Week 14 blog journals

1: Sam didn't mean to burn his house down. He was so worried about how his parents would react when they got home to see their home as a pile of ashes he started to tear up. He felt a sharp pain in his chest and was worried he was about to have a heart attack. He tried to keep himself calm but the longer he looked into the direction of where his house once stood the worse the pain got. Sam started hyperventilating and couldn't breathe. Maybe it was the ash in his lungs? Everything felt wrong and he hoped that this was all just a bad dream.

2: Cut your story by 25%

The morning started like any other, Clarissa burst through the front doors of her 5th avenue apartment building and ran out into the street. Her hair wasn’t combed, blouse unbuttoned, and last night's mascara caked the underneath of her eyes. She had an uncontrollable twitch in her neck she couldn’t shake too, and it was starting to piss her off. This was a pretty typical morning for Clarissa, running late to work and struggling to keep it together. Fresh out of college, she hadn't quite learned yet how to juggle the partying habits of her 20s and her newfound responsibility. Clarissa thrived when she was with people and considered herself to be a social butterfly, but she had trouble saying no to people, or kicking them out even when it was 4 am on a Tuesday morning. Last night was no exception, several friends came knocking on her door at 11 pm, and she just couldn’t say no. 

She ran to the nearest subway station, heels in hand, hoping there was nothing on the ground that would require her to get a tetanus shot. She jumped on the subway and took a deep breath of relief; she had made the 7:30 subway and would be on time to work. She noticed no one was sitting around her for some reason, she decided to ignore it though. Her neck continued to twitch. Scrolling through a menu of texts, Instagram notifications, Facebook messages, and emails a couple of news notification caught her eye and horrified her.   

“NEW YORKS NEWEST SERIAL KILLER?”  

Clarissa clicked on article after article trying to find any sort of information. How many people had died? Where were the bodies being found? Were there any patterns between the murders? How could this happen when the whole damn city was full of cameras, cell towers, and cops? Didn't the NSA have everyone's phones tapped? Or something? A million questions filled her head and she closed the News app because it seemed like no information had yet been made public. That was New York she thought, another day another gruesome crime. 

The day at the office was like any other, but the news from this morning was always at the back of her mind. She’d be pouring herself another cup of coffee as noises of typing and office chatter filled her ears, and then suddenly, “god what if it's near me?" Clarissa had always been an anxious person but living in a city like New York she typically didn't let things like this bother her, because if she did there would be a million things to worry about all the time. Having pepper spray and her phone always connected to some sort of cell tower typically eased her anxieties about crime in New York, but this time felt different.

On her way home she decided to get off at an earlier subway station and just walk the rest of the way. It was genuinely a beautiful evening, a nice cool 60-degree day, spring was in full swing. She took another deep breath of the air and felt a freshness in her lungs. The anxiety she was feeling lifted from her shoulders and she started to peacefully walk towards her apartment building. That's when she heard it. 

From inside a shop she heard the News, “Police press conference about the murders to start within the next few minutes.” It was a convenience store, so she meandered in and picked out a bottle of water and a bag of chips. She small talked with the cashier until the broadcast started and then transition her conversation to be about the News. The broadcast confirmed all her worst fears, the NYPD admitted this was the most puzzling murder case they had dealt with in a long time. They announced about 15 murders seemed connected, but the victims appeared to be random. They had all happened within the span of only a week and a half and there was essentially no evidence left at the sites. The victims were killed in varying fashions and in different locations. You wouldn't think these murders were connected, except for the one commonality, a symbol drawn in blood around the bodies. The police announced they were about to show the symbol, and if anyone had any information to head to their nearest precinct immediately. Clarissa twitched again. 

The image went across the screen and Clarissa nearly fainted; she recognized the sign. In her heart she realized she knew exactly who had committed these crimes. A friend of a friend who would occasionally come to her parties had this tattooed on them, in very small white ink, on their wrist. She would have never noticed if this friend had not attended her “Neon Lights” themed party, where she changed all the lightbulbs in her apartment with black lights. Clarissa was convinced there was no way anyone else could have drawn this symbol, it was too intricate. The fact the ink had been done so small and in white made the situation seem much more suspicious as well, like it was a secret meant to be well kept. The problem was Clarissa wasn’t the most responsible or put together girl, so she thought the police might discredit her information. There was also another major problem, she didn't remember this person's name, she would have to go through her chain of friends to find it out and she was worried that would cause suspicion and the culprit would leave town.  But the memory was so distinct. All these thoughts happened in a matter of seconds and she ran out of the convenience store to the nearest police station. 

She told them her tale, that she had seen this tattoo on a friend of a friend under black lights at a party she threw. She told them how she had never seen anything like it in her life, and she was sure she had found their guy. The policeman interviewing her took notes but felt a little uneasy as Clarissa twitched and her leg shook. She seemed like she hadn't slept in days. He said something into his walky-talky that she couldn’t quite hear. They took Clarissa into a real questioning room, which she found strange. They asked her where she had been the nights of all 15 murders to which she recounted she has been with her friends. They asked her to give the contact information for these people to confirm her alibi and she gladly opened her phone contacts to give it to them. It was weird though, she couldn’t find the numbers of any of her friends, in fact her contacts book was almost entirely empty. She started to panic and her next rolled again. They started to read Clarissa her rights and she freaked out. “What? Why? You have no evidence! I was helping you!”. Before putting her in cuffs the officer showed Clarissa her own wrist, which distinctly had the same tattoo she recounted the killer having on her own wrist.