The Ballad of Rosalie Red

She wore a dress in the color sin and walked with thunder's grace, a shadow lit from deep within, with fire upon her face. She left the party close to one, her heels in hand, alone, they say she whispered to the moon— “Tonight, I’m heading home.” But morning came, and she did not. The chapel bells were grim. A crimson streak, a silver spot, the trail grew cold and dim. They found a heel beside the drain, an earring near the stairs, a smear of blood the size of rain, and whispers in the prayers. The papers roared: “A girl in red! A poet may be linked!” His verses read like hearts gone dead, his alibis all blinked. He wrote of girls who vanished fast, of lips and death and sky, and Rosalie was not the last to haunt his lullaby. Detective Maren took the lead, a woman sharp and slow. She followed every crimson thread the town was scared to know. She found the Poet’s secret book, with names in ink and dread, and there—the line he never took: "…and then she bled and bled.” He never made it to the court, he jumped before the trial. They found his boots, a final thought— a carving on the tile: "Remember me, I told the tale the world refused to see. But stories shift like autumn gales— the killer isn’t me." Six months from then, a letter came, no name, no scent, no fold. Just blood-red ink and ghostly claim, a secret left untold: “You followed every thread I wove, each clue I laid with care. But who first whispered from above? And why was I found there?" Maren sat still, her coffee cold, her hands began to shake. The story cracked. The pieces told a truth she did not fake— The heel? She found it in the drain. The earring? She alone. Each breadcrumb laid with quiet pain by hands as cold as stone. For Maren was the girl in red, reborn with borrowed face. She’d killed her past and called it dead— then stalked it like a case. The Poet wasn’t pure nor clean, but guilt was not the thread. She needed someone to be seen, so she became the dead. The missing girls? Her mirrored pasts, the selves she left behind. And Maren walked the line she cast, rewriting in her mind. So if you pass Saint Cecilia’s hand when fog begins to climb, don’t trust the badge, don’t trust the land— some ghosts commit no crime.