Children of ink and blood
- mollyhancuh
- May 2
- 4 min read
RPG: 1000 words to Die by Tales of the Unknown
(TLDR: solo horror TTRPG where the player takes on the role of an author who has made a sinister deal. The deal? The next 1,000 words they write will bring them fame—but, in true horror fashion, this deal comes with a dark twist.)
Children of Ink and Blood
She felt foolish purchasing the deed to the massive, gothic castle, knowing she could only fill it with words. Hers was the only heart which would beat in it, hers the only steps upon the grand staircase, leading into a ballroom only she would waltz through.
You shouldn’t be afraid to be alone, is what you’d say, what I’d say, but the words taste
like ash and they sound like the crickets who welcomed my debut novel. Would I make
a deal with the devil for this? For fame and success? I think so.
“Belief is power,” she says to herself as the flames flicker to life on the crystal
chandelier, as the scones on the walls blare their agreement, and the ballroom, her
haven from the never-ending questions of success and promise, of financial stability
and a backup plan, becomes a dance floor for them. They take on life, breathing in the
dust coating her unsold signed copies, and twirl together into beings with spindly claws
and elongated canines. They whisper their thirst. More, more, more, as their heels click
along to the rhythm of her typing, each keystroke another step closer.
These are her words, her life being plucked from her fingertips and twisted into the
demons of her deal. They will be her undoing, she knows. But if they are her, her will
and her desire, then is she not their master? As much as a mother is a master of her
child, as an owner is the master of a dog, as clouds as the master of rain. If there were
hers alone, perhaps, but they are tainted with the deal. They thrive on the promise of
power. Greedy little things.
Lightning strikes, illuminating the contorting figures conceived by greed, born of blood
across the decrepit, cracked tile ballroom floor. The hazy music crescendos as the wind
batters the towering windows. Rain slips through, wetting her hair and the completed
sheets falling to her feet with every shift of the typewriter’s arm. It drips down her neck,
riding the planes of her back down like the caress of fingertips.
Their snarls build with the quartet, bows swiping across strings as their breath licks the
back of her neck and fingers twirl within her unbound hair. She holds her breath, waiting
for the creature to move beyond or yank, exposing her neck to spill the rest of her life
across the floor.
You’ve bleed for this, but is that enough? For success? For a spot on the coveted time’s
list, an annoying sticker readers will peel off, an extra sentence to add to the cover. Best
Selling…best seller. These creatures will suck you dry and be what is left when you are
no more than dirt, when I’m no more than dirt. Are they enough? Will you be proud of
the blood you splatter across others, the mark you leave on their souls, the space you
occupy inside their heads? I won’t.
Halfway. She counted three times, each word she agonized over, tore from her soul like
stitches from an unhealed wound. The sopping wet pages marred with the boot prints of
her own creations, hating the letters as much as she does, hating the belief in the
demon’s deal. A mansion of this size is empty until it isn’t, until it’s halls are filled with
the chuckling of a predator spotting a limp gazelle, a monster stalking a weeping
damsel. Had it known what it’d offered when sweeping through the ballroom, promising
to fill it with her success?
Had she? No, she’d imagined sitting in her office, with the plush chair she’d dragged in
there, staring over the decaying garden, its ivy vines shriveling and wilting off the stone
walls, and pen her masterpiece. There, maybe, she could have hid from the blaring
music, the snarls of her passion, the impending doom cinching around her neck like a
noose. 1000 words for fame, but they’d never said what came next. Nor how those
words would get their fame.
Clunk – her finger slips on the keys.
Was it not her words that would bring fame, not the poetry of her prose? But the
circumstances of her death.
Maybe it’s you who isn’t interesting. Yes, for an interesting person would fill a ballroom
with people and parties and wine and debauchery, not the regrets of a life unlived, love
unfelt, the cold side of a bed. An interesting person would convince the gardens to fill
with songbirds, butterflies more beautiful than the flowers, critters basking in the sun. So
maybe it is not your words after all, not how you bled them from your soul for the world
to ignore, but you.
Her children made of ink and blood creep closer, teeth glistening in the flare of lightning and warmth of candlelight, their talons curling through her hair, around her joints, poking
holes into her clothes by which they might drag her from her bench and pass her
amongst them like a bottle of champagne.
One scratches her bicep, and her blood begins to flow. First in rivets, staining her shirt
and soaking through her seat. Then as a river, draining from her as the words now fly
from her fingertips, the climax of her story, her award winning, unforgettable saga, are
stamped on the page. Less than one hundred words to go.
This is how I’d want to go. Newsworthy, not as a final, thankful sigh after a long life
lived, a stack of books collecting dust in the corner. A shock to those who once knew
me, gossip at my high school reunion. Remember me, my death will whisper.
If it watches—it does—she wants it to know the tears flowing down her face are not of
pain or regret, but of pride. That in death, same as life, she let the world spin around her
as she left her mark upon it.
Then she stands, offers it her hand, and dances into death.
Comentários