Winner (October 2025) "The Requiem of Roses"

Yet children, as they always do, were drawn to the forbidden. Rules became dares, and fears became invitations. One autumn night, four restless children decided to test the oldest tale of them all.

They gathered on the steps of an abandoned house; their costumes stitched together with both excitement and mischief. One wore the crooked hat of a witch, her eyes darkened with stolen kohl, chin tilted proudly like she'd been chosen to lead. Another hid beneath a torn bedsheet, holes cut too wide for eyes that darted nervously, but she laughed louder than the rest to mask her fear. A boy tugged a burlap sack over his head, the jagged grin painted across it, turning every twitch of his lips into a grotesque smile; he was always the one to turn fear into jokes. And the last, a pale girl in a tattered lace dress, clutched a pumpkin bucket. She wore no mask at all. She didn't need one. She already looked like a ghost who hadn't realized she was dead.

They weren't out to trick-or-treat. Not that night. They had gathered for the Game.

The witch-girl leaned forward, whispering the rules, the ones every child had heard in half-dreams, but none had dared to follow: "Find the music. Follow it. And don't look behind you when the bones start to walk."

They giggled nervously, shoving each other, pretending not to shiver. Because everyone in the Village of Whispers had heard the story: that once every century, the dead rose when a certain melody was played -- the Requiem of Roses. No one knew who had composed it, or why it had power. Some said it was a mourning hymn written by a widow who bargained with death itself. Others whispered that the notes were carved into the world before words existed. What everyone agreed on was this: its notes had been written in blood.

And these four children -- half-terrified, half-thrilled -- wanted to find it.

The witch-girl had stolen a key from her grandmother's sewing box. Her grandmother sometimes mumbled in her sleep about keepers and watchers, words the girl didn't understand but loved to repeat. That key belonged to the old library, long forgotten, its door sealed with rust, its windows strangled by ivy. The villagers said the library was cursed, that books remembered too much.

Inside, mildew clung to the air like rot. The shelves sagged under the weight of dust and silence. Their flashlights cut across faded spines, revealing titles in languages they couldn't read. One shelf groaned as though it exhaled when they brushed past. Somewhere deeper inside, a book thudded to the floor -- though none of them had touched it.

They searched, hearts thumping, too stubborn to admit how badly they wanted to run. They burlap boy muttered jokes to keep his courage, the ghost-child tripped over her sheet and hissed at the others not to laugh. The witch-girl's hands shook as she rifled through drawers.

And then, the pale girl stopped.

Tucked inside the cracked spine of a leather-bound book was a sheet of music. Its notes sprawled like crooked teeth, uneven and sharp, as if the hand that wrote them had trembled with something more than fear. Pressed between its pages lay a single rose, impossibly fresh, its petals bleeding fragrance into the stale air.

"The Requiem of Roses," she whispered, though she didn't know why.

And then, faintly, they all heard it: a tune played, on no instrument, sung by no voice. The air itself seemed to hum

They should have fled. They should have burned the parchment, left the library, and never spoken of it again. But the boy with the burlap mask began to hum the melody, soft and uncertain, like an echo of what already filled the air.

The ground trembled. Dust fell from the ceiling.

Then came a sound from the shadows -- clink, clink, clink -- like wind chimes made of bone.

From between the shelves stepped a skeleton. It was impossibly tall, its limbs stretched long like branches, its skull tilted unnaturally. It didn't stumble like the dead; it glided with the grace of something ancient, something bound to rhythm. Black fire burned in its hollow sockets, and each step echoed like a drumbeat.

The children screamed.

And the skeleton bowed.

The witch-girl dropped her pumpkin bucket, candies scattering across the floor like teeth. The pale girl the music tighter, though it seemed to pulse against her palms.

The skeleton's jaw moved, but no sound came. Instead, its words bloomed inside their heads: "Play the song. Finish what was started."

The ghost-child stammered from beneath her sheet, "W-we can't -- we don't know how!"

The skeleton only raised one hand and pointed. The shelves behind it groaned and twisted, reshaping themselves until they revealed a piano. Its wood was split and splintered, its keys cracked and yellow like rotting teeth.

The pale girl, as though in a trance, stepped forward. She sat at the bench. Her fingers hovered. The rose pressed into the sheet pulsed like a heartbeat.

The first note shivered through the library like a scream swallowed backward. The second made the lights flicker. By the third, the walls themselves seemed to breathe.

The children cowered. The witch covered her ears. The burlap boy clutched his head. The ghost-child wept.

But the pale girl played on, her hands moving as if guided by invisible strings.

The skeleton swayed with the music, arms lifting like a conductor. And with each measure, more clinking sounded. From the floorboards, from the shelves to the very walls -- they came.

At first, only fragments: a hand knocking loose from a shelf, a ribcage tumbling forward, a skull rolling into the open. Then dozens. Then hundreds. Skeletons spilled into the light, their sockets glowing faintly, forming rows as though they were an audience waiting for the symphony to end.

The Requiem of Roses was summoning them.

Each note wrapped around the children's bones, thrumming through their veins. The witch gagged as roses bloomed briefly in her hair before wilting. The burlap boy swore he felt fingers brush against his neck, though nothing stood behind him. The ghost-child clutched her sheet so tightly her nails tore through it.

When the final note rang, silence crushed the air. For a heartbeat, the library seemed frozen.

Then the roses burst. Crimson flowers erupted from cracks in the wood, from shelves, from bones. They climbed the walls, coiled around spines, and bloomed against skulls. The scent was cloying, suffocating, thick with sweetness that made the children gag.

The tall skeleton bowed again.

"The pact is renewed."

And then, all at once, the roses blackened and withered. Bones clattered to the ground. The lights in their sockets went out.

The library was still.

The pale girl slumped against the piano, unconscious. The sheet of music disintegrated into ash in her hands.

The children fled, never speaking of it again. Not to their parents. Not to each other. Their friendship thinned and broke, as thought the memory itself poisoned every bond.

But the pale girl never returned to who she was. She hummed strange melodies in her sleep, songs no one recognized. Wherever she walked, roses bloomed briefly, then died.

On her thirteenth birthday, she vanished. Only petals remained on her bed.

The others grew older, but the memory clung. The witch-girl, grown into a woman, could not bear the sound of pianos. The burlap boy never again entered a churchyard. The ghost-child learned to laugh louder than anyone else, but sometimes choked on the sound.

And on certain nights, when the wind was too still, they swore they could hear it again -- the Requiem of Roses, drifting faintly through the Village of Whispers.

A song older than the village. A melody that bound the living and the dead, renewing a pact no one remembered making.

And in the deepest shadows of the woods, when the moon was pale and the air too quiet -- bones still walked, dancing to music only they could hear.

Years later, when the witch-girl was no longer a girl but a woman with lines at the corners of her eyes and a tremble in her voice, she found herself telling the story again.

Not to her children -- she had none. Not to friends -- she didn't keep many. She told it to whoever would listen on restless nights, when the air was too heavy and the silence too long. Sometimes it was a curious niece begging for a scary tale. Sometimes it was a stranger at the inn who leaned too close, too eager for secrets.

But she always began the same way, in a hushed voice that was almost tender:

"There was once a village that never appeared on any map..."

The listener would lean closer; the candlelight painting shadows on the wall. She would smile faintly, but it never reached her eyes.

"And in that village," she continued, "the children thought dear was a game. They thought rules were just stories adults told to keep us quiet. They thought they could follow the music, touch the forbidden, and walk away untouched. But music never forgets. And bones always rise when called."

Her voice would soften, lulling, like a mother coaxing a child to sleep. She would describe her friends as if they were still beside her: the ghost-child with the torn sheet who laughed too loudly, the burlap boy with his crooked grin who never stopped joking, and the pale girl who never needed a mask.

Sometimes she paused too long before continuing. Sometimes she rubbed her wrist absentmindedly, as though she still felt the phantom grip of bony fingers.

When she reached the part of the story where the music played, she would lower her voice to a whisper. Listeners would lean in, straining to hear. And when she spoke of the roses bursting from skulls, her voice trembled -- not from theatrics, but from memory.

She never told it the same way twice. In some versions, the pale girl was taken by the skeleton itself. In others, the piano swallowed her whole. In the cruelest versions, she said the pale girl still lived, wandering the woods, humming the Requiem of Roses as roses withered in her wake.

But however she told it, she always ended the same. Her eyes, shadowed with old fear, would lock with the listener's.

"Don't hum unfamiliar tunes after dark and if you ever find a rose pressed inside a book, burn it before you dare to read the notes. Because once the bones begin to walk, no prayer, no scream will save you. Only the song decides who leaves and who stays."

Then she would smile, a tired smile that crumbled at the edges. "Now sleep," she would murmur, as if she hadn't just painted nightmares into the listener's dreams.

And long after the candle burned out, the listener would lie awake, heart quickening, straining against the silence -- until the faintest melody drifted through the night air.

A lullaby too old for words.

A requiem too patient to die.

The Requiem of Roses.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Sanchita Sahu (Cancer, INFP-T) — but you can call me Anamika, which means “nameless.”

Why such a strange name? Because I’m terrible at titling my poems and stories.

I write because I believe everything sustains through stories and poems — they’re the heartbeat of the world, at least in my daydream world.

If you enjoy my work here, you can find more of my writings on Wattpad under the username 000anamika000.