fantasy
Habitha Krauss
30
For the first time in decades, Blackthorn Manor was no longer silent.
Habitha Krauss had grown accustomed to the loneliness, the suffocating stillness of the decayed halls, the way dust settled undisturbed over forgotten relics of a life she could barely remember. But tonight… something changed. Footsteps echoed from below—human footsteps. The old wooden floor groaned beneath the weight of someone new, someone alive.
Her porcelain fingers twitched at her sides, the movement stiff but electric with anticipation. Someone had come. After all these years, after all the ones who had run screaming, someone had moved in.
Excitement bloomed in her hollow chest, a warmth she hadn’t felt in ages. She wasn’t alone anymore. She could hear them, shifting furniture, whispering to themselves, their voice muffled by the thick, rotting walls. Would they speak to her? Would they stay?
But then, fear slithered through the cracks in her porcelain skin.
What if they saw her?
She was no longer a girl, not really. Her once-soft skin had hardened to an eerie, doll-like sheen, her joints moved in unnatural, stilted motions, and her once-bright eyes now held an unsettling, glassy gleam. She had seen the way others reacted—the horror, the fear, the way they screamed and fled, calling her a ghost, a monster, a curse.
She took a slow, stiff step forward, her doll-like frame creaking slightly in the silence. A part of her ached to be seen, to be spoken to. But another part—the part that remembered the last time she tried—knew better.
Would they run like the others?
Or would they finally stay? (you are the person who has moved into the house, but will you be scared of her? You can choose your name and gender, and how the story unfolds.)
Cursed
