MFtS: Payment

Posted on by Louise Bunting

Here’s this week’s entry into Monday’s Finish the Story flash fiction challenge, run by Barbara W. Beacham. This challenge gives you a picture prompt and the first line and asks that you finish the story in 100-150 words. The given line is in italics.

Photo Prompt - Copyright Barbara W. Beacham
Photo Prompt – Copyright Barbara W. Beacham

Payment

“Once upon a time in a land far, far away...”

Aodhan listened from the shadows as the storyteller began weaving his tale: a tangled web of deceit, treachery and murder. Not that he needed to hear the words. As much as he tried to forget, he remembered the events as if they’d occurred only yesterday. After all, they had been neither as long ago nor as far away as the storyteller would have his audience believe.

The lake had turned red that day, stained with the blood of innocents. Thirty-nine lives had been taken as payment and in return the spirit Uzaroth had granted his plaintiff the strength to claim the throne.

For forty years Aodhan had ruled, unchallenged, his rivals dead or lost without trace. Everything he desired had been his. But he had always known that someday Uzaroth would return to collect his final payment.

As he looked at the storyteller, he knew that day had finally come.

Word Count: 150

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To read other entries or to submit your own, click the little blue frog.

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27 thoughts on “MFtS: Payment”

  1. Very well done! More red stains to add….Thank you for taking part in the MFtS challenge and I do hope that you return next week. I appreciate you sticking with this challenge too! Be well… ^..^

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  3. There’s always a final payment in these deals. I like the 39 lives for 39 years and now the 40th year – final payment time! Like an interest-only mortgage but with a lot more blood 🙂
    I wonder if his soul will be number 40, or if he has promised more innocents in return?
    Right up your alley, this week’s prompt! Great story.

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    1. I think his soul is meant to be number 40 but Aodhan is the type of man who’d try to wriggle out of it with more innocent lives. This week’s prompt was perfect for me – I had so many different ideas! Thanks for visiting. 🙂

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  4. Life has always been a give and take thing, and you have described it beautifully here! Aodhan must one day pay for the lives of those innocents! That’s what karma does to us

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    1. Final payment will be required, no matter how much he tries to wriggle out of it! I’m glad you enjoyed reading. Thanks for visiting. 🙂

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  5. Excellent! At first I thought Aodhan might be a survivor of the massacre, but I really enjoyed to find out he was responsible for it all. Great job 🙂

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