The Unforgivable Sin

Flash Horror for the Sunday Scaries

My offering for the latest Sunday Scaries prompt, curated by Labyrinthia Mythweaver, Mathew C. Bryant • Horror Poet, and I.

Is all prepared?”

“All is ready.”

The voices danced on the edge of the man’s painfully slow return to consciousness. His eyes opened with a groan to enveloping darkness. With the first inklings of sensation came a biting pressure against his arms and ankles, in contrast to the soothing dampness coating his cheek.

His ears detected the faint but distinct rhythm of soft, murmuring voices. They echoed through his mind in a subtle yet compelling cadence, as that of an incantation. The collective utterance was loaded with a sense of gleeful anticipation and certain triumph. And, adding to his growing sense of dread, was the fact that the voices all held an undeniably familiar tone -

With a sudden shot of adrenaline he tried to rise, only to collapse back down to the grassy ground, the voices hushing. His wrists and ankles were pierced with the telltale sting of rope burn. A slow trickle of hazy memories came: the two masked forms in the clearing… walking to the grove… the entwining dance of female limbs, their voluptuous glory laid bare…the sharp, thunderous blow to his head…

“Ah, the sleeper wakes,” the first voice – a rich basso - said cooly after a moment’s pause. “The time has come.”

Two pairs of hands swiftly unbound his wrists, feet, and the impenetrable blindfold. He groggily rose on all fours, the sudden onslaught of light affronting his readjusting sight. His aching form was clothed in a loose robe, of the same type as those worn by the ring of hooded figures around him. They were on the outskirts of the same oaken grove from his addled memory.

Silvery rays from the full moon bathed the clearing in front, where he had first espied the twin forms which he followed into this Tartarian realm of nightmare. A blazing bonfire roared behind him, tended by two figures, who alternated in sprinkling some sort of powder into the flames.

“Bring him forth,” said another voice, distinctly feminine but as commanding as the basso.

The same two pairs of hands lifted under his arms with a surprising strength. He mustered a token resistance before succumbing to the paralyzing wave of pain which washed over him. They brought him steadily forward toward the clearing where, eerily illuminated by the lunar rays and tongues of flame, they stood: the sylvan sisters, clothed in time worn finery, waiting amongst the brambles.

The same forms he had followed to the heart of the grove, where, like old Actaeon, he beheld with prying eye what no mere male should. The lustful hunter had been made the cowering hunted. He knew what lay behind the beaked masks of bone…

“Sisters,” rang the basso through the night air, “What is your verdict?”

The form to his right, slightly taller than the other, strode toward him.

“He has committed the unforgivable sin, staining the sacred space with his profane eye -”

“The most abominable of his many transgressions,” finished the other. She came forward, the telltale glint of steel in her hand.

“And the sentence?” queried the commanding feminine voice.

“That of cruel Kronos, most ancient of wretches.”

The shorter sister, now standing before him, lifted his chin with the curved point of the sickle.

“So mote it be!” declared the basso and feminine in unison.

He attempted a desperate appeal -

“Let his foul tongue speak no more!” thundered the basso. “Execute your sentence, sister!”

The suppliant was thrown down from behind, the robe lifted to expose his loins -

The sister lifted the sickle, uttering the mocking lines:

“The locals whisper

About the stench that lingers

Like an ancient plague.”

The man moaned like a dog.

“Good riddance - to a husband most foul.”

The blade dropped.

© Conor MacCormack, 2026. All rights reserved.