Author Games: Red Room

Task One: 1-ck7A

August 19th, 2018
2:33 pm

Bird droppings covered the floor of the hall. They'd already been scrubbed off the walls as best they could, and the irritating amount of pigeons that had taken roost were now kicked out and blocked from re-entry with a few crudely jammed screens blocking the windows. A fresh breeze streamed in through the one down the hall, briefly alleviating the smell of dead rodents and piss that came with the musty air in the unused building. Light filtered in with it, giving Samuel the first glimpse of sunlight he had seen in two floors. The old electrical work was shot to hell and badly tampered with by the previous beady-eyed tennants, which meant that for lighting at the moment they were relying purely on all natural, fresh, zero preservative sunlight as their means of working, that and the dozen flood lamps they'd smuggled in for when the work happened at night.

Wandering along the narrow walkway, the cult member stopped short at an adjacent room. He peered in through the worn doorframe, hands stuffed in his pocket tightly. Inside, Sister Abigail and Brother Jebediah were hard at work painting over a large canvas of graffiti. It wasn't every day you saw the two brunettes working together without clawing each others eyes out. Ever since her comment on his "shoddy workmanship" during the stream in June, Jeb had made every conceivable attempt to make the woman's job miserable. That being said, the faint, wet paint outlines of handprints covering Abigail's shirt and the equally large, grey handprint splattered across his cheek suggested today had been no different.

The creak of an old, rotting board gave away the Samuel's presence as he tried to slip back out of the room. With a shout, Abby had thrown herself around his midsection before he could protest, dragging him the rest of the way into the room. The sickening cold tickle of paint ran down the back of his spine, ruining the shabby Jurassic Park t-shirt he was wearing as she pulled back with paintbrush still in hand.

"Where do you think you're going?"

With a jerked thumb over his shoulder, the younger recruit pointed back toward the "control room" that was stationed on this floor. "Getting out of set duty," Samuel replied, more than pleased with what he thought was a witty retort.

However, he was proven wrong when a roller was shoved into his fist and a glare given down at him. "We only have two weeks," the woman reminded as she flipped her ponytail over her shoulder and pointed to a spot on the wall where a particularly crude saying lay. "Get going." Samuel cast a brief, saving glance toward Jeb but was only given a shrug for his efforts before he quietly resigned to painting the town grey. It'd be splattered red soon enough.

The Task

Welcome, one and all, to the first annual Hunger—just kidding. That's not what we're doing here. No, welcome to Red Room and thank you for joining us! We're so happy to have you guys with us and to finally be setting our plans into motion.

For this first task, we're going to be kicking things off a bit traditionally with a classic ol' free reign task. Or one that's relatively so, anyways.

If your character is one of the lovely victims of St. Judas, you are being tasked to write your character's encounter with the cult in some way. Did they meet a strange person at a bus stop who's a member of the cult? Were they being an idiot with their friends and browsing the deep web? Somehow, some way, your character must cross paths with this cult. The way this is done is entirely up to you but keep in mind we're looking for creativity and characterization in your entry.

If your character is a heinous sinner of Hunters of Artemis, your task will be a little different. Instead, your job is to write the sin that got them targeted by this cult in the first place. This can take place at any point in time within your character's life, so long as you include the sin. Did they murder someone and get away with it? Did they have an affair with Ace's weird necrophiliac? How the sin is portrayed is going be left up to you but we'll be looking for solid storytelling and characterization™ (yes, we said it twice. It's that important).

Word Limit

2500 (as a maximum) Ain't we generous, folks?

Ballots

Will be coming to a deepweb near you soon! Calm down, and wait to actually meet these people before you go right for the throat, okay? geez.

Deadline

Tuesday, August 28th, at 6 PM PDT

~

If you have any questions by all means PM either Linz or myself!