THE MURDER PARTY

Cindy R. X. He

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MURDER NIGHT

It’s Murder Night, and the air in the room is practically vibrating with electric anticipation.
Everyone is gathered in the living room, all dressed up and ready to play. The room is dimly lit, the only light from flickering candles. A dressing table with a large backlit mirror and a stool have been placed in the middle of the room, the scene set for the start of the game.
Tonight, the eight players are in their finest 1920s attire: girls in satin dresses with dropped waists, bobbed wigs, and cloche hats; boys in fedoras, pin-striped suits, and fake mustaches. In the bright light of day, they might have felt silly, but now, in the dim candlelight, in this room, they look just right, and that’s important. It enhances the game, makes it more immersive, makes it feel more real. Like the props. Like tonight’s murder weapon, the realistic-looking knife that some of the boys are fooling around with, testing the retractable blade on each other’s thighs and arms.
Everyone’s hushed, giggling, pregame shots and coolers buzzing pleasantly in their blood. Some of them refer quickly to their scripts one last time. In a corner of the room, a pale girl in a white dress stands apart, her gaze fixed stiffly on the far wall. She’s seventeen, almost eighteen. She doesn’t need to look at a script. There’s nothing for her to memorize. She has only one short role to play tonight, and that is to die. If her eyes are red-rimmed, no one seems to notice.
People skip around, making last-minute adjustments to furniture and props. Someone hands the girl in the white dress a large bouquet of roses. The bloodred flowers are striking against the snowy white of her dress. Another person claps their hands, and the room quiets down. A few people shuffle into positions as the others spread out eagerly, line the walls to watch the first scene unfold.
Silence descends, and the game begins.
The girl in white, roses clutched in her arms, floats into the middle of the room. She tosses the bouquet onto the dressing table and sinks onto the stool. She stretches, removes her high heels, then, staring at herself in the mirror, starts removing her makeup. The star retiring to her dressing room after a show on Broadway.
The sound of a door creaking. Her hand pauses mid swipe. Somebody else enters the scene: a figure draped in a black robe, their face hidden by a mask, one of those rubber Ghostface ones from Scream. A ripple of laughter fills the room.
The girl sees this person in her mirror. She spins around in confusion, gets up. The masked figure brings their hand out from behind their back. The blade of a deadly-looking knife gleams in the flickering candlelight.
“What—” she starts to say.
In one swift movement, he closes the distance between them and stabs her in the stomach.
Her features contort; her scream shatters the air. Her anguish seems so realistic. It’s great acting. A low murmur of appreciation rises; someone claps.
Red stains the front of the white dress, growing rapidly, as red as the roses. It must be a bag of fake blood. So realistic.
She collapses on the floor.
But…something is wrong. The person who stabbed her isn’t exiting the scene. He’s supposed to, so the rest of them can start playing, start solving her murder. Instead, he’s just standing there, staring stupidly at the knife still clutched in his hand. At the blade that’s…dripping with blood? How does that happen with a retractable blade? People shift uneasily.
The masked figure finally drops the knife; it hits the floor with a clang. But instead of making a quick escape like he’s supposed to, he tears off his mask and sinks to his knees. He shouts the girl’s name as he turns her over. Her eyes are wide open, her features slack, her face now almost as white as her dress used to be. Her mouth moves wordlessly, blood trickling out of one corner. He presses his hands to her belly, the bright red soaking through her dress, drenching his fingers in seconds.
Too late, the others finally start to realize that the girl isn’t acting. That her anguished scream was real. A new scream pierces the air, joined by another, as the girl in the formerly white dress, seventeen, never to be eighteen, bleeds out on the floor.

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