The crossroads demon forms in the mist, folding spiked wings. “Your desire?”
“To never grow old, someplace hot.”
Razor-sharp claws open my chest, and pain is all I know. Then, nothing.
I wake in a fiery wasteland, tortured screams filling the sulphurous air.
‘God, help me.’ But even he can’t.
It’s hot as…
Afterword
The mission: to write a 53-word piece about “a catch”.
If you’ve read a few of my pieces, you’ll see I try to avoid the most obvious paths. So, here, I didn’t consider doing one about someone catching a ball or a fish, etc.
I also wasn’t interesting in writing a piece where someone was described as being a catch.
But, a hidden catch, something concealed, something too good to be true (“what’s the catch?”), now that had my attention. That I could write about.
Photo attribution: thanks to Shawn Appel on Unsplash.