The Inkwell presents: Floodgates

By The Inkwell

What pushes a person to that breaking point? What dark secrets or repressed emotions are hidden behind our exteriors? We all know that pressure that builds and builds until we can't take it anymore and have to let it out. Whether lashing out at others, ourselves, or simply breaking down from too much of everything, when those barriers come down, it's a miracle we aren't washed away.

Inferno - Sometimes the world just needs to burn
Defenestration Corporation - Rules go out the window when you're trying to get fired
A Rainy Day - Going to war is a cyclical experience
Flood of Memories - Hypnotherapy opens unexpected doors
Clockwork Under - Dutchmark's search for riches finds more than he bargained for
The Madness of Freya - A queen's world unravels around her
There Is No Story Here - Amy is forced to confront her worst fear - emotion
Whispered Words - A writer's muse can lead you down unexpected paths
The Pitch - A presentation goes awry when truth outs

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Inkwell
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005082291

The Inkwell

We are a writing collective founded on Discord that currently includes 20+ writers all helping each other on the climb to completed works.

Book preview

Inferno

Written by S. Crow

The colossus of steel and glass cracks and groans around me, showering needle-sharp shards down like ice drops, each slicing through my skin like a hailstorm. I raise my arms protectively in front of my face, breathing shallowly through clenched teeth, unable to prevent the smoke scratching at my throat as it billows in through broken windows and doorways. Beneath me, the building crumbles under her accumulated rage, yielding to the pressure as her anger bursts free.

You need to leave. Now, Carter says.

These words, ones I know so well, throw me, catapulting me back in time to a desperate afternoon six months ago. I still vividly recall how we first met—her towering over, me huddled on the ground, scrunching up as small as possible, while faceless goons rained kicks and punches down on me. I remember how her dark eyes seemed to swallow the light surrounding her: intense, burning, and yet carrying something so frighteningly cold in them, as if her fire was meant to freeze the world. She oozed power. She projected purpose. Nothing about her ever indicated uncertainty, each step she took, calculated. So how did we get here?

I stand across from Carter in what used to be a polished board room, the corpse of Rackner, the president of Enyrgyze, lying at her feet, motionless. A crimson stain pools under his chest, slowly spreading across the hardwood floor, the shards that landed in the puddle sparkling like blood diamonds. This man held our city in an iron chokehold but at our feet, he appears small, insignificant.

Something catches my eyes, lights flickering overhead as the electricity rears up one last time before dying. Otherwise, only the burning factory grounds stretching out beyond the demolished windows to my right offer any illumination, casting Carter's face into shadow, and making it impossible for me to get a read on her. None of that matters though, for the blade in her hand still gleams, blood trickling along the edge and dripping to the floor. She must've caught me staring, because she discards the weapon with a lazy flick of her wrist. With the tip of her boot, she topples over a fuel canister resting next to her, its contents flooding the wooden boards.

Why?

I hate myself for that tremble in my voice, but all the composure I once found in her presence has drained from me like the blood from the body at my feet.

She simply considers me, meeting my gaze head-on, and in the one eye visible to me in this lighting, there's nothing familiar. The fire is gone, replaced by an impenetrable darkness. She appears glacial, ancient, much older than I know her to be.

There was no other way.

Bullshit! I scream, legs moving, propelling me forward to grab the collar of her shirt, pulling it out of shape as I shake her. You were the one telling me to fight fairly for what I wanted! You were the one teaching me to protect and respect even the weakest of my fellows! You taught me that killing is admitting one's own helplessness, is inherently an act of weakness! SO WHY? 

With that exclamation, my voice quivers and breaks, finally trailing off into a cough. Beneath me, he floor shudders, threatening to give out. This building isn't going to last much longer. If we don't move, we'll get buried beneath it.

But Carter is in no hurry. Her strong, precise hands, hands of a mechanic, come up to where I still claw the fabric of her shirt. Like a vice, they close around mine, picking them off as if they were but pieces of lint. When she speaks, it's unbearably soft.

Constantin. Don't you understand? I lost.

Those two words wreck my world worse than the quake that runs through the room as an upper floor caves in, debris raining from the ceiling.

No.

A part of me clings to a desperate notion that this is a dream, that I'll wake up and everything will be like it always was. I'll head to school, fool around with Cass and Charley and Lloyd, and wait for the hours to creep past until I can flee into Carter's dusty workshop. Has it only been six months since I stopped staying until dusk, holing up at the library, postponing the inevitable walk home to a lonely, empty flat?

So much has changed during that time. I’ve gotten to know Lloyd so much better now, his charm, his wit, his quiet, considerate manner, something I never have expected to appreciate the way I do. Then there's this new honesty between me and Charley, an ease I’ve never experienced before, that I wouldn't want to miss for the world. Finally, there's my parents, who know I don't wish to follow in their footsteps, who've shown me they'll accept me for who I am, be proud of me, whatever I choose for myself.

And all of it, the big and small things, all of them trace back to this person in front of me, who gave me that courage, who gave me a compass to steer by. Sitting in a rundown, abandoned clock repair workshop, tinkering with battered pocket watches, she helped me find my soul, helped form me. Her steadfast conviction became the cornerstone on which the foundation that will define the rest of my life will be built; her beliefs what set the clockwork of my being in motion. She keeps the hands spinning through her teachings regarding my own world, by what she reveals about her dreams. Her vision once burned in her eyes, like a lighthouse in the dark night, but now, just when I, a poor sailor lost at sea, finally am within reach of it, I find myself bearing witness as it fades out.

I'm sorry, she says, and I don't want to hear it, can't stomach her apologies. They make this real, unequivocal, far more so than the blood now staining both her hands and mine.

Moving fluidly, exploiting my shock, Carter twists one of my forearms up behind my back, placing me in an unyielding police hold. Strength unchanged, her body as solid as ever, she presses into mine from behind, effortlessly shepherding me towards