Friday 4 October 2013

RPG Blog Carnival - October 2013: Spooky Spots - ROSE CORNER



The RPG Blog Carnival is an idea to get groups of bloggers to all writing about a monthly topic, the aim being to build a dialogue across many different blogs, providing different viewpoints and ideas to the viewer. The way it works is that a blog discussing a monthly topic will post the RPG Carnival Logo and will link back to the 'hosters' post.


This month the topic is spooky spots.



Below is my effort:

Rose Corner


Rose corner, as it has been nicknamed by the locals of the city, is nothing remarkable, it looks just like any other street corner and could be in any city, even your own home town; however, 50 years ago a young man was rushing home from work on a dark and stormy Valentine's night, despite his hurry to return home to the arms of his beloved the man was careful not to squash the bunch of white roses that he carried under one arm whilst balancing his briefcase under the other. The man had never missed an anniversary yet and this was a big one, it had been ten years since his knelt proposal had been accepted, he still remembered the nervousness as he knelt trembling in the italian restaurant, a rose gripped between his teeth and the feeling of jubilation when his beloved had accepted his proposal; every year since then, to mark their anniversary he had delivered her a bunch of white roses.

Opinions and local legends differ on what happened next as the man reached the corner of the street, passing by a large private garden; some say that he was distracted by the smell of the flowers or some sort of insect buzzing from the bushes that lined the side of the street, others say that he was busy talking to the office on a cell phone and some that he was just in a rush to return home to the arms of his beloved. Whatever the truth of the matter is, the man rushed out into the road without looking, failing to see that the lights had changed to green or the onrushing traffic; a few moments later there was a crunch of grinding metal and shattering flesh as the mans body was flung from the road into the large bushes at the side of the road. The man was dead by the time the paramedics arrived, his white flowers stained red with his blood, crushed and scattered across the sidewalk.

As a result of the accident the old woman who owned the house next to rose corner (as it rapidly came to be known) moved away, although she refused to ever sell the house; the paperwork eventually became another casualty of bureaucratic mis-filing and it was never sold, being allowed to slowly fall into decay, the gardens becoming overgrown and tangled. Opinions vary locally to why the old woman moved away, some say that she couldn't look after the grounds any more due to her advance age, others that she moved to be closer to relatives, however some of the local people tell a different story, that she was scared by the white roses that had sprung up in the hedgerow ajoining the street corner, flowers not planted by herself that seems to wrap themselves around the existing topiary and blossomed only once every decade with the pure white flowers shot through with a red as vivid as freshly spilled blood.

The rose strangled bushes with their occasionally blooming flowers can still be found next to Rose Corner, flowering once every ten years with their beautiful white and red flowers; people say that when they bloom if you listen closely enough you can still hear the echoes of the dead mans footsteps running between the worlds, always running to get home to his love (now long since dead) and deliver his gift and that when the rain beats down heavily and thunder is in the air, even though the roses may not be flowering, you might still catch the scent of the flowers on the breeze or find petals littered the sidewalk.

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