PHOTO PROMPT © Stephen Baum
Word Count: Exactly 100 words of story-text Genre: Post-apocalyptic fiction
Always Darkest
©July 9th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
We had prepared and stocked our bunker. When the End happened, we descended the two-hundred steps to it, shut the lead-lined, heavy doors, and sat and waited …
Alex was ill. One day, while I was asleep, he crawled upstairs opened the door, and shut it with a clang. When I awoke, I was alone. When my hysterical sobbing subsided, I stayed — in the dark. I could see, eat, sleep, live and mourn in the dark. Time passed.
One day, miraculously, the door opened. Light flooded in.
I whimpered, clawed at my eyes, ripped them out.
It’s always darkest before dawn.
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Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (who has run Friday Fictioneers faithfully for quite a while now) for hosting, and to Stephen Baum for the photograph prompt.