The Things Betwixt...

Labyrinthia...

"Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  Honorable Mention 11-22-2015



I once heard tell of Labyrinthia, buried deep beneath the Carpathian’s snowy fangs. Imprisoned within, I heard of great wealth, for it was the tomb of a bygone king. His name I never heard, but the promise was suffice. Thus I left my hearth without fear of what may come.

I traveled athwart that desolate, boreal country, and into the maw of Carpathia. Heretofore I’d not seen such dreary dusk, for as bleeding sun fell, half-light oppressed those mountains. Wherein my soul sickened with each step I took. There were naught but insufferable shivers lingering in the back of my mind. Still, I marched, and I couldn’t goad them into aught but bitter depression – a dreadful dream.

Mayhap it was my company, for that faceless man’s unredeemed disdain for ‘a belligerent expedition’ was a burden of itself.

His name was Sharon. He knew the way, and the tale, but as he croaked the story, he offered me naught but nervous agitation. He'd been scorched, and vacant of an inclination he possessed a soul but, I settled with an unsatisfactory conclusion that I needed him.

He led me to that decrepit gate of that bygone kingdom. Therein I spied naught but unrelieved dreariness that shared no affinity with time; like a feather not floating on the breeze, but dangling in the air.

Black waters flowed within those crumbling walls. Ripples whispered and lapped upon a dark shore like the wrinkling of a page. Beyond, there was a void of itching despair.

“The River Acheron, my friend,” Sharon rasped, “Greed is a deadly sin.”

Water churned as husks of dead rose like driftwood. They creaked as bones formed into a raft.

That king’s name was Satan, and his kingdom was hell, thence but one discernable outcome. Forsooth, greed is the deadliest sin.

Word Count - 300