Shackles

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Shackles

June 2010 Deadline Dames writing prompt.
Click to see the prompt picture.

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So beautiful she made his heart ache, she came to him. Her dress fluttered, leaflets of fog swirling around moon-pale skin.

Every night, she came to him. Walked into his arms and lifted her face to his without saying a word.

He folded her against his chest. Gently. Desperately. The feel of her, wrapped in his arms, was like holding a piece of his lost soul. She soothed the tattered and inflamed edges of his heart.

He kissed her on the forehead. So gently. Her skin was soft as rose petals against his lips and he inhaled the scent of her. Jasmine and rain and the growth of green, living things.

Down the corridor, something clattered. Men shouted and a siren began to blare.

She was gone, as silently and swiftly as she had arrived. The warning lights began to flash and the siren was joined by a nasal, honking alarm. The manacles that bound his wrists and ankles to the wall glowed with faintly-visible runes.

He didn’t know who she was. At first, he’d been certain she was his savior. That she had come to release him, rescue him.

Now, he was equally certain that she was part of his sentence. What good was it to imprison a man for a hundred years if you did not remind him of the freedom he had lost?