Spooktober 2024- writing Prompt #3

I'm doing / sharing a Halloween / Spooktober / horror / paranormal / creepy

FIRST LINE or PROMPT every week in October leading up to Halloween.

Feel free to give them a try and share the results if you're feeling it.

Below in Bold is time spent and the prompt.

Below that is what was written in that time using the prompt.

This is week 3

TIME: 25 mins

PROMPT: As the witch burned, her mouth fell open and I saw what I was sure was a large black beetle fly out. As it flew into the fading light of the sunset I realized nobody else in the crowd had seemed to notice…’

I waited but no one called out or reacted to what had been clear to me. I was surprised. Even my son who stood next to me stood somber and unchanged. I second-guessed myself. I was not a young man anymore. My eyes were not what they once were. Perhaps I had been mistaken? Perhaps it was a dark piece of ash blowing in the wind. A normal thing with a large fire such as this. It had been so clear though. I was certain.

My mind turned some more and I realized something else. The wind was blowing from behind me as we had all stood on the side of the fire in the opposite direction of the wind. If it had been ash caught in the wind it would have gone to the east. The dark flying shape I had seen went south in the direction of the woods.

None of this helped undo the knot in my stomach that had been present since I left with my son to attend this event.

We had left his wife and my grandson at home. My family had all expressed our opposition to this whole thing but had been considerably outvoted at yesterday’s final meeting about the witch May;s fate.

We had thought of not attending but somehow that had seemed cowardly. Upon our arrival, my son and I had had some final words with the head of town council, Mr. Powell, in a last attempt to call another meeting, change his mind. The whole thing was deeply unsettling. It was made more so by May’s arrival, hands tied behind her back, her face bruised and pale and her frame so thin. I hadn’t seen her since the initial hearing and it was quite clear she had been not been treated well in the last four months she’d been in her tiny cell.