Apocalypse
Scary camp fire story ----- By Bob ----- delivered at Canterbury Weekend 2012
T’was a dark and stormy night! Large rain drops, glittering in lightening flashes, crackled against the Rogue, a notorious tavern standing alone in the clearing. Inside, the building creaked with each gust in a chorus of thunder and rattling rain. A flame torch by the door and a log fire in the hearth provided meagre lighting and warmth. A few customers lingered quietly, drinking draughts from flagons.
A large, dark sinister man sat alone. He signalled for a refill. The waiting wench filled his flagon extending her hand for payment. Incensed and with murderous intent he leapt to his feet amid crashing furniture, grabbed the girl and tore out her throat with his teeth. Blood gushed as her dead body dropped to the dirt floor. No one stirred. The Rogue’s deadly reputation was fulfilled yet again on this foul night in October 1647!!
He wrung her hot dripping blood from his shaggy black beard, wiped gnarled hands on his worn dusty jerkin and walked to the door. Taking the guttering flame torch he went out. An ominous blackness filled the air. It was magically calm, without lightening, thunder or wind but a steady downpour, that extinguished the torch. Discarding the torch astride his horse he rode into the night.
The stench of Dread Marsh announced its location a league away. At its edge it was stifling. The rain had stopped. In the eerie quietness the marsh bubbled and steamed. Even on a clear day its far side could not be seen. A rickety slippery wooden causeway, its rails long since rotted, snaked and undulated over the marsh. Myriads of tiny red and green eyes looked at them from the slimy darkness. Though urged the horse would not go on the walkway. Dismounting the dark man kicked it then slit its throat. With scarf over his nose he stepped onto the causeway using his whip to feel the way.
After and hour, blindly feeling for the causeway’s edge, he heard approaching horses. Fearing discovery he slipped from the causeway into the stinking mire to avoid being seen.
Hoof beats raced nearer. Suddenly, above him were four dominating horses coloured red, white, black and green, glimmering faintly in the blackness. He was afraid now as he had never been before. Sparks flashed from their crashing hooves but they neither touched the causeway nor the mire. The dark man screamed in terror as the unnoticed skeletal black figure of “WAR” on the red horse boomed, “I shall watch and enjoy your fruitless battle in the marsh!”
The dark man whimpered when from the white steed “PESTILENCE” shrieked, “I bring the little carnivores to you!” The dark man struggled only to discover the mire was sucking him down. He became very still loathing the crawling and slithering things gnawing at his clothes. As red and green eyes drew near he gave a helpless shriek. “I crave your starvation,” croaked “FAMIN” from his black charger, “but I gloat whilst the mire creatures feast on your living body.” They began their feast biting and boring the dark man as he cried in pain and struggled and sank deeper in the mire. His head was just above the slime. He gave a piteous scream. He anxiously observed the notched sickle blade flash as it was thrust forward by a bony hand from the back of the green steed. There were few grains of sand remaining in the upper chamber of the hour glass hanging from “DEATH’S” belt. “Inevitably your time is running out,” the deep slow voice hissed. “Think on your life! Satan is expecting your soul! We leave you to your doom!”
Four horses wheeled away, their faint glimmer fading and the sound of the hooves receding.
The dark man remained quiet and still trying through his pain to keep his head above the stinking sludge.
On the distant wind the dark man caught the last words he ever heard drift back, “Be pleased with your fitting APOCALYPTIC end!!”