Would You Like To Play?

Posted by Bowties.

 

  It was a daunting thing, to come back to something that was once great, knowing that it had buckled at the knees while she was out enjoying the world. With three others by her side, the Lady walked through the barren gates to see what was left of their now fallen aslyum. It wasn't pretty.

    Where a buliding once stood, weeds grew. The grass was green and lush and beautiful in its own way, but it only covered the grave of a madhouse. Various debris were hidden within the tall blades of green, including a piano in perfect condition, a few weather-worn books, and many shingles, lights and other things found within any type of building. The building that housed many writers and artists alike had been ripped into the ground out of sheer, dumb luck and a raging storm.

    The four girls that arrived at the scene of this dastardly crime of nature simply looked at eachother. From Lady Emergency's long, brown locks and cheshire smile to Mystic Muse's grey wings and pitch black hair, to Cryptic Critic's stunning green eyes and bare feet to even Unspoken Wit's fur and monkey tail, they just stared. None of them had much to say.

    Too many things had been lost with that building. People, writing, hopes, dreams, jokes, everything. Anything in that building went down with it, into the grave it had been digging itself for years now. Sure, it was inevitable that it was to fail, but no one was quite sure how. Being ripped into the ground was an interesting way to fail.

    The Sacfricial Cult of Aspiring Writers, also known as SCAW, had been created by the four with us today. In the beginning, it was named something much more, well, humble and inviting, but that's an entirely different story for another rainy day. They had created it on a whim, deciding that their friendship needed to be extended to the world in some sort of way. So, they pulled together their minds and created a place for the poor, tortured souls of those writers that just didn't quite fit in. It grew and grew, becoming something larger than just the four friends that had started it all.

    That was, until something happened. No one is quite sure what had happened to cause such a plague of pure insanity, but the cause of this fire isn't all that important, because the aftermath is much more signifigant. It started with the weird letters, then proceeded on with the odd behavior, and after that the violent occurances, until it was just a madhouse filled with the most dangerous kind of people: Writers. Many that were unafflicted left and ran while they still could, including the four that had nurtured it to it's peak.

    With the few still left alive in the building, a storm ripped through the surrounding area, causing several sinkholes to arrive in the middle of nowhere. The Cult was pulled into the ground, leaving only a skeleton of a building in a dirt grave. No one cared.

    "We need to start over." One girl said.

    "Of course we do." Another agreed.

    "We can't allow something like this to die so easily." The third stated. 

    They all looked to Unspoken Wit. Her small monkey head nodded in agreement.

    And so they did. Pulling together their heads once more, the girls picked up their words, needles and thread, and stitched themselves a sanctuary. They threw SCAW in a closet and closed up the remains of the building under their new home, The Gory Details.

    Too bad that closet wasn't locked.

…

Lady Emergency didn’t find this the ideal way to spend her Sunday afternoon. The catacombs under The Gory Details weren’t to be gone into, even by her; they were supposedly deemed unsafe and sealed tight, away from anyone who might want to sneak back in. Supposedly, there were still two doors that led back to the catacombs, but the mansion never truly let anyone find them. Apparently, this was a lost cause. One of the students at The Gory Details had told her of a door that had been ripped open in the dining hall’s floor. So, naturally, Lady Emergency was forced to go in and find out who—or what—had tore through a steel door and a layer of crimson carpeting. The Lady was just enthralled.

Hollow footsteps reverberated up the dusty walls as two small feet sheathed in bright red Converse sneakers crept along the brick flooring. The eerie light emanating from a small electric lantern cast ghostlike shadows across the strange, painted patterns that lined the walls. With Hans, a birdlike creature with a fish tail and four sets of wings, on her shoulder, Lady Emergency crept through the skeleton of a building, unsure of what she’d find.

The place wasn’t all that pleasant, nor did it look abandoned as it was said to be. It didn’t look empty and deserted like she had thought it would be, it just looked at if all the life that had once been here just…stopped. Literally. Papers bathed in chicken scratch were scattered around the floor, tables and chairs were tipped on their sides, and books looked to be flung from the shelves in unwanted heaps of words. The walls were painted in uneven stripes of black and red, making Lady Emergency’s head spin.

A terrible screeching of metal on metal played a tune coming from one of the doors. Hans whimpered at the noise, but still waddled over to it on his slender legs. The awkward bird pecked at the door, beckoning for the Lady to open it for him. Lady Emergency rolled her eyes at her silly partner in crime, grabbed the lantern and walked over to him, unlatching the door.

It opened with a loud thunk, and the sound reiterated and bounced off of the cavernous walls. The door hadn’t been opened in a long while. The Lady held up the lantern, the light casting a golden glow over her pale features.

The screeching grew louder and more profound as she and her trusted little sidekick went deeper into the room, but Lady E didn’t see the cause of the noise anywhere. Hans walked forward into the darkness, straying away from the lamplight. The screeching grew louder, and louder, until the Lady couldn’t hear her own footsteps anymore. She was there, and she nearly screamed.

It was a gigantic metal cage. The hinges screeched like someone staring down the barrel of a fully loaded gun. Luckily for her, Hans had gone over and kicked the door just enough to make the god-awful noise stop. The Lady wasn’t quite sure how exactly he had the strength to make it stop, but she wasn’t about to complain now.

Lady Emergency was bewildered at the sight of the cage, and its condition. A few of the bars were torn to bits, some rusted and broken. Nothing had gotten inside the catacombs of SCAW, something had gotten out. Saying that the Lady was scared out of her mind was an understatement.

She moved the lantern around the big room, looking for Hans. He was against the wall, trying to pick something up in his jaws, possibly an envelope? Lady E set down the lantern on the floor, moving closer to Hans.

That’s when she noticed it.

It looked to be written in blood, the eerie feel of the now dry drizzles that fell from the letters made icicle fingers claw at the small TGDer’s back. There was a message written on the wall, addressed to the whole of The Gory Details. It read: “How about a little game? I hear you all are wonderful Clue players. I’m ready to play.

So is it.” Gooseflesh arose on the Lady’s skin.

Hans had finally gotten to bring the small paper thing to his partner in crime, and pecked at her feet while she just stared at the wall. He squawked loudly, shaking the Lady from her reverie.

“What?” She said playfully, bending down to meet Hans’s small height, “Hm? What’s this?” The Lady asked in a little singsong voice that contradicted her fear. She pulled the small envelope from his blue jaws, feeling for the opening.

It was small, blue and infused with essence-of-fish. The paper looked old and worn, like it had been sitting wherever Hans had found it for far too long. Coffee or tea stains freckled the surface of the opening flap. The Lady’s fingers slid under the sealed flap, ripping the blue envelope with no regret.

She let the small piece of paper slip out and into her hands. It was folded three different ways, and it took her countless minutes to figure out just how to open the small thing. Scribbled words were splashed upon the rustic paper’s surface in red ink. It read: “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!’”

Lady Emergency knew what this was, and where it was from. Firstly, it was some sort of clue. Secondly, it had come from someone in The Gory Details; the handwriting wasn’t elegant or classy, more rushed and to the point; she knew she’d seen it somewhere before. Thirdly, it was an excerpt from one of Lady Emergency’s favorite of short stories: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.

The Lady Just stared at the paper, not wanting to believe it. But, there was, in fact, a crazy monster on the loose, and a post-asylum player of games out there, too. What she really didn’t want to believe was that, due to the current weather outside, they very well might be stuck inside with both at large.

“Oh, dear.” Lady Emergency said with a sigh.

Such a lovely Sunday afternoon.

 

Reviews

[John Morris]

This was defiantly creepy but i found myself being a little confused. The attention to detail is small so i don't get the feeling that I'm there but it is still a good write and i shall read more of it. I also thought it was a little short for a chapter though maybe making the chapters longer and more detailed would help.

[Drifter]

I must say that I am intrigued by this story so far. I will have to read the other parts when I get the chance. It had a level of creepiness that I so enjoy when reading something. Apart from a few typos there didn't seem to be much wrong with the text. Good work.