I have always loved creative writing—in elementary school I wrote countless short stories and poems, and English was my favorite class because of the creative writing the teacher assigned each week. 

In middle school, I entered and won first place in the Taradiddle competition (Fall 1952). It’s a twice-annual competition with a focus on animals. The prompt is given on a Thursday, and the work is due the following Monday. They don’t give the writers much time! 

This year, I joined the Teen Writers’ Circle at the Young Writers’ Institute. It’s a fantastic group of people, and a weekly meeting looks something like this: we’ll chat for about fifteen minutes, and catch up on what we’ve been doing the past few weeks. After that, we’ll switch to a discussion about the publishing industry or the editing process, basically learning something that’ll help us write and share our writing beyond the classroom. Then we’ll shift to our (very casual) open mic. You can read your work out loud to everyone in the room (which I’ve done many times and love doing) or you can just listen to what others have written. People read anything: satire, poetry, novel snippets, flash fiction, short stories, and much more. YWI also has a monthly official open mic night at a kombucha brewery close to the studio. I’ve attended one and loved it! 

Recently, I’ve begun a course in Creative Writing at Harmony Homeschool Academy, and I’m really liking the teacher so far! Coincidentally, she and I are reading a Shirley Jackson short story collection at the same time. So far, the assignments are varied and really interesting. This week, my writing assignment is to write a short story about an abandoned place. 

This year, I decided to submit a flash fiction piece to the Scholastic Awards, something my mother had been telling me about for years. And I earned a Silver Key in Regionals for my flash fiction piece titled “Helena”!

Helena

The forensic pathologist tugged on a pair of latex gloves and hummed in a low voice. Bending over the woman on the operating table, he made small, precise, even cuts. Bodies bleed sluggishly, but even so the familiar metallic tang quickly filled the room. But…strange. The regular rotting stench of the dead was missing. The corpse was female, clothed in a frilly, rather gauche wedding dress. A bloodstained, bruised remnant of a dream. She was attractive, in a macabre way. Her high cheekbones accentuated by the absence of breath. He moved to switch tools, and noticed his hands were shaking. Something about this dissection felt strange. He needed to focus. 

His first few weeks on the job had been going well. He’d not been curious enough to open many people’s files, but almost without his mind’s consent, he reached over and opened the manila folder, looking for more information. She’d died—been killed—roughly three weeks ago?

But that couldn’t be right. The corpse would be in its third stage of decomposition. And  this body was pristine, as if the woman had died just an hour ago. He looked at the file more carefully. Jane Doe. Mystery woman. Who was she? It was a good thing everyone else at the morgue had left for the night, or he would have sounded like a madman, explaining to his boss, a condescending man in an expensive suit, that this corpse was, well, not normal. No, not normal at all. He dropped the file on his desk and walked out of the room, planning on coffee and a potential mental breakdown. 

He shook his head as he came back to the room to finish his dissection. The drink and a quick scroll on his phone had helped clear his head.  But his steps came to an abrupt stop as he approached the table. Was it his imagination, or was the corpse…smiling? An eerie Mona Lisa half-smile. He blamed it on the coffee. Maybe the caffeine was making him see things. Yes, that must be it. 

Shivering, he began to sterilize his station for the second time that night. Again, his attention wandered, and he began to hum. He stopped abruptly and shook himself. He’d been humming Wagner’s “Here Comes the Bride.” God. He needed to go home. 

“Don’t leave me here alone, darling.”  

Something brushed his shoulder with the words, and he whipped around, but the corpse lay silent. Unmoving. Why—how—would a corpse move? He was being ridiculous. Rigor mortis had already set in, long, long before she’d reached his hands. Hadn’t it? 

Lost in thought, he shifted closer to the operating table. He reached out and brushed a strand of auburn hair away from her pale, pale blue face. At least that was normal. The blue on her face didn’t dare touch her ruby red lips. Her far too red lips. When he touched them, his fingers came away stained with something wet and glistening. And warm. Blood. Fresh blood. 

Good God. He felt his gaze travel down, and now he saw her wrists. They were torn apart, arteries and veins ripped open. He looked closer. Torn apart. Dear God, torn apart with her own teeth. She’d not been killed. Oh, no. Helena had killed herself… Helena? Where the hell did that come from? He was losing it, he really was. 

“Join me, darling, you’ll be much happier. I promise…” 

A tinkling laugh came from behind him, and he felt his back go rigid. He had to leave. He really did. But why did he know that Helena was telling the truth? A hand slithered around his wrist, and he looked down to see her sharp scarlet nails digging into his skin. Pulling him down, to meet her pale, pale, open eyes. Helena placed his own scalpel into his hand, and smiled with those ruby red lips, bloodstained and breathtakingly beautiful. 

He was found on the morgue floor the next morning, blue-faced and bloody, a horrifying scarlet smile carved into his cheeks, scalpel in hand, wrists slashed.

In the eternal embrace of Helena.