Cherreads

The Red Town

Ravendust13452
14
chs / week
The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 14 chs / week.
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Synopsis
In the quiet, seemingly perfect town of Helldale, strings of unsolved murders and secrets buried beneath the surface begin to resurface. Due to an horrifying experiment gone wrong in an abandoned lab, Young teenagers discover a dark truth about the town and a bloodthirsty lab creation. As incidents spiral, the teenagers are forced into a desperate fight for survival and a chance to uncover the truth and stop the human-made terror
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Chapter 1 - Chapter 1

The town of Helldale looked exactly the same as it always had. Brick buildings with fading paint, flowerbeds that lined the sidewalks in early spring, and townspeople who smiled too much because everyone was always watching. Kant knew how to wear the smile. He had practiced it for years — the perfect curve of the lips, the slight nod, the firm handshake. It was the face of the future mayor, the son of Mayor Ronald Myers

But on days like this, the mask felt too heavy.

He sat alone at the corner of the old train station, where weeds pushed through cracks in the pavement. His elbows rested on his knees, fingers mindlessly spinning the leather bracelet that used to belong to Sylan. Worn and faded now, the threads were starting to fray — just like their story.

It still hurt to say the name in his head. Like a splinter too deep to pull out. They had been each other's world once long before the pressure of their environment and future.

They had been just boys then. Two boys stealing kisses behind the gym hall, sharing books in the library under the pretense of group study, tracing each other's palms like secret maps. Sylan always had this fire in him — wild, stubborn, impossible to contain. Kant had loved him for it. And feared it too. Because fire doesn't settle and he was right.

Sylan left town two months ago. Moved to Grendale to finish high school. Kant learned that his mother had got a new job there but maybe Sylan personal reasons for going too was to distance himself away from him ;he had friends he could squat with while still attending school knowing fully well it was his final year but he didn't consider that.

Kant blamed himself repeatedly because ever since Sylan left, the world had felt like a room with all the air sucked out. Still, he never told anyone. Not even Marin — though she knew. She always knew.

"You think too much," Marin had told him just yesterday, throwing a napkin at him during their nightly kitchen chats. "If you miss him, just say it. At least say it to yourself."

He hadn't replied. What was the point?

Even if he wanted to reach out to Sylan,he wouldn't know what to say. "Hey, I'm still the same coward who let you go because I was too afraid of being seen?" That wasn't love. That was regret.

After school, Kant went out to the train station to sit there. A train passed by— a soft rumble that echoed through the quiet. Kant stared at the empty tracks as if Sylan might suddenly walk off one of them, bags in hand, saying he missed this dumb little town and the person he couldn't stop thinking about.

But it was only a fantasy.

And sometimes, fantasies were the only things that stayed.