The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear And Other Stories of Chilling Modern Horror Fantasy is a collection of ten short stories written by me and is available to buy on Amazon here. Below is an extract from one of the featured stories Thou Shalt Not Suffer.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer
‘I can’t do this anymore.’
There is a room in darkness; the only light the blazing flicker of a TV screen, HD colours reaching out from beyond the liquid crystal display. There is an armchair in the room drawn up close to the TV. There is a cat and a terrarium with a big warty toad crouched on a smooth stone, regal as a dragon. There is a woman. She strokes the cat, her eyes glued to the TV. She is smiling a rictus grin.
*
‘This was a mistake.’
She can smell the gas. Her wrists and ankles are strapped. There is a strap across her chest and banding her forehead. She cannot move. The ceiling is very white like an operating theatre. The walls are clear ceiling to floor Plexi-glass. The gas is coming from vents in the ceiling. There are other holes in the floor. She cannot see them because she is strapped to a stretcher in the middle of the room but she knows they are there. The flames will come from the vents in the floor.
Tears leak, steady as a tap, down her face. They tickle as they wriggle past her earlobes. She is numb with terror. Panic mounts. She thinks she could pull loose of her body and float like a helium balloon to the ceiling. She wishes that she would.
She cannot turn her head but movement flickers in her peripheral vision. Beyond the windows people are taking seats in the auditorium outside the tiny glass room. The prosecuting lawyers. The Pontiff’s representative. The witchhunters. Keith’s family.
How many people are out there? How many people are going to watch her burn?
Her sobs are muffled by the thick leather mask covering her lower face. The metal grill allows her to breathe and makes her look like Hannibal Lector. They put a sack over her head when they wheeled her in through the baying crowds outside but the witchhunters removed it when they installed her in the room. They want her to see the gas ripple in the air. They want her to see when the room explodes in flame.
*
You can read the rest of Thou Shalt Not Suffer and nine other horror/fantasy short stories in The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear
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