Fictionwocky Leg 20

The Recursive Leg

I raise my hands and chant my prayer: the Beast has risen; all hail the Beast.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here, on my knees in the gray dust. Ash falls all about, settling in a mantle on my hair and shoulders. My arms ache from holding them up in supplication, but dropping them is unthinkable. Everything but praising the Conqueror is.

Or is it? My right arm drops a fraction of an inch, then another. I close my eyes against the ashen shroud and picture it: green trees, green grass, blue sky, the joyful yellow sun, white-capped mountains in the distance. I can see it. I can almost taste the clean air. My other arm drops, then my knuckles graze the dessicated earth. The blue sky evaporates, replaced by roiling ash and darkness. There’s the suggestion of something moving behind the pall, muscular yet sinuous, multilegged and fanged. The Beast!

My paralysis breaks, and I stumble to my feet. A rent in the caul of smoke and ash like a knife cut. That spear of light reveals the path before me. Ash-covered asphalt, faded yellow lines. A green sign points the way to Yellowstone. Dagger-toothed hills rising beside and beyond, the legacy of Hell’s ascent. Above it, the Beast reigns. 

I run, bent-backed and hobble-legged. Ash puffs from each frantic step, and I suck it down my throat. Coughing means knives in my lungs, warm wet on my lips. There’s a figure ahead, crouched and hiding in the shadow of a red rock. The flare of light from above casts my shadow ahead to meet it — her. I see now. I know her. She holds out a hand to me, nails cracked and caked black. I rush to meet her, but just as our fingers touch, she dissolves, revealing a fanged maw in a wretched face. It bites at me, slams me to the roadway with its hand. Purpose fades, like the name that I can taste on my lips, the memory of brown eyes and blood.

I raise my hands and chant my prayer: the Beast has risen; all hail the Beast.

Instructions

Leg 20 – The Recursive Leg: Write a microfiction where the first and last sentences are identical, and the story forms a loop.

The Oulipian time-loop, maths loop, or something else dizzying, unending.

You can trap the reader in a claustrophobic nightmare that they can’t escape.

Link to the rest of this week’s prompts.