STORY WRITING BASED ON RORY’S CUBES

ENGLISH COURSE
Treasure Hunt…with a Twist

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Ray woke up with a lite heart and a stress-free mind. After a very hectic week at the office, it
was finally Saturday, which he generally uses to relax and organize his thoughts. Getting up
from the bed was quite a task for Ray; that was one of the best sleeps he had had in a while.
After freshening up, he decided to go for a walk. It was a pleasant summer afternoon; Ray
grabbed his lavender sweatshirt, put on his trousers, and set out for the walk. Ray was an
assistant editor at Disculture magazine, a famous magazine that published unique stories of
people from the past. It was pretty hard to get a job here. It was his good grades and creative
ideas that got Ray placed here. Since he had just joined, the salary that he got was only
enough to pay his dorm's rent. Ray was searching for a good story for the following week's
Sunday special cover, which could even fetch him a hike in the salary.
With thoughts of what part-time jobs he could do and where he could cut down expenses,
Ray was walking on the narrow road between his dorm and what seemed like an abandoned
plot. The trees covered it so densely that it felt like a mini forest. On any other day, Ray
would have not even looked towards it, but today he thought, "why not see what lies beyond
those trees?" What if I find a hidden treasure? that would be enough for my lifetime's
expenses!!" Ray, for once, smiled at his stupidity and continued walking. He reached the
plot; astonishingly, it also had a fence around it, which was not visible from a distance. Ray
jumped over the fence and entered the plot. He kept walking for a while; the plot was just a
piece of wasteland; he thought and was thinking to return. Just then he stepped on something,
at first it seemed like a flat piece of metal, but after dusting off the mud over it, he realized it
was a rusted key with the symbol of a burning flame on it. "A key? In the middle of
nowhere?” He thought, for a second, he felt probably his stupid idea of finding a treasure was
manifesting itself. But immediately he wore off the thought, put the key in his pocket and
started walking back, to where he entered. He somehow felt a little uneasy about the
atmosphere of the place; he started walking a little fast. In his mind, the thoughts like, "what
if this key is something of great historical importance?", "what if I auction it?", "How much
would that fetch me?" were wandering. 

Just then, he noticed a small cottage-like structure on his right. He walked towards it; it was
an instead beautifully constructed house with a big porch and small gate with a hanging
nameplate covered with dust. The gate was made of cast iron and seemed very sturdy and
was locked too. He felt, “It’s quite weird that no one discovered this house earlier?! Just the
cast iron gates would fetch someone a handsome sum of money.” Then something caught his
eye; it was the symbol on the lock. He realized it was the same flame symbol that was there
on the key he found earlier. Automatically he reached his pocket, removed the key, and tried
opening the lock. The lock opened with a click! Which already seemed weird to him, “A
rusted key opening a rusted lock? That too with a smooth click!”. Ray paused for a while; he
felt something was fishy and was trying to persuade his mind not to enter the house. But that
certainly wasn’t possible. 

He entered the porch. It was huge; it had plants that had grown unwieldy all around, with
grass reaching up to his knees. With slow and rather big steps, Ray started walking towards
the front of the house. "The architecture is truly remarkable, though," Ray thought in his
mind. He reached the house's main door; it was an old-style teak wood door with brass
hinges. The door, which had been left closed for so long, was stuck and was not opening.
Ray's intuition to leave this place now started growing more robust; he felt, "I better leave
this place and go, I can't waste my precious Saturday around an abandoned house" he turned

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back and started walking. That's when he heard it, the sound of a tree creaking. Ray's heart
started beating fast, though he hadn't watched a lot of movies, the creaking of a tree in
absolute silence that too in an abandoned home was indeed something that reminded him of a
horror movie. 

Ray started walking fast, the tall grass was poking him, but still, he did not stop. He walked
and reached the gate; he opened the gate and stepped out. Something caught his sweatshirt's
lace; chills went down Ray's spine. All the ghost stories that his friends discussed in college
contained at least one scene where something caught someone behind. Ray started sweating;
he did not dare to turn back. He started murmuring all the prayers he knew, gathered all his
courage, and turned back. It was the hanging nameplate that had got stuck in his lace. Ray
breathed a sigh of relief. For those few seconds, he had almost frozen; his neck started
hurting. He held the nameplate chain and was about to remove his lace from it when the name
on the plate caught his eye. "Victoria Cady Stanton," he read the name aloud. Ray felt that he
had read this name earlier somewhere. He started recalling as to where he had read it. "Was it
a part of the history assignment that I had done in my first semester? Or "what is the name of
the judge in the case study I did in the third year" Ray started thinking. After a while of
brainstorming, Ray realized, "Oh! Yes, this was the highly acclaimed American writer and an
attorney who had taken part in the women's rights movement" he had read about her in his
activism subject. Another important detail of this lady's life struck him "her death was very
mysterious, where she was found strangled in nylon chords which were generally used as
suspension lines in a parachute." 

Ray had found the cover story for which he was searching. Stanton was a very famous
activist whose life was a big mystery. Many researchers and journalists in the past had tried
to learn about her. But all such attempts had failed. Ray once again stepped in, this time not
with doubt but with determination to solve the mystery around Stanton’s life and her
mysterious death. Ray looked at his watch and saw that the time was half-past three, he
decided it was still not late, and he could go forward in his pursuit.. Ray walked back to the
main door, and he was convinced that the door would not open and had to find an alternative
way to get into the house. He started looking around and then noticed a glass transom on top
of the door. Ray got a stone and threw it onto it, and broke the glass. He managed to climb on
the door and got into the house without hurting himself.

He stood on the floor and dusted his sweatshirt There was no significant light source in the
house; the dim evening sunlight was peeping in through a wide hole on the ceiling that was
making things visible. He started looking around the house; it was a single-storied house with
cracked walls and cobwebs. The place seemed perfect for shooting a horror movie, with a
grandfather’s clock which was not working anymore and mice squeaking here and there. Ray
walked a little further when something touched his hand and fell. It was the idol of goddess
Themis with a blindfold and holding a balance in her hand. He slowly picked up the idol and
put it back in its place. The idol clearly showed that this was the house of an attorney. Ray
walked into a room to his left, “this could have possibly been the room of Ms. Stanton,” Ray
thought. It had a single Victorian-style bed, with torn curtains hanging to it. A small study
table with a broken study lamp, A fountain pen, and a magnifying glass was by the side.
Also on the study table was an open notebook with layers of dust piled up on it. Ray cleaned
the dust off and opened the first page of it, it was written in big bold words “my diary “with
the name “lady Stanton” written under it. He realized that it was not a mere notebook but the
personal diary of Ms. Stanton herself. What Ray had found was no less than a treasure for

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him. He also realized that this was not a mere adventure but a discovery that could change his
life.

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