It’s Halloween eve! Tomorrow is my first day tabling at the MileHi convention. If you’re in the Denver area, come by and say hi! I’ll be there with a friend, probably dressed up as a xenomorph or witch. Does it count as dressing up as a witch if it’s just how I dress?

It’s also day 3 of my writing challenge and today’s prompt is from Carson Winter:

Slender Moon (as in Slenderman and Sailor Moon. We had a discussion once on how absurdly long her legs are.)

With silver nail and golden hammer, I pinned the parchment to the tree. Words in ink spilled from my own veins spelled out a desprete plea.  I still had three more wards to go to complete the ritual.

If it worked.

If the old man was telling the truth.

The ground shook violently, the trees creaked and groaned.

The hair on the back of my neck rose, electricity running through my veins. This wasn’t fair. I didn’t deserve this.

Yet, I ran.

And the moon followed.

And how do you outrun a celestial body?

Dodging trees, slipping on moulding leaves, pulling free from brambles, I despretely counted my steps until I reached two hundred and twenty-two. Each step was a struggle of balance as the earth bucked and trembled.

Catching myself against a gnarled old oak, I looked over my shoulder. My throat felt raw from trying to catch enough air to keep running, to surviving.

The moon hung low in the sky, cradled by a night sky mottled with sickly stars. The moon glowed with a ghostly intensity, like a spectral face watching me as I cried in its light. An opalscenet mass hung from it, stretching long, down, down, down to the Earth where it split in two endlessly long legs.

These legs strode over the ground, shaking it with an instense mass and yet leaving the trees untouched. I could almost feel the legs, like they had atheir own gravitational pull.

I fumbled in my pockets, pulling out a couple silver nails and dropping them into the moss at my feet.

Choking back a sob, I knelt and dug through the debris, to find one but not both. I should have enough for all the wards. I’d bought extra from that man after all, using up almost all of my meager savings to do so.

Holding another ward against the tree, I hammered a silver nail to keep it in place. The words: “I don’t deserve this. Let me move on.”

I coulnd’t resist looking again. Its glow coated the trees like a disease. Pearlescent clouds shifted across the surface of its preternatural legs and feet.

On the night wind, I could hear the softest of feminine whispers: “for love, for justice.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” I screamed at the moon.

“For love, for justice.”

I ran. I had no choice. I had seven wards that needed to be placed in a circle. Seven pleading letters to hopefully placate the wraith of the moon.

Tears coated my cheeks and chin, plegm choking me. Blinded, I tripped on a root, fell down a riverbank.

The nails in my pocket stabbed into my thigh, sending a sharp lance of pain through my leg. I dropped my hammer, losing sight of it in the piles of dead leaves.

“No, please,” I begged.

The moon’s slender body passed through the treetops like mist. “For love, for justice. For love, for justice.” Whispers, condemnations on the wind.

Overhead, the moon’s face hung, eating up the sky.

On hands and knees, I dug through the rot and mush. “I don’t deserve this! I don’t! I don’t!” My slimy fingers curled around the handle and I pulled it free.

The moon placed a foot at the top of the riverbank. The air grew colder, bitterly so, my breath rose like ghosts from my lips. I scrambled up the other side and forced my aching legs to run.

I’d lost count though. He’d said two was the number of the moon, that three were needed to bind its rage. Two hundred and twenty-two steps. I’d lost count. I had to pray this wans’t an exact science.

I stumbled against the bucking ground as the moon gave relentless chase. When I gained just a tiny amount distance, I let myself slam into a tree, wrapping my arms around it. I barely had any time. Any time at all. My fingers were numb from the cold, blood seeping into my jeans leg.

With shaking hands, I pulled out another ward, my head spinning. I stared down at the words I’d written: “I hate you. I wish I’d never met you.”

The man had told me to pour everything into the wards, it was the only way to absolve the lunar curse.

“I’m glad you died. I only wish it had happened sooner. That I’d been free of you sooner.”

I reached into my pocket, didn’t feel the nail stab into my index finger. Blood poured over my hands, warming them. Staining them like they’d been stained that night. I

“For love, for justice.”

Only one more ward. I turned and ran in the direction I hoped would bring me to complete the circle, complete the ritual.

“It wasn’t my fault. She was asking for it, she forced me!” I screamed over my shoulder.

The moon, overhead, said nothing. The last sprint was unbearable, my lungs burned, my heart pounded against my ribs like a hammer to an anvil. I lost count again. I had to pray this would work.

I’d escaped her and now I had to escape the moon.

I broke from the tree line. Tehere, ahead of me, a single tree. Beyond it, like a teasing hope, a hint of sunrise.

I pumped my arms harder, my legs screaming. I threw myself at the tree and ripped the parchment from my pocket. “I had to free myself and you wouldn’t let me go. You have to let me go. What happened wasn’t my fault!”

My whole body shaking, the whole world shaking, the moon approached on the slenderest of legs.

“For love, for justice.”

I spilled more nails from my pockets as I pulled one free. My hands were fully coated in blood and I left crimson fingerprints on the final ward.

My throat was too raw to even scream. Too ruined to make anything more than a whimper.

“For love, for justice.”

I missed the nail.

“For love, for justice.”

I missed again, slamming my thumb instead.

“For love, for justice.”

I tried to scream, blood in my throat. I hammered the nail true.

“For love, for justice.”

The final ward was I place. I fell away from the tree, back to the sunrise. Above, the leviathan moon hung heavy. It stood over me.

“No,”

Was it her curse? Was I doomed to never escape her, even when she was dead?

It stepped closer. My skin went dead from the cold, my lips cracked, blood freexing on my chin. I had no idea if the spell would work.

If the wards were enough.

If I should have made them apologetic to quell a hateful spirit rather than full of despair and rage.

“For love, for justice.”

Or was it guilt. Despite everything. Blaming myself for everything, dooming myself in the end.

Despite everything, I would die for her. Die because of her.

When all I’d wanted was to live.

“For love, for justice.”

I closed my eyes and prayed.

Six minutes to go! Hope you enjoyed it.

x PLM