The model town was unveiled right at the beginning of the village's Art Month - perfectly to scale and perfectly detailed including tiny versions of every villager going about their lives. From Mrs Bennett running her fruit and veg stand near the butcher's, to Headmistress Patel ringing her infamous bell in the playground, to Mr Roshe having the cheeky back-of-the-shop ciggie he'd never admit to.
Everyone was there... until they weren't.
At first people thought it was a part of the Art Month, some criticism of the dying smaller villages as their children grew on and moved out to the cities. When Art Month ended and none of the missing folks had come home again and the artist himself had gone missing, the remaining people began to panic.
It was young Laura who first noticed the model of her mummy lying down in spilled paint behind the neighbour's conservatory. Laura was overjoyed! The child's mind said she'd clearly tripped over a bucket of red paint but she was home now and that was all that mattered.
Only when she found her mummy, the paint wasn't paint and she wasn't breathing. A pattern that would soon replicate itself for every missing person til the last one was found collapsed in a pool of their own blood and the last few inches of the model town's floor had been painted a beautiful, bright red.
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