Red Reign

[Fitzy]

I wrote this story for my English assignment, the original idea was for a short horror film my friend and I are going to make. Post what you think of it.

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Red Reign

It was the day of Rose’s birthday party. She was setting up for the party that night, and her Mother was cooking some party food. Rose saw her brother, who was probably coming to get some Coke.

She called out to him, “Morton! Come and help me set everything up!”
“Ugh, coooome on, I’m busy!” replied Morton.
“Mum, tell him to come and help me!”
“Hurry up,” Mother said.

Defeated, Morton grabbed himself a Coke from the fridge, and trudged down to the half decorated Rumpus room.
“Why all the red colours?” asked Morton.
“I think it looks nice, and for my fifteenth birthday, I should get what I want!” replied Rose happily.
“And so do I,” reinforced Mother, loudly chopping vegetables upstairs.
“I didn’t get everything I wanted for my fifteenth!” Morton grunted.
“But that was last year, and things have changed since then,” said Rose.

Morton sat down on a sofa near his sister, not helping at all. His lanky legs protruded out from the couch.
“So, who out of your friends are coming?” queried Morton.
“I assume you mean: which of my girl-friends, are coming? Then my answer would be Anna, Jess, and Em.”
“Ooooh, I was hoping Anna would come. She’s looking hot nowadays.”
“Stop it!” Rose joked with her brother, twirling her hair.
“I thought you wanted me to help?” replied Morton, with a hint of a grin playing at his thin cheeks.
“Oh stop that Mort,” said Mother, finishing the joke for them, “and hurry up, lunch is almost ready. I’ll be going out to the hardware store soon, I need to pick something up.”

Rose and Morton started to walk upstairs to the kitchen when Mother said,
“Actually, I’m going to leave now, it just occurred to me that the store is closing earlier today.”
She pulled a black jumper over her white albino hair, turned towards the door and left, with a glint from her sunglasses flashing Rose in the eye.

***

Everyone who was invited had turned up to Rose’s party. The music was playing, an R’n’B song currently; the girls were dancing, and the delicious finger-food on the table was slowly diminishing. Rose was talking to a group of her closest friends about next year’s work. School was starting in one month.

One of the girls in the group pulled a white envelope from her red Gucci jacket. The girl, named Anna, handed the white envelope to Rose.

“This is a letter from us. We hope you have a wonderful birthday, and have a great night,” said Anna, hugging Rose. Anna had blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, and constantly led boys on with sly smiles, never attempting to cover up her tanned skin and fine body.

Someone called out to Rose from the other side of the room, so she quickly thanked her friends, and slipped the envelope into her pants pocket.


Rose’s friends continued talking. Anna spoke up over the general chat.
“It’s getting so hot! I want to wash my face. Which way is the bathroom? Em, can you please show me?”
“Sure thing, Anna!” Em replied.
The two girls walked down the hallway, and into the room on the left.
“This is the ensuite, the other bathroom sounded… occupied,” Em told Anna, giggling.

The two girls walked into the Mother’s ensuite. Without warning, Em’s head drooped, and she started shaking. Anna looked around and called for help.

She had heard that this was just like the other two had started. Jake and John. Both of the boys were found with chains around their necks. It had happened at a party last year. They were older, and friends of Anna and Em. It was thought that they were drugged, and then strangled with a long metallic chain. There were no witnesses; and no suspects.

Abruptly, Anna felt like she had fallen into a deep sleep. She would never wake up again.

***

Rose, Morton and their Mother were driving home from the hospital. The three of them had been sitting at Em’s bedside, during her last breath. The nurse had come in seconds after hearing the heart monitor make a constant ‘beep’. Anna’s funeral was last week. She had been strangled to death at the party, after being drugged. Both of the girls’ necks were ripped red raw by the chains which had strangled them.

Rose was still whimpering softly in the car, her big brother was holding her in his arms. Their mother was wearing her favourite red scarf in the front.
“I don’t ever want to lose you Mort,” Rose cried dolorously.
Morton pushed Rose away from his body: “don’t worry; I will always be here for you Rosey.”
Rose started crying again.
“I can’t believe I lost two of my best friends in one night! No-one hated them; who would strangle two young girls!” screamed Rose, moving to lean against the cold window, looking at her brother.
“We can’t pretend to know how you feel Rose darling, but know that Mort and I will always be here to comfort you. We will keep you from harm,” Mother said from the front of the car.

***

Rose was lying on her white linen blanket. Her bedroom had always comforted her. As Rose was thinking about last week, she heard a faint scraping sound.

‘It’s probably just Mum scrubbing the floor of her ensuite, just like every other night since my party.’

However, Rose was distracted, thinking about something at her party. It was playing at the back of her mind.

‘What is it?’ she thought.

Looking for something that would spark her memory, she glanced over to her dressing table, and saw a crumpled white envelope. It was the letter given to her by Anna at the party.

‘Anna looked so pretty on that night,’ Rose remembered, ‘her red jacket was beautiful.’

She had never opened the letter at the party. She had put it into her pocket, forgetting about it after the murders. Now that she was holding the envelope in her hands, she began to think more clearly about what was on her mind. A link between the murders had never been found, and Rose had just found it. The link was red. Anna and Em were both wearing red, and they had both been strangled by chains; and so were Jake and John. The victims were all screaming: “Red!” in their last conscious moments. The killer must be provoked by the colour red!

The letter was electric in her hands. She hurriedly tore open the envelope. Written in ghastly scrawl, the words said: ‘Roses are red, blood is too. Your best friends are dead, as you will be soon!’

Rose jumped off her bed onto her soft carpet, horrified by the letter she had just read. Her heart was beating rapidly, and shivers shot down her spine and fingers. She needed comforting from her Mother. Rose ran out of her bedroom, past the spare bedroom, and down onto the cold tiles in the hallway. As she rushed past the bathroom, she glimpsed a red liquid on the floor.

Rose stopped in her tracks. She looked carefully at the thick liquid. It was blood. Shocked by the sight of the sticky substance, she moved cautiously into the room. Morton’s body was limp in a half-filled bathtub, that was red with blood, and his head was crudely wrapped up in a chain. Rose screamed and jumped backwards. She felt someone brush up behind her.

Her Mother grabbed Rose, whose heart was still racing, and tried to calm her. Rose glimpsed her mother’s red scarf. She looked into the bathroom and saw her strangled brother. He was wearing red shorts.

“Mum! Take off your scarf now!” yelled Rose at her surprised Mother.
“And why must I do that?” said her Mother questioningly, pulling Rose to her, hugging her daughter close to her body. She felt her mothers cool skin against her neck.

Her mother was hugging her, she will be safe forever...

She heard a *****ing sound. Mother was moving her hands. Something cold and hard scraped against her back. Rose felt the chain slip around her neck. She looked up to her Mothers distorted face. Rose whispered her last curses, at the twisted woman whom she'd loved dearly.

And as her feeble body fell on the floor, her red hair glistened.

[MaryKateIsHot]

Lol i liked it, wish it was a bit longer and explained more about the murderer person but it definetly entertained me!

[Fitzy]

Yeah. I wish I could've made it longer, but the word limit was 600-800, and this is over 1300, so I was kinda annoyed.

[NEoob]

Nerf word limits. Thats so stupid. It's like saying "I don't care if you want to put in extra effort to make it really good." I also agree that if you could have, it would have been much better if you elaborated on the background and motives of the killer. Overall pretty good though.

[NeverCry]

Sorry, in my oppinion this story was just... bad. You fly through it with so little detail you can't get into the story. I understand that it was a 800 word max essay but I still feel that it lacked a certain amount of description to make it pull the reader on reading it. It was choppy and already after the second cut I was becoming less motivated and willing to read it. Your dialogue also seems to be forced instead of normal.

That said, the story has a lot of potential and I think that if you sat down and worked through it once more, adding detail to it and reworking your dialogue you could get a lot out of it.

It does also inspire me to sit down and write a murder story of my own...