Twist

The clouds were a depressing shade of gray and everyone was on edge thanks to the continuous murders around the town of Courts. Max was a sun-yellow haired boy that had blue eyes, he was a straight A student and was the average height for a 15 year-old. “We’re going to be later AGAIN,” he said as Niamh came speeding down her front steps and next to her best friend. Niamh had a head of dark chocolate hair and amber eyes, is just below average in her height and lets her emotions get the better of her judgment.

“I. Bloody. Hate. Math.”, said Lucy as her head slammed into her blue school locker door, Lucy had night-dark hair that’s lighter at its tips with brown eyes to go with it, and, as you can all tell, likes the stupid idea of brain damage.

During her fourth lesson, Niamh got bored and she couldn’t use her phone because Mr. Brocket was teaching her class and made everyone put the phones in a plastic tub on his desk, so naturally Niamh got out her journal. She started going through her notes, findings and clues. On every page of her journal had a different picture of one of the murder scenes in Court’s, signalling that with every new picture was a different murder. She was now trying to find connections through the murders to help her get the identity of the murderer and stopping them before they could hurt anyone else. After fifteen minutes the lunch bell rang, Niamh was the first one out of her class; she sat at an empty table near the wall so no one would distract her from doing her investigation.

Halfway through lunch Niamh, along with everyone else in the cafeteria, heard someone screaming. Turns out it was Rebecca Dells, the biggest prick and attention seeker in the school; but she made Niamh think. Then it happened, the reality of the situation hit her like a train. She went through all the names of the places where the murders had occurred and found that they were normally crowded places, if they weren’t packed with people then you would have about... eight minutes with only one or two people around. So these murders would have to be carefully timed, they would have know who their target was and where they were going... Niamh was so deep in her own thoughts that she didn’t notice her childhood friend Max sit in the chair in front of her, “Niamh... Niamh~... EARTH TO NIAMH!” , He said, this sudden sound ripped her from her thoughts and scared the crap outta her. She felt a sharp pain in her thighs and knees, she then realised that, thanks to the scare, she bolted up and hit her legs under the table. “Oh god- I’m so so sorry Niamh!”, “It’s fine Max”.

That afternoon she walked home with Max, the whole way there Max just kept saying, “I’m sorry Niamh!”. She stopped in front of her house and waved to her friend goodbye and walked inside. Once she changed, she sat down on her bed and started her English homework. Once that was out of the way she went to her cupboard, reached up, and grabbed the little box there; she sat back down on her bed and put her computer back on her lap and opened the box. Inside the box there were many different U.S.B’s, she reached inside and took out the gray one- she plugged it in and started looking through the security camera footage. Thanks to her mother being a cop and her being as sneaky and quiet as she is, she managed to get the passwords to her work files. She went to the one called, “SLV3648”, clicked it and the video popped up, it was in a bar. She reached to her nightstand and took her journal off it and in front of her screen, she flipped through the pages until she reached the page she needed. There were two pictures, one of the bar, concluding that this was the right bar, and a picture of the victim, she moved the book to look back at the screen again. Yep, thats them alright, the unfortunate target. She quickly checked the date of the footage, one month ago, yep, this was the person. She flicked back to the video in time to see a strange hooded man walk up to them, the killer looked to have, from what she could see, dirty-blonde hair and green eyes, looked a few inches taller then Max and was the only one with the victim. Okay, imma backup a few thousand miles, the reason no one remembers what happened during that night was because everyone and I mean EVERYONE was blackout drunk and couldn’t remember shit. They were only talking so Niamh got up and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich, when she got back from the kitchen she took her computer back into her lap and looked down at the screen-which she immediately regretted.

Everyone had lost the plot and were acting like hyper three year old toddlers, god it was a sight to cause blindness, and not in the good way.

Her disgust was broken when she heard a scream from the speaker of her computer, she quickly looked back to the soon-to-be-dead and mysterious guy... but what she saw made her face go white... right there was someone she knew, an old friend.. driving a knife through someone’s heart. There was so much blood that even the drunk lil bastards soon caught on and ran yelling, screaming and crying out the door. Niamh refused to believe that someone she knew, one of her friends would kill someone! Of course she didn’t fully believe that until the man took his hood off and looked up at the camera. Her blood ran cold, she knew the boy... this was Jack. He was in her science and Mathematics classes, Jack had dirty-blond hair with emerald eyes. She didn’t know the boy very well, but she knew that he was bullied at school because of the scar running across the bridge of his nose and that a big part of his right cheek had dark brown skin covering it. She watched as he walked over to the camera in the corner, and shut it off.

That night, Niamh was wide awake. She couldn’t sleep knowing there would be a murderer sitting behind her and could spray her blood across the science lab. She eventually fell into a light slumber, thinking of what bullshit Lucy would pulled out as an excuse for not doing her homework.

The next day she made sure to avoid Jack as much as physically possible, but the gods were smiling down at her and gave her the distance she needed from Jack. But as her day went on, she was also putting pieces together...

After school, when she and Max stopped at her house, she told gave Max a letter, telling him not to open it until he thought the time was right. As soon as she closed her door her Mother gave her a crushing hug. “Mu-Mum, I-I can’t b-breath!”, “Oh god! Sorry hun!”, her mother, Ms. Kathlin or Kelly, had reddish-brown hair and brown eyes. “Oh and Niamh, I made you some chocolate chip pancakes. There on the counter”, “Thanks Mum!”, she kissed her cheek and ran to the kitchen and saw the plate of chocolate chip pancakes with banana and strawberry pieces with whipped cream. She took the plate, the fork and knife, and ran upstairs into her room. She put her pancakes on her bedside table and grabbed her computer and History book to start her Medievil assessment. Once it was half done she put her homework on her desk, came back to her bed and grabbed her journal, grabbed her pancakes and grabbed her computer, exiting from her HaSS research and onto her ‘murder mystery’.

Its been about an hour since Ms. Kathlin left for work, and an hour since she stopped her snooping and turned to Netflix! She was currently watching The Umbrella Academy when she had gotten a new E-mail.

“Meet me at pebble park, bring no one, tell no one. Meet me there at 8pm exactly, don’t be late”, Niamh checked who the E-mail was from... but found it was an anonymous. She turned to her alarm which said 7:45, so she had about fifteen minutes until the deadline. She grabbed her gray rain coat and sneakers, walked down stairs and out front door. She was walking down the footpath, Niamh lived close to Pebble park; around 5 minutes away. She loved this park, all the colour it holds was breathtaking... but now it was dark, and all colour was gone, there was a thick fog coating the ground, the only light there was a single lamppost next to a bench. Niamh sat down on the bench, waiting, watching.. listening for any movement in the distance.

It’s been about 10 minutes since she sat down and nothings happened.. yet. She has let her guard down a bit because of all the time she’s had to think this over. As she made up her mind to leave... she left a cold, sharp, piecing feeling in her chest; she dropped to the ground while grabbing her chest. Her normally crystal clear vision was now invaded by black spots, everything went from deathly cold to a comfortable warm.

Then everything went black... everything went quite... everything became still...

It was early morning and Max was going to Niamh’s house for the weekend. He walked around the dark park, and was about to turn the corner when something shining in the darkness of the park. He was interested on what what was in the park that was so shiny it caught any of the little light in the park. Max entered the park and after a few steps.. he froze... right there in front of the bench.. was his best friend, Niamh. He ran to her crying, why, why was his best friend have to die... she was the only one at their school who didn’t bully him for being gay, she was the only one who helped him get through all his insecurities and struggles... and now she’s gone.

When he ran out of tears to cry he took a better look at his friend, she had a gap in her chest with dry blood surrounding it, along with the ground and her clothes. He noticed a note jabbed into her soldier with a stick, he nearly started crying again seeing on how much pain it must’ve caused if she was still hanging onto life. He then turned his attention to the note, it read, ‘Curiosity killed this cat”. Heel was mortified at this killers sick joke, man or woman, boy or girl, he was going to teach that Son of a bitch a lesson they’ll never forget.

He just couldn’t stop crying and hoping that this was all a bad dream and that his only friend was gone. He couldn’t take it, seeing her like this, he just couldn’t take it... before he knew it he was already running, running and running until he was in his room, face buried in his pillows with tears rolling down his cheeks. When he sat up to breath he saw the letter Niamh gave him, he say up slowly, not taking his eyes off of the envelope that sat unopened. He got off his bed and sat on his desk chair, now sitting in front of the letter. He sat there, motionless, not knowing what he should do... Niamh told him to open this letter when he thought it was the right time. He reached over slowly and grabbed it, his breath caught in his throat as he slowly started to open the letter.

‘Dear Max,