HUES OF A MURDER

Crimson Blossoms - Prologue

It was strange. The music was loud and the air was vibrating around them. Yet, the house was silent and dead. The party was long over. The handful of people left were packing up or snoozing in the moth-eaten sofas in the living rooms and the foyer. Somewhere, a clock struck midnight.

The three musketeers walked through the dark, narrow corridor. The thick uneven carpet muffled their footsteps. No soul was there in the corridor. It was dark, save for a dim yellow bulb, which threw sinister shadows at them. The portrait of a long-forgotten ancestor sneered at them from the end of the corridor. They peered into rooms which were open or rattled the doorknobs of the locked ones.

One of them, the red-haired woman, heard a noise coming from a room on her left. A dull thud! It was the last room in the corridor with a heavy wooden door. She avoided looking at the portrait of the scary man staring at her from the nearby wall.

She put her ears at the door and listened. She couldn't hear anything. It was silent. 

"Did you guys hear it?" the woman looked behind her. 

Her friends weren't there. But she heard them arguing. Again. They were in the nearby room, the one with large French windows and a fireplace. The woman sighed and shook her head.

They were arguing about what she was about to do. Her friend, the woman, wanted her to do it but had her doubts. The guy was sure that they were doing the right thing. As for her, she wasn't big on confrontations and would rather forget it. But she was tired of being the meek spineless girl. She wanted to stand up for herself this time.

Was that sound of feet shuffling coming from the room?

She went back to listening at the door. The room appeared to be silent. Maybe she was imagining things. She was already nervous about the confrontation.

Clank! The woman jumped back. Her eyes widened and her heart was beating a tad faster. She put her hand on her heaving chest.

The sound came from inside the room. Something metal had fallen on the floor. She took hold of the door handle and took a moment to focus on her breathing. She opened the door and blinked at the darkness waiting to swallow her whole. The door squeaked. She again heard a loud thud.

"Hello!" The woman peered into the darkness. She felt something moving beyond the shadows. She gulped. Her heart beat was erratic. Her palms were wet.

Her brain told her to call her friends in the next room. Or wait for them before stepping into the room. She waited for a moment to gather her wits and squinted. It took a moment before her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The woman glanced across the room. Various dark shapes across the room, visible in the faint light from the corridor, frightened her.

A faint, haunting metallic odor mixed with the itchy smell of dust hung around her. Hairs in the back of her neck raised as she felt someone closely watching her moves. She swallowed her fears and carefully stepped into the room. She bit her lips and looked around.

The room was fairly large. Near the door was a couple of Knights in Armor on either side. The woman had seen them in other rooms and even in the corridor. She tried to touch the one closest to her but withdrew her hand. She felt that if she touched it, it might turn to look at her.

There was a massive desk in the center of the room with a huge arm chair facing her and three smaller chairs in the opposite side. Two of the chairs were toppled on the floor. Behind the arm chair, thick curtains adorned the wall barring the moon light's feeble attempt to enter the room.

A huge armoire stood on the left wall, close to the door. Beside the armoire was an alcove with a figure etched on the walls against which, was a small desk.

The woman looked to her right and was shocked to see a figure. A scream got stuck in her throat. The figure stared at her with mouth wide open and eyes bulged out. It took her a second to realize she was looking at her own reflection in a mirror. She raised her hand to confirm and took a deep breath upon realizing she was right. She leaned on the door and let out an "oh!" There was a fireplace beside the mirror with a small sofa in front of it, beyond which was a book case.

She moved forward into the room. She wondered about the sound she heard. Maybe a rat or a critter might have jumped over the Knights in Armor.

Something rustled behind her. The woman gasped and turned around. She couldn't make out anything in the dark apart from scary figures which she assumed were the Knights in Armor. She tried to gather some courage and tried to figure out the sound she heard.

Her footsteps echoed across the room. The woman moved closer to the desk, looking around. She felt that someone was in the room. She had clearly heard a noise in the room. But, apart from the grotesque shapes and shadows in the room, it seemed to her that she was the only living person in the room.

Was someone hiding in the room? It seemed like there were places where someone could hide. Was the person she was seeking, hiding in here? Was this another prank to scare and humiliate her? The thought emboldened her.

But a creak behind her stopped her. She turned around and squinted at the dark room. She couldn't see anything moving. Wasn't the armoire door open earlier? Or did she imagine it? It was now closed. Maybe she was imagining things!

The woman saw the table lamp on the desk. She moved around the chairs to reach behind the desk and slipped on something wet and slimy on the floor and fell with a scream onto something soft and warm. Strong metallic smell filled her nostrils. Her breath was caught in her lungs. It felt like a ...

Bright lights filled the room. She blinked a few times. "Hey, we didn't see..." her friends came to the room.

Someone screamed. But it felt like a distant echo to her. She stared at the figure lying in front of her. 

The woman's blonde hair, now dyed red with her own blood, formed an unsightly halo around her head. Her eyes were staring at nothing. Her mouth was open in a silent scream. Thick blood coated the woman's dress and had formed small rivulets around her.

The red-haired woman looked down on her own dress. Red stains coated her hands and the beautiful white dress she was wearing. Someone hugged her from behind and helped her get up. She looked at the person and found two blue eyes staring at her. This is the deepest blue eyes I have ever seen, she thought.

The guy was saying something. She looked down on her hands and tried to tell something to him. He grasped her shoulders and gently moved her out of the room. He closed the door once they were out of the room. Some people were running towards them. Her friend, the raven-haired woman, yelled frantically at them, in a high-pitched voice.

The guy took her to the next room and made her sit in the sofa. He was whispering something to her. But she couldn't understand it. All she could see was the lifeless eyes of the dead girl, all she could hear were words which made no sense, all she could smell was the strong metallic smell that invaded all her senses, all she could feel was the wetness of the dead girl's blood...