Part III, Chapter III - A Day Off

It has been a week of boring cases;

Man who lost a shoe turned out his dog ate it,

Children who claimed there was a skeleton in their closet turned out to be halloween props,

and corpse from the morgue claimed to have walked out like a zombie, turned out to be a drunken make-up artist.

Midnight, I was in a forest, The dark trees cracked the dark-blue sky above and the only light sources were the pale moon light and my flash light.

"William!" a voice called out to me. I turned to see that it was my little sister, Emily. I ran to her arms but before I could reach her she got pulled up with a noose and hung on a tree, lifelessly. I woke up screaming and noticed my tears falling down.

"That's not how she died!" I comforted myself, my voice cracking. "Fuck my brain"

I checked the time to see that it was 6:00am. I did not bother to go to work. I, instead, helped myself out with breakfast and an early morning bath to help wash my tears away. By 7:30am my phone rang. I let it go to voice mail. "Greetings, random caller!" My recorded voice called out "I cannot come to the phone now because of one of two reasons; i'm either taking a shit or, not in the mood to answer the damn phone. Please leave a message after the phone's impression of a microwave"

The phone beeped before hearing the voice of none other than my friend Jane.

"Hey" said Jane "I'm on my way to your house to check if there's anything wrong. I swear, if you're dead i'm gonna get angry as fuck! So, uh, yeah"

I waited at the door for nearly 20 minutes before hearing a few knocks and Jane's voice call out. I opened the door.

"Oh good, you're still-" she stopped mid-sentence after realizing something was wrong "Anything wrong? Did something happen?"

"No, nothing at all" I answered slowly "Well, something, but don't worry"

"I'm sorry, do you need some time alone? I promise I won't tell the boss and just make something up"

"I need some time alone, I guess"

"Sure thing, i'll check up on you every one hour, so expect phone calls from me. Is it too early for a hug?"

We paused for a few seconds.

"Just do it"

She hugged me for a while before leaving. I noticed she did not bring any car and I slowly closed the door. I went to my drawer to grab a key to re-visit my sister's room that I had not opened since that tragic day. Everything stayed the same way I left it only more dusty. The bed stood between the window and a desk drawer with a lamp above and did not face the door. The closet underneath it that, if you were to lie down on it, your feet would be kicking it. She had no fear of an event of a demon pulling her leg. In fact, she was courageous that if that were to happen she would throw her lamp on it and beat it to death. I flashed back to all the fun times we had in this very bedroom. We would play certain games such as UNO or Chess, sometimes split-screen multiplayer on her old, now broken, Playstation 2, and listen to our favorite songs. I checked under her dusty bed for a briefcase full of discs that contain our old videos. I inserted each after the other on my DVD player.

We were at a beach. We were the only people on it. The two of us wore long clothes and a cowboy hat.

"Look what I made!" called out my sister from the video. She showed me a wooden carving of John Lennon. It was very well done and almost perfect.

"That's wood, Emily" I said "You didn't make it"

"The carving, idiot!" she cried.

"I know" I laughed "It's pretty impressive"

"I did this a couple hundred times. I threw the failed ones away because this is the only one that stands out"

"I deduced correctly, then"

"You'd make a good detective"

"Yeah, well, i'm no Sherlock Holmes. Also, I deduce incorrectly at times and not tell anyone about it"

"You can tell me"

The video ended and jumped to the next one. I paused it, for, my phone rang. I picked it up to hear Jane asking how I was doing.

"I'm feeling better" I answered

"That's good to hear. Oh, I gotta go, an idiot needs me" she hung up. I resumed the video. Emily and I sat down on the same sofa I sat on, it looked cleaner in the video and brand new. The camera in a tripod facing us. She sat on the right of the camera and I on the left. I did not remember much of this video.

"A video message for future us" we said together. She and I pulled out a paper.

"You first, big brother" she announced.

"No, you first"

"If you insist" she cleared her throat "Dear future Emily,

"If you're watching this, it better be five years later when you have a loving husband whose name replaced your last name that means 'Animal home'. Ignore having kids. If you have kids and they are also watching, what monstrosity have you inflicted upon thyself? But enough jibber jabber. I just want you to be an improved version of me, whoever i'll be, a bad person is not one of them. That's it, your turn big brother William"

"Dear future William,

"If you're watching this, you better have a loving wife and adorable twin children named Ember and Quartz who will be there for each other like you and your sister. Whatever, whoever, i'll be, I will accept it"

My tears were falling down when I noticed a small detail behind Emily on her left. It was half the face of a man wearing a red cap and face mask looking directly at the camera, only his left eye and a small portion of skin were the visible parts of his face. I paused the video and took a photo with my phone. I stood up and looked around the sofa down to the smallest detail and hit my toe on the bottom left side and ignored the pain. Looking at the photo I just took again, I tried mimicking the way the man stared at the camera, at the same place, he was very close to the floor, and I, upon ducking as low as possible, could not go that far. I was about to stand back up when I accidentally slid the floor, making a snap sound, behind the sofa open and ajar infront of me. I called Jane to come and I waited for half an hour behind the door. I heard a few knocks before her panting voice.

"I came here as fast I could from the crime scene. Peter took over"

"Come look at this!" I walked her over to my discovery and she grabbed one of my umbrellas and used the tip as a crowbar to pull it open revealing a set of stairs leading down a dark room.

"Usually, it should be ladies first." I mentioned "But for the sake of your protection, i'll go down first. And grab my shoulder so I know you won't just disappear"

We walked down the dark set of stairs, my phone as a flashlight, and Jane holding my right shoulder like I said. We entered a dark room, the only light source emitted from the hatch I discovered. The lights automatically lit up revealing that the room was a simple a bedroom as big as mine, except there was only one bed, and a TV monitor on the right. The smell was horrendous. Suspiciously it looked like something or someone was underneath the blanket. We walked slowly to it.

"Hello?" I said uncovering what was underneath it.

"What the shit!" I cried out discovering that it was none other than the corpse of my sister, Emily. But, one thing bothered me, it did not look rotten enough to have been there for two years, it looked recent.

"This isn't my sister! It can't be, because she died two years ago, I buried her, and her corpse should be nearly a skeleton by now!"

"Calm down!"

I tried to breathe in and out but I was too confused "How can I calm the fuck down if I don't know what the fuck is going on, or why this shit is happening to me?" I cried, my voice cracking. Suddenly the TV monitor turned on by itself. Words popped up in a typing matter. The screen was black and the letters were white. It looked like the screen of a rebooting computer.

"Because" it said "You owe me since elementary - Cupcake"

"What?"

"You don't remember me do you? It's been too long, I guess - Cupcake"

The words cleared up and he typed in the next message. Quoting

" 'A boy who is not embraced by his own village will burn it down to feel its warmth.' Nobody embraced me. I asked for your comfort everyday, and not just you, don't worry. You're not my only target. I already played with the others in the orphanage. They've all died too quickly. But you're the most fun"

"I still don't understand" I claimed

"Solve this case and i'll tell you more. You see your sister's corpse right there, correct? Solve it and you will find me!"

The screen turned off and I sank my head on my hands crying. Jane hugged me again for my comfort. She noticed that my crying from sadness had turned into anger.

"I must not let my emotions get to my head" I exclaimed "Come Jane! We have an asshole-bastard hybrid to find!" what was supposed to be a happy new life for me, had backfired, and now I must stop deducing the obvious and start focusing on the things I never noticed before.

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「「Everything's going well so far. For me anyway! - Cupcake」」