A Recipe for Disaster

What remained of the blackened bookshelves towered like a dead forest: rooted in the ashes where they had burned.

The library was gone. Utterly obliterated.

Covers and pages crumbled to grey powder; the wind scattered it, and carried clouds of it off into the night.

Only one tome was fortunate enough to escape the blaze. It sat, unscathed, in one corner – enshrined in wood that still smoldered.

A skeleton – dark symbols freshly seared into each bone – sprawled face down across its open pages.

Its jawbone wiggled, and the dim embers flickering within its eye sockets grew brighter.

“Damn,” the skeleton said. “That was one hell of a cookbook.”

- J.F. "A Recipe for Disaster"

 

Originally published on Prose: A Recipe for Disaster

Also appears in the Wattpad collection  Paper Veins (and other stories)