World's End

This story has been written in response to L.C. Schäfer's proposal to spend 2024 choosing to write a microfiction story every day, making 366 stories for every day of this lovely leap year. You can check her original story out here:

Prompt number seventeen:

The picture is the prompt

***

"It is fitting, is it not, that we should meet here at World's End?"

Michael tried to disguise his surprise at the sound of Max's voice behind him. He concentrated on the magnificent view ahead of him.

"After all, you have been the orchestrator of the end of my world as I knew it so it seems only fair to restore the balance, as it were, and be the person who ends yours."

The clouds were growing ever more black and gathering together, forming an angry mob. Michael had never meant to fall in love with Max's wife; never meant for her to leave him; never meant to lose his best friend. It had just happened. He was a decent man. He knew the hurt he had inflicted and yet, he could not see how it could ever have been stopped. His union with Lydia had seemed inevitable, unstoppable, designed to be.

He couldn't say anything of this to Max. It would only create more friction and there was enough already, the hairs on Michael's arms raising themselves in reverence to the charge that nature was brewing above.

World's End. A place named by an explorer who commented it was like "reaching the end of the world", and so, it had been named.

"What do you want, Max?" Michael asked, although he knew.

Max's words sprayed like molten spittle from his mouth as he said,

"I want you gone. Isn't that obvious? And today is the day."

In a rush, Max launched himself at Michael who still had not turned to face him.

A tussle ensued: punches thrown, roars emitted, scratches tearing skin, blood running, skin bruised.

Only one man made it back from World's End that day.

***

Lydia said nothing about Michael's wounds when he arrived home. She was satisfied with his "fall" explanation. He'd been lucky, he'd said, although his face and posture told a different tale.

But when Max, who had been a persistent niggle, suddenly stopped pestering her, a seed of suspicion was planted as Lydia recalled the memory of Michael's battered physique after World's End.

The coldness and distance that Lydia developed towards her lover could not have pleased Max more.

***

366 words

I am using a lot of pictures as prompts at the moment and I like this as I think that any writer can bring something different to the table when presented with an image. We all read different things into them and we all write different stories as a result.

I'm not sure who I feel more sorry for in this story: Max because of his misery and vengeful spirit; or Michael and his predicament by the end of it.

Thanks for stopping by. If you've read this story, please do leave a comment as I love to interact with my readers.

17/366