Murder at Hillcrest

The guests finally arrive at the manor for dinner. It is a cold and frosty night, the windows are frozen shut and the wind rattles the shutters. One after the next, the guests enter the manor and congregate in the dining room.

"Dinner is almost ready!" the host states.

We sit down and have idle chit-chat while the host finishes cooking. One of the guests twirls her golden necklace in anticipation for the meal to come.

When dinner is finally set, no one hesitates to dig in. The meal is divine and the host beams with absolute joy. She then takes the finished plates in the kitchen and proceeds to clean up.

The dinner was short but the night is far from over. After some of the guests help with the dishes, we decide to play a game that's a mix of Clue and hide and seek.

We all pick a card and whoever has the lowest card, hides and we have to find them and guess how they were murdered; a game most unique to play in real life.

The murderer runs off to hide and the rest of us give him a three minute head start and start to guess how he'll end up being murdered.

Will it be a candlestick, a rope, or a knife? The possibilities reel.

The three minutes are up and we all rush to find the deceased. We search floor, after floor, and room after room to no avail. No one is that good at hiding unless they've already had a layout of the place.

Thinking it through, these are all colleagues and no one has really interacted with one another other than this party. It's the workplace's way of trying to make everyone who doesn't have a place to call home for the holidays feel more connected with their associates.

We hear a scream coming from the bathroom and we run in. After flinging the door open, we see the host clutching her neck in an attempt to keep the blood gushing from her artery in her body.

It's the host! She was searching with us. I don't understand what happened. Looking at the sink, we see her toothbrush soaked in blood. It looks like she may have been trying to hook up with one of the colleagues?

We panic and dial 911. The wait is short before their arrival. They are quick to bag the body. One of the officers notes that there was no weapon found and they searched the kitchen top to bottom and no utensils appear to be missing or out of place.

They give us their card and tell us that if anything should turn up, to notify them immediately.

Our minds fail to wrap our heads around the events that just occurred. Do we leave? Do we try and find the missing associate?

We discover that we have no choice but to search for him, as once we leave, the house will most likely have more officials crawling over it to seal it off.

Searching the rooms again, there is one where there's this woman weeping. She looks almost identical to the host, but that can't be since we all just witnessed her bleed out.

I turn back to realize that I'm all alone. I start to get nervous as I draw closer to the woman. When I reach her, she turns at me and her eyes run red with blood.

Rushing back, I run into the missing associate and he swings his blade and slashes my throat with ease.

I grip my throat in an attempt to remain conscious to no avail. Within seconds I collapse on the ground.

Everything appears black and I arrive in the same room as the weeping host. Looking around, I find that I'm not the only one. There are five other murdered reliving their deaths on a loop.

At least there are guests about to arrive and we'll all have a nice dinner...