Yikici's Paper Anniversary Challenge

I can't stay away from the blog challenges!  This is a relatively simple one, though, and has the potential to end up helping a charity, so I had to do it.

Ozlem Yikici came up with the following challenge as a celebration of her paper (one year) anniversary.  In her words, "I want us to write a story together.  How?  Just like any other Flash Fiction Challenge; but with a slight twist (I can't help myself); we will each write a paragraph (no more than 250 words per entry) to the on-going story (which will start below and continue in the comment section/linky list, I will create a page to collate all the entries."

There are four pictures to choose from as inspiration, and I was second to go, following C.M. Brown.  If you want to read the first portion of the story, you can hop over to her blog here, and if you want to see the picture that inspired our part of the story, you can go here to Ozlem's blog. Right now we are the only two that signed up, so I hope you all get inspired to continue with the story!

Here is my part:

“I’m scared,” Delphina whispered.

I glanced at her.  Her eyes were wide, and she grasped my hand hard enough to numb my fingers. 

The noise came again, an eerie howling. 

“It’ll be okay,” I said, and tried to smile, but my cheeks refused to help me lie to my sister.

She didn’t look convinced, either.

Some unknown power drew us toward the door, despite the strong urge to turn and run away.  Step by dreaded step, we continued down the hall until we stood just beyond the reach of the light shining beneath the door.

I peeled my hand out of hers, and reached for the handle.  

The door exploded open, knocking Delphina and I backward.  It flapped wildly in the hurricane force winds raging from the room.  My hair whipped up into the air above my head, and I had to squint my eyes against the violent gusts to locate Delphina.

She leaned against a doorway, her eyes closed.

“Del!” I shouted.  The wind carried my voice away.

I retraced my steps, the wind pushing against my back, until I stood in front of the staircase. 

What?

I rubbed my eyes.  There was no way what I saw was real.

A gigantic sunflower crawled octopus-like up the staircase.  One of the yellow petals broke free of the flower, and blew across the hallway, hitting Delphina in the face.

She clawed the petal off her eyes, her mouth open in unheard shrieks of pain. 

You really do need to go to Ozlem's blog and see the picture.  It's quite... um, interesting!