• The once-great remnants of The Sacrificial Cult of Aspiring Writers, better known as SCAW, were merely catacombs under the mansion that now held The Gory Details, a writing school meant for the misfits of the writing world. SCAW had been like an ancient civilization, great and powerful. That was, until the plague of greed was injected into the system, causing pure anarchy. SCAW was now in ruins, a corpse in a closet to the founders of The Gory Details.
    The beginnings of The Gory Details hadn’t been too successful, nor were they pretty. SCAW was created on a whim, made with a web of words by a few friends fond of writing. It was a humble little place, meant only for those with a passion for writing and a curious nature, especially a curiosity for gore. SCAW quickly went from being adorable and nice to something sinister, a cult of crazed lunatics.
    It had turned into a mad house, an asylum, filled with the most dangerous kind of people: writers.
    When an earthquake ripped through the surrounding area of No Where in Particular, the entire building was pulled into the earth, trapping the few people still left within it. Being as it was, no one cared. They citizens of No Where in Particular let those people go down starving, beaten and out of air. Many people rejoiced over the loss of the crazy house.
    Still, the earthen skeleton of the eerie building lives under The Gory Details. Withholding the tradition of a curiously gory writer’s place, the council of The Gory Details makes the semi-good parts of SCAW live on.
    Sometime, though, the closet holding SCAW must be opened…
    …

    Lady Emergency didn’t find this the ideal way to spend her Sunday afternoon. The catacombs under The Gory Details weren’t to be gone into, even by her; they were supposedly deemed unsafe and sealed tight, away from anyone who might want to sneak back in. Apparently, this was a lost cause. One of the students at The Gory Details had told her of a door that had been ripped open in the dining hall’s floor. So, naturally, Lady Emergency was forced to go in and find out who—or what—had tore through a steel door and a layer of crimson carpeting. The Lady was just enthralled.
    Hollow footsteps reverberated up the dusty walls as two small feet sheathed in bright red Converse sneakers crept along the brick flooring. The eerie light emanating from a small electric lantern cast ghostlike shadows across the strange, painted patterns that lined the walls. With Hans, a birdlike creature with a fish tail and four sets of wings, on her shoulder, Lady Emergency crept through the skeleton of a building, unsure of what she’d find.
    The place wasn’t all that pleasant, nor did it look as abandoned as it was legend to be. Papers bathed in chicken scratch were sprawled across the floor, tables and chairs were tipped upside and downside, and books looked to be flung from the shelves in unwanted heaps of words. The walls were painted in uneven stripes of black and red, making Lady Emergency’s head spin.
    A terrible screeching of metal on metal played a tone-deaf tune emanated from one of the doors. Hans whimpered at the noise, but still waddled over to it on his slender legs. The awkward bird pecked at the door, beckoning for the Lady to open it for him. Lady Emergency rolled her eyes, grabbed the flashlight and walked over to him, unlatching the door.
    It opened with a loud thunk, and the sound reiterated and bounced off of the cavernous walls. The door hadn’t been opened in a long while. The Lady held up the lantern, the light casting a golden glow over her pale features.
    The screeching grew louder and more profound as she and her trusted little sidekick went deeper into the room, but Lady E didn’t see the cause of the noise anywhere. Hans walked forward into the darkness, straying away from the lamplight. The screeching grew louder, and louder, until the Lady couldn’t hear her own footsteps anymore. She was there, and she nearly screamed.
    It was a gigantic metal cage, eerie and ghostly and every other synonymous adjective. The hinges screamed like someone staring down the barrel of a gun, waiting for their last moment to just end. Luckily for her, Hans had gone over and kicked the door to the brazen prison just enough to make the god-awful noise stop.
    Lady Emergency was bewildered at the sight of the cage, and its condition. A few of the bars were torn to bits, some rusted and broken. Nothing had gotten inside the catacombs of SCAW, something had gotten out. Saying that the Lady was scared out of her mind was an understatement, and the Lady never got scared; the thought of SCAW and some sort of vicious animal was probably one of the only things that could frighten her out of her wits.
    She moved the lantern around the big room, looking for Hans. He was against the wall, trying to pick something up in his jaws, possibly an envelope? Lady E set down the lantern on the floor, moving closer to Hans.
    That’s when she noticed it.
    It looked to be written in blood, the eerie feel of the now dry drizzles that fell from the letters made icicle fingers claw at the small TGDer’s back. There was a message written on the wall, addressed to the whole of The Gory Details. It read: “How about a little game? I hear you all are wonderful chess players. I’m ready to play.” The Lady stopped reading for a moment, catching her breath, then continued, “So is it.” Gooseflesh arose on the Lady’s skin.
    Hans had finally gotten to bring the small paper thing to his partner in crime, and pecked at her feet while she just stared at the wall. He squawked loudly, shaking the Lady from her reverie.
    “What?” She said playfully, bending down to meet Hans’s small height, “Hm? What’s this?” The Lady asked in a little singsong voice. She pulled the small envelope from his blue jaws, feeling for the opening.
    It was small, blue and infused with essence-of-fish. The paper looked old and worn, like it had been sitting wherever Hans had found it for far too long. Coffee or tea stains freckled the surface of the opening flap. The Lady’s fingers slid under the sealed flap, ripping the blue envelope with no regret.
    She let the small piece of paper slip out and into her hands. It was folded three different ways, and it took her countless minutes to figure out just how to open the small thing. Scribbled words were splashed upon the rustic paper’s surface in red ink. It read: “‘Villains!’ I shrieked, “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!’”
    Lady Emergency knew what this was, and where it was from. Firstly, it was a clue. Secondly, it had come from someone in The Gory Details. The handwriting wasn’t elegant or classy, more rushed and to the point; she knew she’d seen it somewhere before. Thirdly, it was an excerpt from one of Lady Emergency’s favorite of short stories: The Tell-Tale Heart.
    The Lady Just stared at the paper, not wanting to believe it. But, there was, in fact, a crazy monster on the loose, and a post-asylum player of games out there, too. What she really didn’t want to believe was that, due to the current blizzard weather outside, they were stuck inside with both at large.
    “Oh, dear.” Lady Emergency said with a sigh.