The untimely demise of the scarlet woman and the haunting aftermath which led to today’s disturbing events…
By Miss Lilith
You’ve…heard the stories. They’ve been making quiet, murmured rounds from before you were even born. From newspaper clippings to lost VHS tapes. Whispers and suspicions shared only as “jokes.” Because it could never be true, of course. Especially not now. Not in the present world, ruled by facts, science, and logic. A world where the fantastical and the extraordinary must hide before the waves of modern enlightenment. Modern beliefs. Modern truths.
You’ve heard the stories. You’ve watched the tapes. You’ve been on those hidden, dead online forums…places safe from sanity and sanitized of all logic. Places which had led you here. Standing in front of this abandoned, broken down house. On this abandoned, forgotten street. In the part of town where no soul dares to tread for fear of the unknown. Fear of the dark. Fear of the myth. The legend. The horror.
You’ve heard the stories. The accounts of the people who had come before you. Other curious individuals who simply could not stand to stay in the dark. Who felt compelled to make the trip to the Crimson Manor. People who had entered and who had later left…different. Changed in ways they could not quite describe and wished not to talk about. Altered in ways that defied logic. That laughed in the face of common sense.
You…are one such curious individual, having made the long, difficult journey to this very doorstep, standing in front of the peeling, tattered, red door. Finally, the moment has come. The big reveal. The unraveling of the age-old mystery. You take a deep, slow breath, place your hand on the doorknob, and turn. With a jig and a jag of the handle, you push open the door…slowly. Carefully. With reverence.
Stepping over the threshold and inside, you take a deep breath of the musky, stale air and realize that you should have taken a flashlight with you. Instead, you use your phone. Not quite as good, but good enough. Raising your phone, you can see layers of dust on every surface, even from a distance. You can see in the beam of your torch. It’s…everywhere. The dust…almost red in hue. Almost like the color of blood.
Shaking your head and closing the door behind you, you walk deeper into the house, the floor creaking beneath your feet. Your passing a disturbance to the slumbering house as strange noises begin to make themselves known to your sensitive ears. You walk onwards down a hall, your boundless curiosity keeping your fear bound and quiet as a mouse.
At the end of the hall, past a few doors, you step into the open kitchen. Large, high, and empty. Here, the sounds of things moving are clearer. Rats? Mice? Racoons? Huge mutant spiders? You have no way of knowing. No experience. Perhaps they are simply old house noises? Tree braches brushing against the roof. Squirrels playing hide-the-nut.
Whatever the source, you are undeterred. Your nerves that of steel. Unbending. Beyond doubt–
[upstairs sound]
A sound from up above puts a halt to your thoughts. A curious sound of something…big? Something heavy? An animal? In any case, you move back through the hall and towards the stairs leading upwards. Time to inspect the second floor, then. No choice, really. Who wouldn’t be curious about strange, spooky sounds in an abandoned house on an abandoned street? One simply had to know. Especially when one is all alone.
The stairs spiral upwards in a graceful curve, framed by majestic, sturdy banisters rarely seen in modern architecture, where cold, calculated function has replaced form and soul. You breathe deeply in and out…and make your way up to the second floor. Somewhere, you notice as a cool draft washes over your skin, there must be a window open. Perhaps a window broken.
From one of the rooms behind one of the many closed doors, you can hear…a clock. Loud and impossible to miss. But you can’t quite tell where it’s coming from. Which direction. The sound seems to hang in very air, suspended by the dust around you…your brain unable to track its source.
[upstairs sound, but closer]
Again! The same sound you had heard downstairs, but closer now. At the end of the hall. Behind the closed doors facing you. All you have to do is walk forward.
Past the closed doors…even as the sound of the clock travels with you. The tick tock of the clock permeating the stale air you breathe. The fraying walls of the Crimson Manor. The hardwood floors beneath you. The goosebumps-raising, cold draft on your skin. Dust the color of rust exposed in the light of your phone. And yet curiosity drives you onwards. Hesitation long forgotten. Common sense having lost all meaning.
You reach the door, turn the knob without preamble, and push it open, excitement flowing through your veins.
Without pause, you stride into the room, eyes in search of anything out of place. Turning this way and that as you stop in the center, you take notice of the open window. The draft of cool air. The dimming light on your phone. The humming coming from behind you.
Wait…the dimming light on your phone? Is the battery dying? Oh no!
Wait…humming?
Before you can turn around, the window SHUTS, you hear the door SHUT, the draft abating, the light of your phone dying a quiet death…and a gentle breath tickling your left ear. You begin to–
[Boo…]
To..
[Drop(snap)]
[Sleep(snap)]
To…feel hands inside your mind. Fingers inside your thoughts. Slowing down…a cold sensation cascading out from the very center of your brain and throughout the rest of your body.
[Stop thinking. Stop doing. Stop and drop for me. Down, down, down.]
The voice stops your thoughts in their tracks. It stops your mind. Takes away the illusion of control. The cold spreads. It spreads into every thought. Every muscle. Every limb. Freezing you in place. Freezing your mind. Movement…becoming impossible.
[You cannot move. You cannot think. You cannot remember. You stop and you drop and you sleep. You give in. You give up.]
You feel hands inside your mind. You feel fingers brushing against your thoughts. You feel the coldness spread into your entire awareness. The cool, freezing sensation of vulnerability locking you down. Compromising your control and your memories and your thoughts and your life. Your value. Your safety. Because…
[You aren’t safe here. You have no allies here. Nobody to keep you sane. Nobody to keep you alive. Nobody to save you.]
Your eyes begin to close as your body begins to feel more and more out of sorts. More as if it weren’t yours at all. More and more as if the cold, merciless fingers inside your head have taken all control. Taken your intellect. Your mind. Your thoughts. Your doubts. Your awareness. Your wakefulness. The ability to defend yourself. Your autonomy. Your self-preservation.
[Drift deeper down for me. Fall for me. Become an extension of my will.]
You can feel the coldness in your mind and your body devour you whole from the inside out, leaving you drifting downwards into a state of mindlessness. An empty state of mind where the cold exists so that your thoughts may not. Your resistance a thing of the past…murdered and hidden away.
[My thoughts rule yours. Your body is mine. Your mind is mine. Your free will is mine. You are mine. You are weak. Mortal. A thing made of flesh. Of bones. Of blood. I….am more.]
You cannot move from this spot. Standing here, frozen, cold, paralyzied. Like a bad night terror from which there is waking. No escape.
As control over your own body becomes nothing more than a faded memory, exorcised so effortlessly and expertly, you feel your eyes open. There, she stands in all her ghastly glory. The Scarlet Woman. The woman from the tales. The legends. The horror stories. The woman who had died so many, many years ago. Who has since haunted the Scarlet Manor. The house you have chosen to explore. Your morbid curiosity of the events that had transpired here having been a driving force behind the journey and the risks taken.
You struggle to even move your tired eyes as you take her in. Her striking, semi-translucent visage. Her lithe figure. The old-fashioned, monochromatic maid outfit. The long, curly, red hair. The….red hues over her heart. The lack of all expression. The lack of all movement. Like a statue, standing there, gazing into your eyes. Looking at you as if you were nothing but a spec of dust.
Finally, her mouth moves…
[I have seen many like you before. They come to experience the haunted house. The myth behind the Scarlet Woman. Behind me. They come expecting fun and games…but leave having experienced no such thing. That is…the ones who do get to leave at all.]
She moves closer and places her hand on the side of your head…and recognition strikes you. Familiarity. It was, of course, her hands inside your mind. Your brain. It was her coldness spreading across your body, taking your control. Your will. Your resistance. Her fingers on the pulse of your emotions. Your senstations. Your memories.
And now…you can feel more of her enter you. More of her flow into your thoughts. Even colder. As you become weaker. More and more suggestible…eager to hear her voice. To feel her touch. To look into her striking eyes and accept your fate. Whatever it may be.
[Your fate is in my hands now and I will show you the error of your ways. You deserve to be punished, you weak, meek thing of flesh, for disturbing my rest. My sleep. For disturbing my house. My street. My world.]
Chills spread across your skin. Your bones beginning to feel as if they were frozen solid. Your life force…dimming. Growing weaker. Hazier. Dropping and dropping and drifting down, down, down.
[Down, down, down…deeper and deeper.]
Your thoughts having lost all heat. All energy. All desire to resist or defend or think.
[But before I choose how to punish you, you must listen to my story. To the truth of what had happened. To the events which had transpired here. Not the version you have most certainly heard. Not the vile lies spewed by those responsible for my being here.]
She glides across the floor and positions herself behind you. A hand still on your head…her fingers inside your mind, playing with you. With your likes and your dislikes. Your loves and your hatreds. Your memory and your awareness. Your…lifeforce. Your soul. Your very being. You are in her power now. You have none of your own here.
Even with your body paralyzed, you can still feel as her other hand glides across your flesh. From neck to butt, leaving a trail of…tingles and pleasure along your spine. Of…arousal? Confusion fills your mind. Such a strange, bewildering combination of sensations. The creeping cold…the loss of thought…of free will…the paralysis…and the arousal spreading from your spine and somewhere deeper into your body.
[I had once been a humble, loyal servant to the lady of the house. I had cleaned. I had cooked. I had given her baths. Kept the manor in perfect working order. Kept the lady and the lord happy, clean, and well fed. I had once been the lady’s most closest confidant, my ear always open to every complaint, every tiny little story, every mention of every crush and every joy and every moment of sadness. I had been there for her. Always. Without reservation.]
The hand resting on your head moves downwards. Over your neck and your shoulders, around your waist…and down between your legs. You would jump in surprise if you could…but you can’t. All you can do is feel your breath hitch and your skin grow alight with pleasure wherever she touches. Wherever her ghostly hands caress.
As one hand rests idly between your legs, the other snakes around your chest and it’s as if someone took an ice cube to your left nipple. An ice cube capable of manipulating flesh. Pintching and twisting and pulling and rubbing. You would moan…but you can’t.
[I had trusted her with my life…as she had trusted me with her own. We had been more that just a lady and her servant. We had been friends. There was…a sort of love between us which could not be put into words. A trust which transcended humanity. Or…so I had thought.]
The hand between your thighs moves up. Higher and higher up to your mouth. You feel her fingers dip inside, the coldness spreading to your tongue. She cannot be denied even as she spreads deep into your lungs. You cannot stop the tide. Your mind simply steps aside.
[The trust which had been built over years and years and years…the love which we had shared…the secrets and the joys…the tears and the sweat. It had all been so brightly lit. Blinding. So strong, so sure. Unwavering. Foundation solid enough for a thousand dancing colosseums. There had been no doubt in my mind that I would grow old in this house, by my lady’s side, serving her wishes till the day that I died.]
One hand between your lips, inside your mouth, your saliva flowing freely down. The other moving from your nipple back to the side of your head, a finger resting on your ear. A finger dipping inside. Coldness traveling through the ear canal. Through the layers. Into your brain. She has you again in her palm. Between her fingers. In her hands.
Your mind now soft and malleable. Flexible. Easy to change. Easy to alter. For her, it is child’s play to find that part of your mind already branded with the word slut. Here the Scarlet Woman begins to work her ghostly magic.
[But, alas, it had not happened as I thought. We had not died of old age, happy, and together. The trust and the love did not last. The foundation had been an illusion. The friendship as deep as a tadpole’s self-reflective thoughts. As solid as leftover ash from a bonfire. As strong as the force of a single blink of a dying man.]
Her grasp of your mind tightens as her fingers stretch and take hold of the word slut deep inside your head. As they take hold of the concept behind the word. What it means to be slutty. What it means to be a slut. What it means to be horny. To feel lust, desire, and arousal flood every thought and every second and every limb and every memory. What it means to be a slutty, horny, eager mess.
[Drop deeper into my power, my little thing of flesh, as I speak and I manipulate and I fuck with you. As you listen to my story. To the truth. Drop every so much deeper. Sleep for me…make it easy to change you. To remake you.]
That concept. So clear in your mind now. The idea of being slutty. The idea of being horny. The idea of neeeeding to touch. To be touched. To cum. To see others cum. To feel nothing but arousal and pleasure as the world falls away.
[No, it had not happened the way I had envisioned for so very long. Instead, on a night like any other, my duties for the day complete, as I was changing for bed in my private chambers, the door burst open and my sweet, lovely lady stomped into the room with a violence in her eyes I had never before witnessed in my life. The anger and the hate was all tangible. I could almost feel it brush against my skin. Against my thoughts.]
[She had given me little time to react as the accusations had begun to be flung. Her ears and cheeks red in anger, her eyes burning in malice, her fists vibrating, her body tight like a spring…the accusations hit me like a handbag full of bricks. She went on and on about how I had slept with the lord. With her husband. How I had apparently been in a relationship with him in secret for months and months. She had called me a slut. She had called me all sorts of names. Shamed me for my actions. Made me feel small and weak and dumb.]
[I had tried to deny it, for it wasn’t true in the slightest, but my words fell on deaf, angry ears. She had been having none of it. Angrier and angrier she instead became. More and more violent. Stomping from one side of the room to the other. And back again. And again. Her words hurt in a way nothing ever had before. They were like a serrated whip, wounding my mind over and over again. Slut. Whore. Bitch. Fiend. Nypmho. Witch. There was no stemming the flow of vitriol.]
[Until, finally, she had stopped, seemingly frozen, stuck somewhere in her own mind. Her beauty, even in the state she had been, was breathtaking and singular. I could only watch, shocked and frozen myself, as she sprung into action, grabbing my own letter opener, a gift she herself had given me years ago for my birthday…and leapt at me, pushing me down back onto my bed with her on top of me, straddling my waist. Her…hand around that letter opener. Sturdy and strong. Solid. Powerful. Sure. The letter opener, like a dagger it almost seemed, had found its way between my flesh and my ribs and into my very heart. And my lady, there, her face tear-stricken but full of conviction, only watched as my life drained away from me, her tears on my own cheeks.]
[In those last few moments of awareness as a living thing, I had only shame on my mind. I had only my lady’s words as she shamed me for the slut that she thought I had been. The slut…which I had never been. Not really. I had not broken her trust. I had not even kissed her husband. I had been, in fact, without a relationship at all. She had killed me for less than nothing.]
And the Scarlet Woman’s hand in your mouth moves, leaving it feeling empty. Leaving your mind feeling blank. She’s in front of you now, having moved without notice. Both of her hands on the sides of your head. Her fingers in your brain. In your mind. In your thoughts. Her eyes penetrating deep into your soul. The sensations of cold more intense than ever before.
[I had died feeling shame for something I had not done. I had died feeling like a slut without ever even having the chance to be one. You punishment for disturbing my rest is an extension of my need to spite my killer. My once best friend. My lady. She had accused me of being a slut…and so I have become one. And so I spread the lust and the arousal and the need to all who make the mistake of coming here. Into my home. My crimson manor.]
[I had died feeling shamed. Full, full of shame. Shame for something I had not done. Shame for something which nobody should feel shame for. I have already started to take yours. To drain you of your own shame. Of your reservations. Of your hesitations. Why feel shame when you don’t have to. Why stop yourself from feeling good. From feeling happy and horny and satisfied.]
[As I feed on your life force, I take your shame away. As I take your shame away, I give you something better in return. You can have and enjoy and cherish the feeling of being horny. Of arousal. Of need. Of lust. Of wanting to be slutty.]
[My fingers in your mind, altering your thoughts. Your behaviors. Your truths. Your reality. Taking your shame. Feel it…grow colder now. Feel the idea of shame sloooow down and freeze as my fingers find every instance of it. As I drain you of it. Where’s no need to be ashamed. No need to scared. No need to keep yourself from being the slut that you wish to be. That you’ve always wished to be. There’s nothing stopping. Not anymore.]
[You can feel those parts of your brain grow even slower and colder as I continue taking more and more. More of your shame…replaced with sluttiness. With arousal. With need. With the desire to throw yourself headfirst into sex. Into lust. Into touch. Into erotica. And all without a trace of shame for anything that you do and enjoy.]
[I take that shame, for I have none. And sometimes…it’s nice to feel some. It’s been so long since I’ve felt any. It won’t last and I’ll need more, but for now, it shall suffice. So feel the cold touch of my ghostly fingers split open into a billion tiny little tendrils…finding each instance of shame for being your true slutty self…and feel me drain it all. Take it all into myself. You don’t need it. You don’t need this sort]
[And without this negative shame, you can be who you actually want to be. You can be a slut without worry or shame. You will go back out there in the world changed. Hornier. Needier. Sluttier. More eager to touch and be touched. More eager to feel that sexual frustration. That sexual release, in whatever form it may take.]
[The cold touch of my tendrils leave nothing to chance. You have no resistance. No barrier. No defense. When you leave, you shall leave different. You shall leave horny. You shall leave a shameless slut for others to enjoy. You shall leave eager to enjoy yourself.]
You can feel the changes happen in your brain. The cold touch of the Scarlet Woman’s willpower spreading across every brain cell. Every thought. Every memory. Like a winter storm in your mind. Leaving nothing untouched. Leaving her mark on the very foundation of your being.
[The word “slut” shall never again feel the same to you. It is now changed in ways difficult to describe. The idea of the word brings to mind all the feelings of what it means to be a shameless slut. Of what it means to be horny without needing an excuse to be horny. It’s perfectly acceptable to be the slut that you wish to be. Without shame. Without hesitation.]
The coldness grows…colder, freezing over your mind as the world begins to fade away. As the Scarlet Woman begins to fade away. As the house begins to fade away. As memories begin to freeze over and lose themselves somewhere on the way to the bank of storage that you sometimes call your mind.
You begin to wake. Slowly. Surely. From what must have been a dream. A strange, wild dream with ghosts and murder and old, haunted manors. And the more you wake, the more you realize that it really had been all a dream. That none of it had happened, of course, because how would you be waking up in your own bed otherwise?
How would…you be waking up…in a bed? That’s not yours. In a bedroom that’s not yours. With a cool draft on your skin that you had felt before.
[Wake up, thing of flesh, bones, and blood!]
[Wake up!]
[You know…I had killed them both later that year, after I had spent some months haunting them into insanity.]
[Boo!]