The Invocation: A Fifty Word Story

Amidst the three-pointed symbols of her dark god, she prostrated herself. Another incantation had failed.

Her year-old child cooed in the corner. She gathered him in her arms. He whimpered and she smiled.

Three cuts then his heart beat in her palm. She devoured it.

The power still didn't come.

This week's 50 word prompt is WITCH.  Although the word itself isn't in the story, I am sure its influence is clear.

I seem to be doing a lot of darker microfiction lately. I don't really know why beyond being grumpy from high pain levels and still working through some grief. But I do swear my longer stuff isn't all dark and nasty. In fact I am currently working on something for a contest that will hopefully end up around 500 words with a more humorous bent. I have a long work that is funny also that I come back to occasionally--or at least want to. 

The Halloween build-up of the current prompts along with coming off having finished my first horror story ever and sending that out to a mainstream submission call probably also have helped put me in a darker mindset. 

In any case, I am having fun with them and I feel like I'm making progress in the actual skill level of my writing, so I'm happy.

The art on this post is the talented work of AnikeKirsten (Hive account@anikekirsten). She has my copious thanks for her help with turning this into something that fit the vision in my mind.

As usual, this fiction piece has been revised and edited with the help of my INKubator family (Hive account@ink-ubator). The #text-edit channel is awesome for shorts like this and it really helps. Lots of exciting stuff has been happening on INK lately. I strongly recommend checking them out.