10 August 2011

Seven virtues - diligence

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Diligence

The man shakes as I straighten his fingers and staunch the bleeding from where his fingernails used to be. "Shh," I murmur. "You must keep still."

Blood weeps from cuts all over his body. If he moves too much I won't be able to save him. I stitch every slice closed so that he can live another day. When I finish my fingers ache, but my lord will be pleased.

Tomorrow we start again, then the next day, and every day after that, until the man has told me everything he knows and we have all his friends too.

5 comments:

  1. Nice twist in the end. I love it when the last few sentences turn the whole story upside down. The character seemed like Florence Nightingale, but turned out to be a torturer.

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  2. Nice twist! For his sake, I hope he does move to much so his misery can be ended. Unless he was very, very bad...

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  3. Wow, not sure if I would fight for survival in that situation. Great turn on the end :-)

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  4. Oooh dark diligence. This reads like a gothic horror - brilliant twist!

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  5. Very chilling, doing a good job with the last moment twists--which really impresses me in a mere 100 words.
    Though that's definitely diligence to spend all day breaking something only to repair it come evening and then go again and again.

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