Today's Word: Anathema

Sometime around midnight we saw the first of them. Anathema. Winged reptiles the color of wet sand their elongated snouts bejeweled with seven rows of serrated teeth. They swooped and dove toward our ship, several even striking the cockpit window with leathery wings. The sounds they mad were unearthly. They brayed warbling songs like the cough of an aged man losing a lung. Simpson guided the ship close to the canyon walls, our exterior lights picking out myriad crevices where the anathema made their homes. We might have caught sight of a broodling nusery, had the fool not moved too close to one of several dozen queens attached to the wall like an old-style jumbo jet suction-cupped upside down on the stone. The giant lifted its maw and bit through our nosecone. With its boulder-sized teeth still embedded in our now dead ship, the queen gave us a good shake and sent us tumbling toward the canyon floor.

That is where my memory grows hazy.


-- david j.