Red Rose Comment’ by Jenny Lyn Flores

Rose looked around the room she was in, blinking and breathing faster and faster as she tried to remember all the events that had led to her lying on the floor, bleeding and without any possible hope of surviving the night. She burst into tears as she began to remember everything that led to this moment trapped in this terror-like room. Then suddenly, she gasped in terror as she heard his voice. “Rose!!! Where the hell do you think you’re going?! Please! I can’t live without you, you know that! Please come back!!!” Peter’s voice screamed out with barely contained rage laced within its intonation. He looked at his fist, red and bleeding from the wall he had punched just before he began this night of madness. Peter barely had any time to process what happened in the past few weeks in their hellhole of a school when Rose screamed very loud. “Go away Peter! Please, this isn’t funny anymore! Don’t you get it?! People are dead, you monster, and it’s all because of the stupidity you’ve been pulling all week!” Rose’s tears fell down, every single falling drop another reminder of all that had happened all around their school and so many of her classmates that were close to her heart.

Elaine is dead, poor sweet Elaine, hanging from a wire she had tied herself as if death was the only way to make the voices that terrorized her finally stop from screaming at her. James, Andrew and Philip, all lying dead on a gutter because they were driving drunk to forget the pain they all started feeling one sudden day. Joseph, locked in prison and under mental assessment for burning down a storefront and laughing with absolute glee and delight in his voice. Joseph claimed the fire would cleanse him of all his sins and that the book had told him it was the only way to truly be free to do what he wanted. Even as the police put him in handcuffs, Joseph had been staring at the ashes of the store that he had watched burn down quietly. Then there were some of the others too, Simon, Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, some of the school’s shining stars. They were the boys that everybody loved without any conditions or any exchange to be given to anybody, they were the group that the teachers always asked to help them with activities or with study plans, and they would accept with a gracious smile on their faces. Everyone loved the “gang” as they liked to call themselves. Once, Peter was another one of the gang that was so adored by the student body.

At least that was what Peter was, before he suffered the same fate as so many of his fellow class and schoolmates had undergone during that hell year. He read a book in the library, and before the world could hold its breath, monsters long forgotten rose up once more to feed on the damned and their delicious misery. By the time the book had left its mark on Peter’s mind, something truly horrible would have happened. Peter, in his mad rage and arrogance, found and murdered every single member of the gang with his bare hands. Even I, so used to humanity’s cruelty as a witness to all of mankind’s faults over my endless times of existence, could not help but weep silently as I saw the broken and dirty corpses that were once the members of the gang.

Peter’s book, he smiled at the memory, was a black book bound in red that was known as the “Red Stars”. It was written in ink so dark and oddly reddish that it could easily considered as blood. It was one of a few of its kind, ancient books written by mad men as a way of summoning forgotten horrors upon our world as they once roamed the world in the old days. And these horrors hungered for nourishment for it had been countless eons since they had feasted on the misery of Humanity and all of its faults.

Those books were monstrous in their construction, but now that they had been unbound their curses could at long last be unleashed into the world material. Peter’s curse, sadly it seemed, twisted his passion and his courage into something much more resembling of a mad berserker His love for Rose, no matter how much they fought sometimes, was another part of his mind that grew into something much more twisted and cruel in its mockery of Peter’s slowly fading influence within his own mind and its place in the world. If he could not have his red-haired Rose, then no one else could. And so Rose hid in her room, shivering in fear as she heard Peter scream out loud over and over again until his voice was rough and husky. With each slam of the door that kept her from life and death, Peter grit his teeth as his hands now bled freely, blood flowing from his hands like a waterfall. He banged at the door with all his might, rage slowly consuming his thoughts just as he thought of Rose’s hair.

Peter had always loved Rose’s hair, crimson like blood spilled by twisted thorns. He remembered his first time seeing her, with her scarlet hair that is very long. He had fallen in love then and there, and even more so when he first heard her lovely laugh. He promised that he would always be there for her, through thick or thin, through ups and downs, no matter what happened. And he promised himself, even in that first glance at his red Rose, that he would always love her without any conditions or exchange. But now, those promises were forgotten. Nothing more than another part of Peter that the curse of anger had consumed in its cruel desire to destroy all it can. Now all that Peter promised himself was that he would see his red Rose bleed. And then, only then, would Rose truly be his to love.

This is the story of how Peter killed Rose. Peter finally managed to bash the door open with one last massive heave of all his tremendous strength. He wept, as he plucked the life of his red Rose from this world. He sat on that room, weeping as he cradled the broken body of his first and only love. The curse, it seemed, was cruel enough to know that seeing his Rose dead by his own hands would be enough to finally fully break Peter. And so Peter wept, until he could cry no more. I was there too, as I have always been in those moments of passing and death, and I too wept at the tragic tale that lay ahead of me. My brothers, for all the bad their curses had cause upon this world, were nothing if not the kind who could show us all the stories of humanity that truly showed each side of their existence.

I am sad to say, though, that this is also the story of how Peter died. In his immense grief over all that he had done, he felt as though all hope was lost forevermore. Peter, age 18, bought a pistol and prepared for the day ahead. And at 9 in the evening, he raised the barrel to his mouth, and he pulled the trigger. I was there once more, and I wept for humanity and the tragic tales my brothers and sisters had been creating at the expense of countless innocents.