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Masque of the Red Pillow
There was a hush over the rooms as the doors at the far end of the great hall slammed open with a great thunderous clap and the wind blew in from the outside.
The party guests, whom had hitherto been involved in the various sorts of things you do at parties of this sort, involving great halls, began to stop their various activities of shouting loudly across the room to other guests, gesturing wildly to other, yet further party guests, spilling their drinks quietly down the backs of other party guests, suitably oblivious as to not care/notice their clothing getting stickier and stickier with the contents of many a cup, all of the guests in masks, so all of them making faces which they thought no one else could see, though they themselves could discern other people's masks moving around the jaw area, and soon the hall grew very quiet, and seemed to darken, as the wind made it's way, pulling in the leaves and the night sky. One guest, making noise in the first room from the doorway, a bluish room with heavy yellow curtains, as he tried to extricate himself from the same yellow curtains, where he'd gotten entangled when his then considerably sticky shirt brushed against the heavy fabric and forever, it was to be, stuck him fast to the curtains, and as the latest guest, coming in on the wind from the door in a red mask passed by, so did the breath pass out of the man, who was left dangling in the yellow curtains, silent finally.
And the new stranger in the red mask stalked down the great hallway as if a breeze, and as it passed through each room growing slowly darker, more and more crimson-like, passed the former merry-making throngs, and the breaths of each of them faded away, whisked forward like the leaves preceding the masked red stranger.
And the red stranger got to the end of the great hall, in the crimson room, where the host was holding court, and the guests in the crimson room, which was now all in shadow, huddled against the walls and the vast drapery, and then host, her voice caught for a moment, called out, "Joe?"
And the red stranger shook it's head.
"Death?" said she, her voice trembling.
And the red stranger shook it's head.
And giggled. Which was most out of character for a silent red stranger. Shaped like a pillow, which was also odd. And so she said. "It's a bit odd, you being shaped like a pillow, you know?"
The Red Pillow nodded.
And giggled again. Again, most uncharacteristic for a pillow, red or otherwise. If you're familiar with the stereotypes.
"Jacob?" she said.
And her little nephew Jacob ran out from behind the pillow, without a stitch on him (the stitches having been left with the Red Pillow, now deflated at the foot of the host's feet, quiet, still), and he ran off back into the night, up to the main house, where his bedroom was.
disclaimer:
And so, children, let that be a lesson to you... something something, something about a lesson.
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