Murder at a Moon-lit Soiree

Drowning. Lungs filling with water. Burning. Submerged. Where? How? Dark murky green cloudy water. Swallowed by it. Harder to fight. Harder to move. But wait. She became able to slowly take a breath. Burning still. Slowly another. Her body gave a moment of slow relief, a slight feeling lighter than the water that was weighing down her lungs. As if the water was pouring itself out of them. It burned with relief. She was ascending, rather than sinking. Oh. Another slow breath. She finally rose to the surface of the water, body still laid out flat. She thought she had been drowning? She thought it was death. How was this almost happening to her? What had decided to save her? dark. It was dark. Pitch black, middle of the night. Alone, floating in the middle of…. A lake? what was she doing in it? She strained her sore, burning eyes to find a shore line. She looked again. A flash of something along the water’s edge. a couple was dancing. A young, well dressed, well-groomed couple, as if at a ball and not oblivious to a failed murder scene. They continued twirling in a smooth line along the edge of the water, before the trees, until they vanished from sight as fast as they appeared. No one else was remotely around, she was by herself again.

Her eyes flew open. a dream. A nightmare.

Still hours after waking, there was a lingering feeling of tragedy screaming from her insides. One that stayed with her all day. a dread of familiar trauma she hadn’t experienced, but could not shake. some kind of dread she had felt her entire life, seemed to be growing like a black hole through her existence just as the season of spook, fright and magic draped over time like fabric. Had her entire life been a foreshadowing of a tragic fate spelled out for her? Could the fate be fast approaching? The foreshadowing of her existence, the thing that would finally tie her existence together and come for her full circle? All day, as if waking up from that dream had been someone’s mistake.

The year is 1921. Tonight, there will be a party in the forrest under the moon. Not a halloween party, no, a party to celebrate the season. An autumn soiree. A regular, seasonal celebratory soiree in the forest dancing around the bare trees under the eerie but enticing light of what would be a full moon, the moon that shines better this time of year. A seasonal autumnal moon-lit soiree in the forest. The forest was outlined by moon lake, a man-made lake well deserving of its name in the shape of a perfect full moon. A forest connected to a lake. The perfect setting.

It was a masquerade. She put on her best gown: an ivory, satin floor length gown with a rounded slit in the side of the straight draped at the waist skirt, which she dressed up in black netted tights and draped on her thigh a thick band of pearls peeking through) and finished with a necklace pearls. Her best accessory. A staple to who she is. As she dressed, she spent all of her time trying her best to disregard the lingering feeling of tragedy. Finally, a pearl encrusted mask to match her pearl necklace.

Lola arrived to a forest of a brilliant aesthetic, the moon centered above with a glow as if she knew it was her soiree, decorated with gold framed mirrors propped against and entangled in the trees and scattered with taper candles, littered with flasks and wine bottles, and a charming crowd of dancing pairs, twirling as if they were a pre set hologram and someone would have to remind them to end. Endless dancing took over the night, until next on the night’s itinerary was a game of mafia.

One person would pretend to be a murderer and one person would pretend to be murdered.

Shaking various hands, unable to see anything under the mask of who owned the hand except for a smile, sometimes daunting, and maybe a glimmer of eyes. Shake hands, and onto the next person. You survived. she moved throughout the crowd of people, slowly to the edge of the crowd, almost distanced, where the crowd began too thin. A gentleman of fine appearance then approached Lola and gave a firm handshake. Too firm. Distracted by the alarmingly tight grip, she didn’t notice the man reach for her pearls. She panicked and tried to pull them back, which made him pull tighter. she was too busy with her effort to take back her pearls to notice he slowly edged her further away from the crowd. Lola’s turn. she found the murderer. She didn’t know the game could become this dangerous. She thought it was only a mere passing of hands. She became scared. The more she moved reluctantly, the tighter he pulled, until Lola felt the choke of her pearls so tight, she was losing breath. Oh no. she wanted to speak, to say there must be a misunderstanding. She couldn’t. The string that held the pearls together around her neck began to slice her skin. It burned. Who is this man? And why was he doing this to her? She grabbed his hands that soon moved to the very pearls wrapping her neck, then onto her skin. She was losing vision and air. Soon enough, but what felt like a damned eternity, she felt herself being dragged. Barely conscious, she could see the sky moving in a plummeting motion above her. She was suddenly wet. She was underwater. The lake. She had been thrown into the lake. Dark, murky, green, cloudy water. Before she could think fight the water that was only rising above her, her lungs began filing with water. Her consciousness gone. Slow. Slow. painful. Slow. Lola was gone. Disappeared, into the lake with no trace.

She was murdered.

Dawn soon arrived with the first peaks of autumn-colored sunlight through the still too eerie clouds the night’s events left behind, as if the trees of the forest never held a soiree within their branches.

As if the soiree that took place mere hours before vanished into the chilling wind. Like a hologram, there and gone again as quickly as it appeared. Like the dancing couple. There was no evidence of a party on the grounds, and no trace of Lola’s murder.

It is said that Lola still remains around the lake, in the forest somewhere through the trees or around the water in search of her pearls, her finest pearls, that were taken from her along with her life. The pearls being a reminder of her beautiful life lost. Poor girl.

———

The year is 2021, the 100th anniversary of Lola’s murder at the soiree. The autumn season’s 100th annual soiree in the forest was being held on the very night.

Well into the night, as the dancing was never ending, the moon suddenly began to slowly slip lower and lower out of the sky…

As it finally, eerily lowered enough to touch the lake, its light revealed the silhouette of a young woman standing center front, in the middle of the lake where the moon touched the water.

Dressed in her now distressed ivory satin gown, with black, torn apart netted tights showing through the slit, no pearls. The crowd of dancing couples all came together in one big shape to stare at the ghost of the young lady who had just appeared before them, fearful but in awe.

It was indeed the date of the murder, only 100 years has passed. The ghost of Lola had come to understand one thing: the 1920s were dead. Her life she knew and had, filled with all of her pretty things, was dead. She was dead.

She scanned her eyes past the crowd as something caught her eye. Someone. A man. Someone she thought she knew. Standoff-ish in the crowd, as if he was done paying attention to her while everyone else remained hesitant to look away. Had she seen him before?

The man.

It was the man from the last dream she had the night before her murder 100 years ago. She recognized him. It couldn’t have been. She was suddenly brought into a rush of a flashback. The man from the soiree. The man who murdered her.

Her murderer.

They were the same man. The dream. The couple dancing along the shore line, vanishing as swiftly as they appeared. The gentleman. It was him. The young woman. It was Lola. She was dancing with him. Her murderer at the soiree. Dancing and vanishing. She had seen herself as a ghost. The sickening, foreshadowing feeling. She finally knew.

It all occurred to her in that moment. The very last dream she had was foreshadowing her own life and death. Her own murder.

He then moved as swiftly as he did dancing in her dream, then he vanished. Again.

A ghost?

She was murdered by a ghost?

Why?

She was angry. She didn’t understand. She had no closure.

It was in that moment she decided to embrace what had become. Her old life was dead, and dead to her. Time to start new in her now more powerful form she would come to embrace and spend her new eternity avenging her dear past life that was so cruelly, violently, undeservingly ended much too soon.

With an eerie, sudden and twisted event, a rather sad fate, from an unfortunate happening told in a horrifying narrative, of a beautiful life ended all too soon.