untitled (standard:drama, 1278 words) [1/2] show all parts
Author: Lawless	Updated: Apr 09 2001	Views/Reads: 3713/2219	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The first segment of a suspenseful short. Part two is on its way.

It was a saturday night, I was settling down to go to bed. I had my
pajamas on, I had brushed my teeth and I had washed my face.  When I 
had finished my cleansing I locked the front door of my single bedroom 
apartment.   I walked through the kitchen to see if I had left any 
appliances running; I hadn't.  Lastly I turned out the hallway light 
with the switch near my bedroom. I closed the door to my room and 
prepared to get comfortable for the night.  I approached my computer to 
preform my final email check of the day.  However what I saw next 
nearly gave me a heart attack. As I lifted my 'Britney Spears' screen 
saver upon moving my mouse for the first time in over an hour, I saw a 
blood-curtling message typed out on my screen.  The message included 
three digital images pasted onto the screen with text surrounding them. 
 The first two pictures on the page were pictures of the brutal murder 
which captured my mother and father over five years ago.  The third 
picture showed a portrait of my family that had been taken many years 
ago.  Tragically this selection was always one of my mother's 
favorties.  Yet this picture had been slightly altered by the sender.  
For now it had the faces of my mother and father cut out, and the faces 
of my brother and I covered with large X's.  The X's appeared to be 
made with blood.  They completely covered both of our entire faces.  
Two words graphically written in blood, and which looked like they had 
been copied off of some gory website, surrounded the photos.  "It's 
Over," was spelled out in a large bloody font.  I became very scared.  
All that I could think to do now was see if my brother Andrew was safe. 
I called him on the telephone.  555-5646.  He didn't answer the first 
ring, the second, or the third. 

After four rings his answering machine picked up and gave the timeless
message we had made years ago.  Back when we first left home for school 
and started out on our own.  It was the first time we had ever been 
away from our home and it was great to make that first big step. Prior 
to that for over a year we had lived with our Grandmother following the 
death of our parents.  Life was never the same for us. 

We chose to attend Boston University together and we looked for an
apartment in one of our uncle's several apartment buildings just 
outside the BU campus, right in the outskirts of Boston.  We found the 
perfect place.  A mile from classes and right in the heart of a huge 
population of students living on and near campus. Our uncle allowed us 
nearly free rent and rarely even collected the small sum from us most 
months.  We arranged the place the way we wished right when we moved 
in, and we took it from there.  Together we had great times during 
those years in Boston, and we met tons of friends and had tons of 
relationships within those walls.  It was a great. 

At first I felt releived that he was not home and not involved with this
possibly dangerous situation.  However, soon I became very worried that 
he may have already been struck by an attack of some sort. Who could 
have sent this threat? 

I lived only a few miles away now.  I had finished my undergraduate
schooling in just three years, and Drew remained in the old apartment 
now with his girlfriend for his fourth and final year of studying at 
the School of Management. Since I lived so close I decided to take a 
drive past his place, and see if anything was wrong.  Hopefully he 
would be home by the time I got there and we could talk it over. I 
arrived in minutes.  I had broken nearly every speed limit on every 
road I had driven, during my ride over.  I leaned my large Kawasaki on 
its kickstand in the alley below the window of my old apartment.  I 
still had a key to the place, but I chose to take the back way in case 
there was trouble.  We had rigged a sort of a trap-door allowing us to 
get in and out of our apartment in the event that there was any problem 
and we needed a quick escape.  Only two or three other people knew 
about this secret passage, because we had crafted it ourself.  Our 
father knew, he had helped us build it.  He was a stock broker with a 
major trading company, and throughout his career he had made his way up 
to the top of his company.  But deep down he was a true tradesman at 
heart.  He had taught us all the old carpentry skills he had learned as 
a child, from his own father, while growing up in a small Connecticutt 
town. 

I climbed into my old kitchen through the false panel beside the ceiling
fan, I dropped lightly onto the old beat-up linoleum covered floor.  I 
examined the room for any clues, I noticed a few changes since I had 
left 4 months ago, but nothing I saw created any display of possible 


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