NYC Midnight: The Good with the Bad

Note: This is the first round entry for NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest. I had the weekend to write a 1,000 word fiction story. I was placed in Group 12: Genre - Fantasy. Location - A dam. Item - A wool blanket. After scoring on one of two stories last year (5 points), I set the goal to score on both this year, and hopefully well enough to advance. Sadly, time goblins assaulted me this weekend, and this story isn't what I hoped it would be. Instead it's poorly paced, awkwardly worded, and flawed in many minor and major ways. Unless the rest of the group failed to submit, wrote in some sort of personalized Esperanto, and/or simply didn't understand what they were signing up for, this one will be a big zero for me.

 

Brief Synopsis: When Henry turns on Nora, he dooms a new world to repeat the struggle between good and evil of the old world. The difference is that Nora is the Dragon.

 

The muzzle pressed against the back of her neck, sending goosebumps down her spine and across her limbs like falling dominos. Nora’s concentration had been on the knife with the golden hilt, so she mistook the sensation for a nervous reaction to the idea of cutting herself. When Henry spoke, she understood that he had his revolver drawn on her.
 

"I have to stop you, Dragon.”
 

“Story as old as time! A sneaky honkey crossing a well-meaning negro. Burn that cracker!” Her Nana’s voice shouted, dominating all the other voices muttering in her head. Nana had been a proper lady, but she had always reverted to her poor southern roots when angry. Nana died before the devastation.
 

 “What are you doing, man?” Her father’s voice bounced off the walls of the subterranean cavern hidden below the dam. Nora remained kneeling on the wool blanket before the pool.
 

“This isn’t the way,” the witch added.
 

“Hush. Nora, let’s get you away from that water. We can’t have your blood dripping into it. The witch was right. We were all drawn here for a reason. My destiny was to stop you. This restless wanderer will finally have his peace.”
 

Nora’s face reflected in the pool. Her thinness startled her almost as much as seeing her bald head. They shaved all their heads days earlier due to the lice. The reflection changed to the haggard guise of the old man from her dreams. Part of him was her now.
 

“Use the blanket!” The reflection said for only her ears.
 

Placing her feet on either side of the blanket, she shoved back into Henry as she pulled the blanket forward. Henry grunted and lost his balance as the blanket was jerked from under his feet. Diving forward into the pool, her splash coincided with a blast that made her ears ring. She would have sworn the pool was only inches deep, but she plummeted downward with no bottom apparent. Using the witch’s knife, she opened a wide gash in her palm. Blood swirled in the still pool, turning a fiery orange before her eyes. Her blood – the Dragon’s blood – would bring life back to the dying world, as the witch had proclaimed.
 

Her father’s hand clasped onto her arm, yanking her up. She emerged to chaos tinted the strange green from the glowing orbs the witch had produced earlier. A blinding white flash warned of another blast, and when the flash receded, Nora was greeted by the witch, who now had a third bleeding eye centered on her forehead. Nora made to scream, but flames burst out of her mouth instead of sound. The walls shuddered, exposed to heat and light like never before. Then Nora passed out.

***

She woke in her father’s arms before the ladder at the top of the stone stairway. The wood rungs led hundreds of feet up to a secret hatch in the dam’s interior.
 

“Where’s Henry?”
 

“Up ahead somewhere. I think you scared him.” Her father laughed, but she could tell she had scared him, too. “We have to get moving. Can you climb?"

She nodded, but the first rung she grabbed squished like a sponge and then disintegrated.
 

"It’s rotted. How can that be?”
 

“Time moves differently down here, and the magic is leaving. I can feel it.”

***

She didn’t know if minutes or hours passed before they reached the open hatch at the top of the ladder, but she was grateful for the glow from the emergency lights of the dam when they got there.

The old machines were buzzing and lights were beeping in foreboding rhythms. Before she could consider those implications, a bullet screamed by her ear, burying itself in the concrete feet away. She rolled away, rose to her knees, and prepared to spew forth a death spiral of flames, but her father’s hand clasped over her mouth.
 

“The walls can’t take another blast, honey. Besides, he’s on the move and out of bullets. I’ve been keeping count.”

They ran toward the metal staircase. As they climbed, they heard Henry singing from above.
 

“Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name. But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.”

"What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
 

“He thinks he’s the devil’s tool.”
 

She also noticed a humming growing persistently louder.
 

“What is that?”
 

“Water. A lot of it.”
 

“That’s crazy. We’re in a desert.”
 

“It’s a different world now.”
 

When they burst into the sunshine, her father’s suspicions were confirmed. Water had burst through the dam wall below, and on the opposite side, a great river was nearing the top of the wall.
 

"Hurry, it’s coming down!”
 

The dam walls buckled, groaning like an old giant trying to stand after sitting for a century. The dam collapsed in a horrific rush of water and power, as they reached the safety of the surrounding cliff.

***

The red sandstone that had dominated the canyon when they arrived was gone, buried beneath lush greenery.
 

“You did this.” Her father had tears in his eyes. “The Dragon’s blood brought life back to this world.”
 

“Look.” She pointed to the opposite bank. Henry, in his ragged black suit with a white shirt and thin black tie, stood with his hands in his pockets.
 

“Ah, well. This world will just be like the last.” Her father put his arm around her. “It has its good and bad. Henry is the bad, but he can’t defeat the Dragon. The Dragon is good”
 

She smiled, wanting to believe him. The witch had said as much when Nora accepted the gift, but she was starting to believe the witch hadn’t told them everything. The voices in her head, many of them saying terrible things, reached a crescendo. Henry waved before turning away and disappearing into the brush.
 

It was a new world. There was good. There was bad. And there was the Dragon.
 

“Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad,” she whispered.