The odds
seemed impossible and any sane man would give up instead of struggling so
desperately, but the sane men are the ones getting cleaned out of the room like
rotten fruit. Jerehn didn’t eat and he didn’t sleep, none of that mattered
here. The only reason the prisoners died was because they gave up.
So Jerehn fought
with all of his strength, he struggled against chains and impossible odds, he
refused to give up and let death take him. He didn’t know what the future
looked like or even if there was a future for him, but he had to try.
There was a
driving force that kept Jerehn going. He didn’t know why he wanted to live and
didn’t understand where his drive came from. He didn’t question it he just
pushed. The chains rattled harder than ever and for the first time ever one of
the knights looked up at Jerehn. The knight’s helmet hid any emotion, but
Jerehn still got a reaction. In a hundred years the Knights never looked at the
prisoners, they only cut chains and dragged off corpses. Jerehn did something
that made the knight have to look.
