STACH Short Story Contest #22: My Entry

The tattooed girl stood atop the last mountain staring at the torn sky. Up. Flip. Down. The hollow slap of the bottle solid against the meat of her palm. Freezing air, thin and sharp -- but it mattered not at the end of the world.

_{The Mountain}

A thousand feet below, ravening darkness ascended, gobbling clouds in its path.

The fissure above widened. She sighed, rocked back on her heels. Held the bottle still, contemplating its contents. Green and blue danced within, swirling as if seen through dark water.

A hundred feet. The darkness boiled upward as if it had her scent.

She looked down. Sighed. Raised her face to the ravaged sky once more. Her right arm caught fire, flames tracing every tattooed line.

Forty feet.

She looked up. One more breath. Plant right foot. Lean back on it, left hand stretched languidly at the sky, as good an aiming point as any. Blazing right arm cocked back, the bottle by her ear.

Ten feet.

She threw. Hard. The air split athwart it as the bottle thundered into the slashed maw of the sky. Darkness swallowed the mountaintop below but the world in the bottle escaped the end of the world.

---

Was just browsing around when I stumbled across this contest set up by the good folks at @stach (who are in turn supported by @sndbox) that they had literally just been posted seconds before. 199 words? Even I can do that. So on impulse, I did this thing here. Hope you like it and hope even more you go give it a try too!

@edumurphy