Genre : Horror, Fantasy, Thriller
Word Count : ~1800
Rating : PG
January 3, 2016: Denver, Colorado
If there ever was a stereotype about how a 15 year old boy's room looks like, this was definitely not it. As Elle tiptoed into her older brother's room, she cannot help but be impressed by how cleaner it was than her own. Books neatly stacked on the shelf and those he was currently reading are on the desk. They were closed and the page he is currently on have a bookmark placed in them. Elle was happy to see that her brother was using the bookmarks that she had made for him a while back. His used clothes are in the laundry basket and the fresh ones are neatly folded in the drawers. There is not a speck of dust or rather anything lying around in the floor, which made the tiptoeing really easy.
Things were not always this way with her brother. Just a few months back, he was hanging out with the wrong crowd, skipping school, failing exams. He was indifferent to everyone in the house. Would never listen to her parents and hardly acknowledged her existence in the house. And yet, just one day, he drastically changed. He cleaned himself up and stopped hanging around with his old "friends". His grades got way better and in these last few months, Elle found herself growing closer to her brother than anyone else in the world.
As Elle tiptoed into her brother's room where he was sleeping in his bed, she suddenly jumped on him. David woke up startled, looking around trying to figure out what happened. As he looked around the room with a confused and shocked face, he found his sister puffing her chest and then shouting with a loud voice,
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!"
David let out a groan and then checked the clock, it was 6.30 AM. He usually wakes up at 7, so he lost half an hour of his sleep. He looked at his sister and simply replied,
"Thank you, thank you, now please leave me, so that I can have some sleep."
"Come on, its your birthday! Look what I made for you!" she said, as she stuck out her hand and showed him a card.
David delicately took the card in his hand. In the front it said, "Happy Birthday to the Best Brother in the World!" with generous use of glitter all over it. It made him a little happy, but he wouldn't show it. "Too much glitter don't you think?"
"Oh, psshhh, stop complaining and look inside!", she was looking at him all excited.
He opened the card and it had a drawing inside. Elle was good at drawing, but she was never confident about it. A month back, David had coerced her into entering into a competition after looking at her drawings. She managed to win a consolation prize to which David's reaction was, "I thought you were good for a second prize at least, those judges wouldn't know art if it hit them in their faces". From then on, she had been even more hard-working and dedicated towards improving her drawing skills.
David looked intently at the drawing. It had a small timid girl and in front of her was a knight in his armour. Facing the girl and knight were several nasty ghosts and monsters. The knight was extending his hand as if he was motioning them to stop. The entire drawing had a background that depicted hell with a sea of fire and corpses floating on them and several mountains spitting lava.
"This is really good. Elle, you should really enter this in the next competition."
"It is good, but no, I won't enter this one. Do you understand this drawing?", Elle was a little fidgety as she asked this question.
"The knight is saving the girl from hell", David replied staring at the drawing again to see if there is anything he missed.
"The girl is me, the ghosts and monsters are the bullies who were bullying me and the knight is you"
David looked at the picture again and he noticed the faces for the first time. Indeed, the girl resembled Elle. The ghosts and monsters had faces too. And the knights face did look like his own.
"Thank you", Elle squeaked, "I wanted to say this before but thank ..."
David flicked her forehead and she whimpered in pain. "You don't need to thank me. It's what families do."
Elle hugged him and gave him a quick peck in the cheek, "Come down, we have a surprise for you!" and she left the room hopping like a bunny.
After she left, David closed the card and checked the clock again. It was close to 7 already, so he placed the card on his desk, went to bathroom to wash himself and get ready. Then, he came down to have breakfast, his entire family stood there,
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY", they chorused.
His mother and his sister both had awoken early that day to bake him a cake. As David came down the steps, his mother approached him, clasped her hands around his head and pulled it down so that she can kiss his forehead.
"Mom, I am old now, you didn't have to do all this", he said with a smile on his face, which was getting harder to hide.
They split the cake, between them and happily ate them. David praised his mother and his sister for the delicious cake and looked at his father with a querulous look, "no gifts from you?" His father threw the car keys at him and told him, "You are old now, you don't need gifts. You need to learn responsibilities, so I am going to teach you how to drive." As he finished, his father grinned at him. David could not hide his astonishment and went ahead and hugged his father.
His father then turned on the TV. There was on-going interview with a serial killer expert on the morning show. They were discussing the latest serial killer who has hit the headlines - the "Child Reaper".
Interviewer: Child Reaper has killed 7 children of various ages across the country so far. Do you think we will be able to catch him at all?
Expert: The child reaper is a very elusive killer. The time between his kills are quite far apart. He is also killing at different locations. Even though so far his attacks have been on children, they vary in their ages from 7 to 14. 14 year old being the last known victim. So far, we haven't seen a discernible pattern to his killing, except for the fact that he leaves a note for the parents to tell them where he has buried their kid. It looks like a difficult case, but someday he is bound to make a mistake and when he does, we will catch him.
Interviewer: Speaking of the note, according to the latest information release from the police, there is some mystery around that, isn't it?
Expert: Yes. All the families of the victims tell the police that they received the note the day their child disappeared and yet when the bodies were dug out from their burial place, the time of death was several months prior to receipt of the note.
Interviewer: How does one explain that?
Expert: We don't have an explanation for it as of yet.
"Must be god's angels", David's mother blurted out while she picked the plates from the table. David, who was lost in thoughts during the interview, suddenly stood up and began helping out his mother to clean up. Elle followed her brother to help clean up as well.
"What do you mean god's angels?", David's father asked.
"Angels must be with their family so that they don't have to deal with their son's death. That is why, these families have been finding the note much later, so that they get to spend some time with their kids before they get the news. That must be the explanation.", David's mother said with an enlightened face and the conviction of a true believer.
"You should be on this show," replied David's father half jokingly.
Elle and David got up, waved their parents goodbye and went to school. It was a normal uneventful day at school for both of them. When school ended, Elle decided to walk home with her brother. They were passing by an empty park on the way to their house, when an unimaginable pain coursed through David's hand. It was moulding itself and changing its shape. David screamed out in pain. Elle ran up to him to see, worried by what she was seeing happening to his hand. David turned around to look at Elle. However, what Elle saw was not David's face but a face she did not recognize. She got scared and fainted right then. The changes that were happening to David's body stopped after a while. David looked around to ensure no one was watching, then picked up Elle in his two hands and went home quickly before anyone spotted them.
When Elle came back to her senses, she found herself tied to chair and her mouth was gagged. She looked around and recognized that she was left in the shed of their house. Somebody opened the door to the shed and came in. It was her parents. They looked scared and were relieved to find their daughter safe and sound.
"Where is Dave?", Elle asked worriedly. Her parents went quiet. Her mother began to cry uncontrollably as she continued to hug Elle. Her father lifted his spectacles and rubbed his nose. It was then that Elle had noticed a note in her father's hand.
January 16, 2016: Salt Lake City, Utah
David was sitting inside an abandoned factory lot with another kid his age and they were smoking cigarettes. This David looked nothing like that David from Denver Colorado. So, none of the kids recognized him from the picture of the dead kid that made the TV news as the latest victim of the Child Reaper.
"So David, how do you find our terrible city?", Renny asked.
"It's not bad, I have been in worse", David replied non-chalantly.
"Man, I would love to hear those stories. This city has no ambition. Look at my father, he is a fucking pinko. He helps out everyone and tries to 'share' with the community, even if it comes at the expense of his own family. And my mother does charity work in the church. But nobody fucking helps when we need them. You know what I realized, these goodie two shoes won't make anything of themselves in this world. I never regretted turning towards a life of crime. I got 300$ just by pawning a stolen PS4 and it was only too easy." Renny brought his tirade to a halt as he waved 300$ in front of David. "Sorry, I went off on my own there."
David leaned in, "No, I am quite interested in hearing this. Do tell me more about your family."
