Where Did Daddy Come From?

path

© J.S. Brand

The sign post was all but unreadable as she stood staring at it from the foot of the path. Left pointed to the way she came and right to the Ranger station. The one pointing behind her was to the camp grounds. She couldn’t read the one pointing up the hill, but she’d heard stories.

No one walked up those steps anymore. People went up and never came down. The secret, at least Alise thought she knew it, came from her mother’s diary. Mommy went up and then came down three months pregnant. She never told Alise who her Daddy was. Now on her sixteenth birthday, she was going to find out.

She climbed the steps. Fog rolled in as she reached the top. It was longer than it looked from the bottom, like another world.

“Hello, Alise.”

“Daddy? But, you look so young, hardly older than me.”

“An incubus never ages, my dear. Here, let me show you my secrets.

When Alise descended the steps, her unborn baby was forming inside of her.

I wrote my wee tale for the FFfAW Challenge-Week of July 18, 2017 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as an inspiration to craft a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long, with 150 being the ideal. My word count is 174.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

30 thoughts on “Where Did Daddy Come From?”

    • I think the legend of the incubus was originally created to cover a woman’s “mysterious” pregnancy. “The demon did it while I slept” sort of thing. I hadn’t really thought about whether or not Alise and her unborn child are/will be demons themselves. Could be interesting.

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  8. Not what I was expecting to be at the top of those steps, but then, given her mother’s experience, that’s as good an explanation as any. I wonder if that’s what the woman in my story will find at the top of her steps?

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  9. Indian mythology speaks of Gods and saints impregnating illustrious women, from a distance, to produce gifted offspring. Maybe, artificial insemination and gene selection was already in practice.

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  10. There’s something about steps and open doors that sets the imagination racing. I liked the way yours took you. Your story prompted me to find out more about incubi and succubi – I was amazed to find they were once considered to be real by Christian theologians. Maybe they still are in some quarters?

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