Creative Writing: The Arden

The sky was pale grey, flecked with ivory clouds amidst the dark skies. Into the bleak air curled wafts of effervescent breath that created a mystical veil above the thronged people in the achromatic town. Across the town, the shrill sharpening of steel against steel echoed, creeping across the gravelly pavements of the town square, in between the white cottages that were in well-ordered and neat rows and right down to the bones of Arden, who cowered amongst the crowd, cowed by the imperilled grandeur of the looming guillotine, a smooth machine with a glinting blade spluttering sparks as the executioner sharpened it.

Arden watched the scene blankly. Public executions occured so frequently to the point where they were seen as the norm, with

She had skin paler than light that gleamed off from the moon and a curious smile upon her thin lips, the pupils of her eyes capering. A small, trembling man read out the long list of crimes that she had committed: venturing outside the tall barbed wire fences that separated the town from the outlands, treason, conspiring and scheming against the Great One in the underground syndicate… The list went on. The words merely floated by Arden’s ears, with his attention diverted towards the unusual nature of the woman in question, whose mischievous grin hinted at secrecy and mystery and whose pale eyes mockingly interspersed the charges read out with dismissive, contemptuous eye rolls, as if it were a show; as if impending death did not loom over her like the guillotine

Arden cracked his eyelids open, craning to see what the fuss was about, while the executioner and the announcer both froze in astonishment, neither knowing what to do. Blood was spurting out of the hollow gash where the woman’s head once was, but there was something significantly different about the substance that dispersed onto the cobblestones, a dissimilarity so immense yet absolutely foreign to Arden as he struggled to fathom it into words.

The blood was not black, nor was it white or grey or anything that Arden had ever seen before; it was deeper, richer, the metallic tang more pungent than the previous criminal. It stained the black splattered cobblestones and washed over the dried blood with its abundance. As if in a trance, Arden stumbled forward towards the guillotine, reaching a pale hand forward, letting the eccentric blood coat his fingers, the salty scent enveloping his senses. Arden stared at it, captivated and confused, letting his eyes explore the striking and estranged appearance of it, trying to comprehend what his eyes