Banshee - The Threads of Fate
The pain was unbearable. It felt like a knife in her chest, with every breath the blade moving beneath her flesh. She couldn't help it; she tried not to cry, not to cause the pain to worsen. Still she wept.
She could see the cause of the pain. A long, impossibly thin strand of crimson tugging at the inside of her chest, pulling her towards something she couldn't see. There were others, uncountable, an inconceivable number of tiny blue strands she felt against her skin as she walked. There were so many the air was thick with an eerie, glowing fog that only she could see. Most of the strings moved out of her way like water, but only one drew her in. Only one wouldn't let her go. The blood-red string cut through the rest like a blade, taut and straight while the others danced like mist around it.
She followed it, weeping in pain as she struggled to breathe. Why this one? She never knew; all she knew was she had to follow it. She had to make the pain stop.
The forest she traversed was thick, yet she barely saw the trees. Nothing here mattered but the cold threads she felt on every inch of her skin and the one red-hot spear in her chest. Each thread led to something, and if she listened carefully she could almost hear their owners. Humans talking, feeling, laughing, hurting. But not right now. Now she couldn't hear anything over her own sobs.
“Who goes there?” A man's voice. His string was blue. “Is everything alright?”
He took a step closer, confused and intrigued by the ghostly woman before him. It was the last mistake he would ever make. The banshee turned to look at him through the curtain of ever-present ethereal blue that clouded her vision, her eyes glassy and lacking pupils. She reached out a needle-like finger towards his thread and touched it. The wisp erupted as if lit aflame, a vivid red that shot down the misty blue strand towards him. As it reached his chest it pulled towards her tightly. When she felt the sudden heat against her own skin, she screamed.
The man didn't get the chance to run. She held the red string in her claws, and all he could do was watch her once-gorgeous image twist into something grotesque and monstrous. He was close enough. He wouldn't be given the chance to do anything but listen to her deadly shriek as his ear drums burst and his bones began to crack from the tangible force emanating from the gory slit that ran down her throat. It gaped open like the jaws of an animal, the inside of her neck hollow and yet something moved inside. His eyes would be liquid before he could process the vision before him - the woman in white turning into a horrific creature that moved the very air with its voice.
With the same needle-like finger she severed the red thread and the long flame was snuffed out, the string turning a putrid and oily black as it splattered onto the ground with the rest of his blood.
But her target was still there, beckoning. She knew not how far she would be pulled before it could hear her, but nothing would stand in her way.
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