The Contest

This announces the winner (who receives the signed poster) and the runner-up for Image Prompt A (see the Prompt-Contest-Tab for the contest description and all the submissions).

Prompt B showcases art by Grace. P. Fong.

The signed copy of the poster is awarded to entry B20

Wesley Kirk (B20) Winner

Surgery is always a risky business. Even in the best of circumstances something can go wrong. How wrong? The patient losing everything, while the physician loses a patient, and a little piece of their soul in the process. But this wasn’t ‘the best of circumstances’. The patient in question had been bitten, and the physician performed an emergency amputation in an attempt to save them. But, whether it was the infection from the bite, or other factors, the poor young man didn’t make it. Which left the one attending to him in an unfortunate position as well. For, in medicine, you’re supposed to work with detachment. Which is why you’re never supposed to work on someone you know.

But, they were desperate. Out of options. Out of time. So she did what she was trained to do: take action.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. And, worst of all, she couldn’t finish after he’d expired. Not so soon. It’s too raw. Too painful.

So she bound the lad as tightly as she could. Including wrapping him in multiple sheets and then rather roughly strapping the whole bundle down to the table.

Just in case.

For she has another task to complete. She failed to save him, but she can at least avenge him. The monster that caused his demise will meet its fate, at her hands. Tonight. She refuses to allow any other alternative to exist. Saving a life is hard. Taking one, no matter how foul and disgusting? That’s easy. For her at least.

Her only hope is that when she returns to her failure, she finds her husband’s body exactly as she’s left it. Resting peacefully. And not thrashing against it restrains like the undead monster she fears he’ll become. But she won’t know until she opens that particular door…

Danna Janz (B21) – Runner-Up

Francis stared between the fingers splayed across his face, unable to tear his eyes from the body of his wife, bloody and broken beneath the sheet he had hastily thrown atop her. His vain attempts to bring her back had resulted in jerking, unnatural movements, requiring him to strap her down. Sick to his stomach, he forced himself to stand, leaving Lillian behind to search for water to wet his throat.

She had died during the birth of their first and only child, and his heartbreak had been immeasurable. There was nothing to be done for the baby, a cold and stony thing that had passed long before she had. He and Lillian had been trying to have this child for too long, and the lengths he had pushed her to were not worth this loss. His need to bring her back to him had driven him from their church and to the dark arts of necromancy, trying to stop her soul from passing through the Veil.

Days later, all he had to show for his efforts was a graying body that was no longer the woman he’d loved. The light he had seen fade from her eyes never returned, and save the inanimate movements that had begun in the early hours of this day, no signs of life had returned to his beloved. Pulling himself together, Francis prepared himself for burying his wife, putting her to rest with their child, and resigning himself to join them.

Walking into his laboratory once more, Francis stopped short. The sheet, meant to keep her grotesque appearance from disturbing him further, still lie on the table. The body, however, was gone. The straps were broken away on one side, and bloody footprints tracked to the door that led to the streets of Rome.