The Queen

30 Days Of Fright Challenge, Day 6: Atmospheric

The air was dank, putrid.

It smelled of rot.

Curdled milk.

Worms devouring, withering. Thriving.

Pale jars of teeth whispering.

The stench pressed down thick and suffocating, like wet velvet against the face.

You could feel it crawl into your mouth, summoning a gagging impulse.

The mood, tenebrous—like black tar of tension sliding down the walls.

Scattered all around were bones. Piles and piles of bones.

They lay fragmented and fractured, gnawed on and scratched.

A dim, macabre visual of filet flesh, discarded organs in different stages of decomposition, and deep red stains pooled and hardened all around.

Layered on top, a synthetic bleach smell—like someone tried to clean up but realized it was futile, and at some point gave up.

She couldn’t move; she tried, but her body wasn’t listening.

How did she get here?

She could see now that moment when everything took a turn, led her here, to this moment.

It was after her mother sat her down and told her they found her father’s car—all smashed up against a tree.

His head through the windshield, stuck in the glass. She was sixteen.

And now at forty-two, she was lying on top of a pile of rotting bodies with a broken spine, staring up into a blinding light.

Bleeding generously all over the place. Fading. Remembering. Clinging.

“Rachel, time for school,” her mother shouted.

Her mind flooded. She was blinking furiously now, tears pooling.

That moment when her mother took her shopping—black tar crawling down the store walls.

“Just us girls,” she said with a wink, her smile contorting into his.

Her first kiss under the big walnut tree in the park with Brad Baker—she could feel his hands on her hips.

Then she could feel him peeling them back, looking at them in horror.

She looked down. Blood streaked down, heavy.

Earlier, when she was two, crawling around the living room pretending to be a unicorn—all the yellowed bones now scattered through her living room, her memory.

Her first day at school.

Her new shiny backpack bouncing on her back as she ran up the stairs, as she ran through the field.

Adrenaline taking her with wild animal fear—primal.

Her first vacation, catching fireflies in the field at sunset.

Her car on fire, dumped on the side of the road. She screaming in the trunk.

Pounding against the weight of the lid.

Boom, boom, boom.

Her fists—a useless fury.

Then back at the bowling alley, in the parking lot.

Walking towards her car.

Hands over her mouth.

Her screams, muffled.

Black crawling, coating everything. Pooling.

⸻

The Butcher had a name once.

Ri…ch…

He couldn’t remember now, but he remembered his family.

Their smiling faces running to greet him, then running from him—scared, panicked.

He used to work, he thought.

He didn’t remember what he did, but he remembered getting ready.

White short-sleeved button-up, pressing over his bulging belly, spattered with blood.

Black tie.

His glasses, polished—cracked from struggle.

Coffee, hot, steaming in his hand.

It boiled over like black tar.

His hands shook for a few moments. He paused and waited until it passed.

Rich scratched his neck, fingertips brushing the raised worm pulsing under his skin.

It squirmed, then settled.

Then he continued.

Loaded the new girl on the cart. She was still twitching.

No matter, he thought. It will all be over soon.

He covered her nose and mouth, felt her struggle like a butterfly fluttering.

Then he felt a sharp pain. He looked down.

A small blade jutted from his leg.

Nothing fatal.

A small, brief resistance—then she went limp.

She didn’t know it, but this was a mercy.

What comes next is worse.

But she liked them fresh.

The warmer the better.

Copper pennies.

Fireflies.

Black tar.

The Queen was always obeyed.

Always putting images in your head.

In his brain, her voice echoed like a sonic boom through a chamber.

FEED ME… she screamed.

He saw her descending—not birthed, but landed.

A long ship, blacker than space, cracking the atmosphere open like an obsidian seed.

An exiled queen trying to reinvent herself. Pathetic—but then again so was he. Letting her in. Not fighting harder…

She’s forever replicating—scaled, reptilian.

Her scales weren’t separate from the walls—they were the walls, peeling outward in jagged plates, dripping with amniotic tar—

beautiful, dangerous, and always hungry.

The Queen let out a loud shriek—piercing.

It sent a shiver up his spine.

His hands trembled, a micro reaction.

His eye sent a single salt-rimmed tear down his grizzled cheek.

The moment dragged.

Eyes wide.

Dilated.

Twitching.

Rich…ard… gagged.

He remembered when they bought their first house.

His wife was so happy, her belly bulging with life.

“Richard, it’s perfect,” she exclaimed, delighted.

Her hair bouncing on her shoulders.

Hands clapping together with glee.

Her smile lighting up the room.

For a moment, Richard smiled too.

His name came flooding back, followed by a series of sensory visuals.

The images flooded his brain—worms consuming, hurling through space, fire, strange stone cities.

The memories of his wife laughing, then shadow larva emerging—crystalline.

Scaled husks. Dripping. Empty.

It was too much.

He wanted to see his wife again.

He vomited.

The Queen had been here before.

The first cities remembered her.

Not in myth—in architecture.

Pyramids. Obelisks. God-like. Worshiped.

That’s all he wanted.

He saw red.

Memory snapping back.

His wife, Anna—her eyes dull, staring without seeing, up at the ceiling.

Broken picture frames scattered around her—fractured memories of happier times.

Red. Red. Red.

And he knew, remembered.

She was gone.

And the Queen was all that remained.

She wouldn’t let him go.

Wouldn’t let him end it.

She was looming, a giant tidal wave.

“I need you,” the Queen whispered.

And he knew he’d never see his wife again.

His eyes dimmed.

He was hers now.