Chapter I – Bloody Rose
1800's
The soft melody of the music box faded through the dimly lit room. With a soft clickety-click-click of the small, brass winding key, the haunting notes flitted gently through the misty evening air once again, whiffing along the bed covers as it blew away puffs of snow past the charred and dusty window.
A subtle cry echoed from the interior of the house. There, huddled inside a cloak of gathered blankets, was a dark-eyed, fair young girl, looking distraught and alone as she sat atop the dirt and grime of the ancient wooden floor. It creaked lightly under her weight as she adjusted her seat on its planks; her feeble legs tiring from the weary position they had been in for quite some time now. Her heart hammered against her chest loudly. The music had stopped. She pressed her ear onto the floor and listened.
It was quiet.
Anxiety bubbled up inside her.
“The wood’s warm,” she thought to herself as she retreated to her shelter of thick blankets, the small melodious trinket box clasped tightly in one hand, and wound them tighter around her small form. “The wood’s unnaturally warm and blistery.” She dared not set her foot down the steps and towards the living room. Her head was already spinning with nerve-wracking distress.
There, as she sat still and unobtrusive inside the sanctuary of the parlour, nightmarish forethoughts plagued her mind. These visions were so vivid – so real, in fact, that she cried and shook her head violently, taking her some few minutes to realize that there was entirely nothing to fear. The vestiges of the trance still remained to her until now. She shook her head wildly and forced the thoughts into complete oblivion.
“Just a little while... I’ll wait just a little while longer.” The undersides of her gaunt thighs were already seared with light crimson bumps due to the prolonged contact to the burning wood. “They’ll come for me, and we shall leave this place all together. We shall live all together. They’ll come. Oh, they better. They still breathe – oh, God, tell me they still breathe. They breathe, and they live, and they shall laugh with me, and sing with me, and play with me once again – dear little sorrowful self, why are you in such woe? They live.” She reassured herself almost too firmly, as she was already on the brink of breaking down into hysteria. She curled herself up into a ball.
Finally gathering a handful of courage and resolve, she placed one cold foot onto the scorching staircase steps. She hurried down, neglectful of the sting of crimson flames which continued to lick violently at the soles of her bare feet.
She was too late. All that remains of those she once treasured had been reduced to nothing - charred debris of coaly skin and burning flesh and bones, almost completely unrecognizable as they are devoured ever so vigorously by the fire. Out at the far corner, a pair of ghastly, beady eyes stared down at her with a dead, steady gaze, as if inflicting yet more remorse into the girl's already unstable conscience. A slab of wood fell from the height of the ceiling, along with the scattering of burnt limbs and the cracking of several bones; hardly any blood left inside the body's dried and shriveled tissue. She averted her eyes.
A nauseating, empty feeling sank slowly down into the depth of her hollow core.
The girl sobbed and wailed, her neck arching into an unnatural curve as an almost inhuman ululation was released from the back of her throat in such a way that was completely heart-wrenching for anyone to hear or bear witness to. Her dark eyes was strangely devoid of tears. Her hands seemingly took on a life of their own, almost tearing off her hair and beating wildly onto the girl's own frail chest. Her voice began to grow hoarse.
How entirely foolish she felt! Never in her life did she experience such misery; the mere consequence of lacking courage during a time she didn’t even dare think of as dire turns out to be more desperate and guilt-inflicting than any wicked deed could ever impose onto a man. She pressed the small trinket box close to her heaving bosom and cried out some more, helpless, fraught and bereft of those she held most dear. She is alone, and now, she will always be. Something that is lost can never be brought back again.
These few words lashed at her like a stinging whip.
The air was barely still, stirring with the intoxicating, heady scent of burning flesh and smoke. The girl, however, didn’t care nor mind the extreme heat any longer. She was already so confused and unnerved and half-mad, much so that any more uncertainties to add up to her own would make her head burst. At the back of her mind, her malicious visions played themselves back and again, making her hate herself even more. If anything, all she wanted was to become a different person, any person at all, besides herself. Oh, but who would be foolish enough to stand in her shoes? Reality is cruel. Reality is unmerciful and ruthless.
The shuffling of heavy, iron boots resonated amidst the wicked cackling of fire.
The girl’s eyes widened. She tried to stand up on her own frail legs once again, but to no avail. The footfalls sounded closer; the heavy, candid treading echoing through the vast room. With the quickening of her pulse, and the tightening of her chest, the girl ran away from them frantically, past debris of charred wood and an eternal sea of crimson which stretched endlessly in front of her and all around the mansion.
A sickening squelch came from beneath her as she inadvertently trampled over a freshly roasted corpse’s rib, puncturing her left foot deeply and exposing her own flesh onto the dead man’s own warm, burnt tissue – a barbaric, stomach-churning sight of charred, bloodied meat still clinging to dried, cracked bone and mashed internal organs – a man she soon recognized to be her father. She yelped in horror and scampered away. Much to her surprise, the stranger’s silhouette was vividly visible, just a few meters in front of herself. A man; she knew from his bulky, lean figure - curved his neck at her in a menacing manner. Her head spun with terror.
Her little mouth merely hung open as if to say something, but no words, aside from senseless babble and choking noises, escaped from her lips. Her bright, amethyst eyes reflected his likeness in their glassy sheath of welled-up tears: raven hair, a mocking, sinister smile playing at the corners of his lips, thin, arched eyebrows and light auburn eyes; turning crimson as an illusion of the flames which danced and waved near his pleasing patrician countenance.
He grabbed her harshly by the length of her hair, twisting a thick weave of her ginger-coloured locks through slender fingers and yanking her head up, forcing her to face him. She gasped and struggled from his iron grip. He struck her across the face with such inhuman strength, it was a miracle that her neck didn't snap. She felt sickeningly light. A pair of cold, sturdy arms scooped her away from the hungry flames just as the flames began to consume her, but a hint of doubt replaced the gratitude she almost felt as she caught another glimpse of the man's cold, unsympathetic gaze.
In the trickery of light and the dancing of crimson fire, a pattern of rose filled the vast marble floor. It flickered and grew upon wolfing away the remains of everything it touches. It burned brighter, got more sweltering than before, and bloomed as dynamically as spider lilies in the first of spring, ironically living up to the mansion's name.
Red Rose.
Bloody Rose.
With one last, labored breath, she caught a whiff of smoke inside her faltering lungs.
Slowly, everything dissolved into darkness...
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