Short Fiction: The Mask of the Red Death

Again we return to Jay’s short fiction corner in anticipation of Halloween.

Through filtered layers of a tale told and re-told over countless generations a few things remain the same.

There was a plague, one that marked the skin a ruddy shade of red, slowly at first, but each hour let the red plague claim more and more of your skin, until the eyes wept blood,  the muscles became taught, the pain became great, and in sympathy for the suffering the heart would stop. All that remained was a crippled, blood drenched, crimson corpse; doubled over in the pain of its final moments.

The ‘Red Death’ knew no class distinction, it took the pauper and the prince, the beggar and the merchant, the old and the young, the sinner and the saint. Gripping the land in its crimson fist as whole communities were culled, quarantined and left to die, still the plague continued. The road became empty, the harvests rotted in the fields and the streets became choked with the dead when there were no longer enough living to bury them. The gutters flooded with filth and decay, and the rats ruled the cities as kings of carrion.

The tale tells of the Lord of the land, seeing his kingdom fall into ruin as he drew in the few privileged and powerful he could into the mighty stone walls of his keep, hording all the remaining food and declaring a masked ball would be held for the most privileged to enjoy, hiding behind the stone walls, the rich food, and of course the porcelain masks, while the plague swept through the common folk.

As the rich and the mighty wined and dined, their people starved and suffered. The banquet tables stayed full, fed by the servants who were too terrified of the deathly plague outside the keep to voice their objections. The days melded together, night and day inseparable as they became lost in endless dancing and drinking and the continued music from the over-worked musicians.

The story ends when for the first time in the endless days and nights, the music started to falter, the dancing slowing, the hall falling still and silent. All faces turned to a red-robed figure, seeming to drift slowly across the hall in measured footsteps in time with the fading music. Their mask stark white and flawless, save the long streaks of crimson tears falling form the eyes. The crowd’s hush soon turned into an angry murmur, crying out against the poor taste of the hidden noble, decrying them and threatening to eject them from the ball to face the plague they mocked.

Thus the unknown noble raised their velvet gloved hand gently grasped their mask, lowering it gently to reveal their face.

And the story does not end…

On all hallows eve the keeps gates open, and the terrified survivors of the Red Death will enter and discover what is left of the masquerade, and finish the masked ball.

And then, the story will end.