The Red Room

Another task we were set at school. To write in the style of Edgar Allan Poe.

Eliza stood warily outside a large oak door. After exploring the rest of the rooms in the house, she had found no trace of its master. All the rooms had been the same. Empty. Lifeless. Forgotten. Now there was only this door left to open. Eliza had no clue what she was about to find, and felt a strange sense of fore-boding which she had not felt with the other rooms. Everything seemed so much more silent, and she seemed so much more…alone. Who would help her if she ran into trouble? She scolded herself for thinking such thoughts. She would simply open the door, find the room as empty as all the others, then leave as fast as possible.

   Gulping nervously, she slowly, slowly, slowly opened the door. It was much heavier than the others and strangely cold to the touch. As she stood in the doorway, a slight breeze caressed her cheeks with icy fingers and she shivered. Ahead lay a dark, dingy corridor. Cobwebs fluttered lazily like white lace. Her heart pounded like a horse’s hooves on the ground. Time stood still and Eliza stood still with it for a measure that seemed like hours to her. In a split-second, she stepped inside. The door closed behind her. Her decision was made.

   In an instant she was plunged into blackness. Her heart jumped inside her and she gasped. Bravely, she stretched her arms and felt along the walls, insides churning. Finally, she came to another door. This one she threw open with little hesitation�"her fear had intensified but so had her frustration. How was she supposed to leave this wretched building? Inside she saw a room that was well lit with a glowing chandelier and roaring fire. But it was not these that puzzled her. It was the buckets and buckets of strange red liquid. Accompanying this was a sickly sweet smell which she couldn’t quite place, although it was familiar. As she glanced around it seemed as though the liquid was paint, as if someone had tried to hurriedly coat the walls with it. Cautiously�"oh so cautiously�"Eliza ventured into the room. Then it hit her�"how could there be a well-fed fire and glittering chandelier in a house were all the other rooms were barren and bare? ‘There must be another soul in this place!’ she thought. Queerly though, the thought haunted her instead of the expected reassurance. Her heart started to race again, fingers trembled and her teeth chattered. She began to back out of the room, but to her horror, heard the door slam and an unmistakeable click. Whirling round, she was met with a  figure that would have haunted even the creator of Frankenstein himself.  

    A chalkboard white face held the round, round eyes filled with a madness only fully realised when seen with ones own eyes. Such madness had twisted this creatures features to an unimaginable degree. But those eyes! Oh, such eyes! Wild and clouded with delusion and delirium. Eyes of a beast in agony. Eliza was trapped�"trapped in this nightmare room. In her terrified state, an image of the Devil in his fiery hell flashed in her mind and Eliza did the only thing possible. Screamed. Screamed until she thought her lungs would burst and her heart would explode. The Wild Thing lunged to silence her, but she stepped and tripped over a bucket. The paint flowed freely over the tiled floor and Eliza slipped and fell into the pool of liquid. The scent was strong now�"she could smell nothing else. The Thing stopped. It grinned. Rows of sharp teeth filled its mouth. It started to speak, its voice a thousand nails grating against each other.

  “You will never get away. There is no escape”. With that it sprang towards her. Shrieking, Eliza slipped, slid, ultimately scrabbled on her hands and knees to get away from him. She ended up on the far side of the room at an oak table littered with weapons of all kinds. She picked the nearest to herself�"a silver hilted dagger, glinting dangerously at her. Clutching  it in her fist, she clung onto the table and waited for the beast. He made his way out of the mess and flung himself at Eliza skidding towards her. Believing that he had her trapped, he started to laugh a booming laugh filled with echoes of all kinds of feral animals of the night. As he reached out a long gnarled hand to close around her throat, Eliza lunged and sank the dagger deep into his neck.

    His demonic laughter stuck in his chest. He froze, almost not comprehending his fate. She gave him a shove and he toppled down to the ground with a dull thump. As he lay wheezing on the ground, Eliza shuddered at the blood dripping off her fingers. The beast gave one last chuckle, “I hope you like my paint,” he gurgled, “Such a nice colour”. With that, he breathed his last and his head lolled to one side. Eliza choked as the realization crackled in her brain like lightning. It all added up. The sickly smell, the deep, rich coloured paint. Only it wasn’t paint. Bile rose in her throat and as she sat in the pool of ‘paint’ she screamed a blood-curdling scream, shrieking into the night. The Wild Thing watched all this even in his death, for his body had stiffened and his eyes remained open. The light may have died but the madness was still there. Eliza kicked and stabbed and mauled his body beyond recognition, screeching abuse and damnation on his resting place. For she was locked inside and couldn’t find a key. Eliza Baker was trapped.

    They say that late, in the dead of night, the Wild Things laughter can be heard throughout the village, followed by the desperate screams of the young woman in there. The young woman, trapped, a prisoner… of the Blood Red Room.                

Author's Note

Anything to improve on???And i mean ANYTHING??
be kind though, cos it was alittle rushed.

Reviews

[Sukylola]

what's good expression??

[Shamsuddin Mazed]

Good Expresion...