I can't keep up anymore! Between writing for both Lillie's Five Sentence Fiction and Angela's Visual Dare challenges every week, I can't keep track of what scenes I've written for whom and how they might or might not relate. I like the idea of keeping a running story going between prompts, but today, it's just too much to handle. And so, an independent scene for this week's Visual Dare prompt, Alone?
I started writing a romantic scene about a man waiting for his love while reading a poem she'd left for him, but my daughter complained that I write too many romantic stories. She wanted murder and mayhem. The following incorporates a few of her ideas, sort of.
As always, check out Anonymous Legacy to see what others wrote for this prompt.
He's been sitting for uncountable hours, and will sit until he receives the atonement he seeks. Unless she finds him first. Clutching the leather covers of the Torah, he lets the book open where it chooses and reads the first words on which his eyes fall. He scours them for the message of forgiveness he needs, and the strength to break free from her. It seems so long that he's been in her thrall, but in the recesses of his mind, he knows it's only been days. The things she's made him do, they have broken him. The final act, the one from which he ran, was to kill his own sister. He didn't know why Emily would have threatened her (even now, he cannot bear to think her name), but she wanted his sister dead. Drowning in the flood of his sins, he opens the book again and searches.