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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 18, 2022 8:29:37 GMT -5
The DARK Avenue Murders A Collaborative Mystery
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 18, 2022 15:13:14 GMT -5
Chapter One By Mister m
Something was crooked in this town.
It had been a long, hot summer, but yesterday the storm had finally broken. As I drove my car through the drifting winding lanes up to the mansion, I could hear the sounds of water spraying up behind me as the wheels cut through the rainfall. There had been nowhere for it to go, the ground too hard and dry from the relentless pounding of sunbeams.
The nights were growing longer, and it was still dark as I made my way there. I had received the call in the early hours of that morning. I had been awake, as I always was - sleep rarely came to me at this time. I had so much responsibility, and it left me restless. The weight of every 667ers lives rested on my shoulders, how could I possibly let myself sleep?
As I drove past the Rubens memorial, it filled my heart with sorrow. If Dante were still here things would have been different, I thought. How wrong I was, and yet how right. Dante wasn't dead of course, only gone. He had left us like so many others, and each night I prayed for his return, even though I knew in my heart it would not happen.
As I approached the mansion, I was heralded by an array of cars and flashing lights. Semblance, my junior, was already on hand, and he gave me a briefing of the situation. The body had been found by the housekeeper, at around 2 in the morning. She had heard a sound, a gunshot, and had proceeded to enter the study, and there he was. Lord Zortegus was as dead as they came.
Zortegus had enjoyed a life of opulence. His mansion with extravagant, with marbled floors, stone gargoyles, grand ballrooms. He had lived a life of riches, but that made no difference when you were dead. All dead men are poor. I found myself in the same place as the housekeeper had been only a few hours earlier, looking down at the corpse. Although he was laying face down, I could tell where the wound was. The blood was still pooling out onto the marbled floor around him, nowhere for it go, like so much dirty rainwater.
'Mr. Lucio' said the pathologist, bent over the corpse. 'How are you doing.'
I merely shrugged at Robert. 'I take each day as it comes, not that it makes them any easier to bear. What sort of timeframe are we looking at here?'
'Time of death would be between two and three hours ago. It seems to me that he was stabbed, as there's an incision in his lower abdomen, and its quite deep, and I would say it was made with some force. As he fell, he banged his head on the desk, and we can see on a few mild abrasions on the wrist, there, which suggests some kind of struggle.'
I looked at the desk behind Zortegus; there were a mass of papers strewn about, some tipping over on to the floor.
'Sir'. said Semblance, 'Do you think something could have been taken? It looks as though somebody was searching for something.'
'Its impossible to know.' I replied. 'If they found what they were looking for, then it's gone. Smoke on the breeze. Perhaps we may never know.'
Semblance made to look through the scant papers on the desk, but I held up a hand of refusal. 'I think we need to talk with the housekeeper.'
'Sir, I've already taken a statement from her.'
'Then she will be well prepared to give us another.'
Roxy was waiting for us in a small tearoom downstairs. She was as demure and unruffled as she always was. I could have expected her to be more displaced by finding the dead body of her employer only a few hours earlier, but that was Roxy for you. Immovable, Immutable, Impeccable.
'I am Detective Chief Inspector Jean Lucio of the Dark Avenue Police Force, and this is my associate, Detective Inspector Semblance. I understand that you found Lord Zortegus' body earlier this morning?'
Roxy raised an eyebrow at me, betraying a hint of curiosity as to my formality, but she did not question it directly. I expected that she understood the seriousness of the circumstances.
'That is correct, Mr. Lucio.' Roxy smiled at me demurely, but her eyes would not meet my gaze. It was not so long ago that she had been my apprentice, my protégé. All that had changed since then, and there was an unspoken tension hanging in the room between us.
'And what was it that caused you to discover the body? Why did you enter Lord Zortegus' room?'
'I heard a gunshot.'
Semblance, who had been dutifully scribbling notes into a pad looked up at me curiously at this point.
'Of course. And could you describe to me exactly what the scene was in the study, exactly as you found it?'
'He was on the floor, and there was a quite of bit of blood. There were papers blowing around from the desk, so I shut the window to keep out the storm. I checked for any signs of life, and finding none I called for the police. You took quite a while to arrive, if I may say so.'
'Miss. Roxy, did Lord Zortegus receive any visitors at all prior to his death? Say, in the last 24 hours or so?'
Roxy's brow furrowed, betraying a moments hesitation, before she answered; 'No. No, I don't think so.'
'That will be all.' I said, giving her a curt nod, and leaving the room without a second glance.
We found ourselves stood out in the driveway of the mansion, the beams of sunlight beginning to edge their way over the horizon.
'Sir, may I ask a question?' Semblance asked.
'Of course.' I replied.
'I thought Robert said that Mr. Zortegus had been stabbed?'
'Indeed he did.' I walked over to a pair of iron gates at the edge of the driveway, with Semblance following obediently behind me.
'So why did Roxy say she heard gunshots?'
'A very good question.' I replied. I knelt down next to the edge of a neatly kept lawn, and brushed my hands gently against the ground. 'And here is another one for you. What do you make of this?'
Semblance looked carefully down at the ground for a few moments, closely inspecting where my hand was touching. 'That's mud, Sir.'
'That is a tyre track, Semblance. Looks to me like it came from a motorbike of some sort, and the tracks are fresh - The rain last night must have softened the ground. So it seems clear to me that Zortegus did have a visitor after all. So is Roxy simply mistaken, or is she lying to us again?'
'Sir, surely you're not suggesting that she's a suspect?'
'I think not. If you were going to kill somebody, why would you lie about the method? And why lie about the visitor? Surely that would be a perfectly good suspect for us to focus our attention on? It simply doesn't make sense.'
'What beats me is why anybody would want to kill a nice guy like Mr. Zortegus. He wasn't the type to have any enemies.'
'He was exactly the type. Rich, powerful, wealthy, successful. On the surface he seemed like a thoroughly decent guy. Underneath... Who knows. But a man like that? He has enemies. They're just harder to spot. ` Truth be told, my head was spinning. I used to be the man with all the theories, but after all these years I had nothing. I couldn't understand what happened here, or where to begin making sense of it. All I had were clues that led to nowhere.
'I wish Dante were here', I said, to myself more than anybody else.
As we headed back up to the mansion, Robert and a group of officer were exiting the front doors, Zortegus' body lain beneath a sheet on a trolley. Semblance went up to him, and rested a hand gently upon the corpse.
'Rest pleasantly, Zortegus.' said Semblance.
There was a look of compassion in his eyes, a decency I had not felt myself in so many years. Another citizen of our society was dead. Nothing I could do could change that, and deep down I knew it. My fear was that nothing I could would help, and nothing I could do would stop what was going to happen next.
I could feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders, and it was crushing me.
The case was on.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Sept 19, 2022 15:54:20 GMT -5
Wow, I like how this is being set up.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 28, 2022 16:25:44 GMT -5
Chapter Three By Mister M
Across the way from Zortegus' mansion of opulence there were a small cluster of quaint little cottages that in olden days had been home to some of the servants, maids, and general household staff of the lord of the manor. These days they were occupied by those few residents of the town who were unable to afford better accommodation. Two such residents of these humble abodes were Mister M and Anka, and on the morning that Zortegus' body had been found, Mister M in particular was feeling perturbed.
He was sat at the kitchen table, a letter laid out in front of him. He had received it the day before, and he had known full well what would be inside, but still he was unsettled. There was an egg sat in front of him, the top cracked off, yolk dripping down the side. Try as he might, he could not find the appetite.
Anka walked into the kitchen, still wearing the coat and boots from her morning walk.
'What are you looking like that for?' she asked, as Mister M cast her a look of displeasure.
'We need to do something. We can't just ignore this.' He pointed at the letter. 'We need to talk to the others. Maybe Zortegus, he always knows what to do.'
'Well, you can't talk to Zortegus. At least not if you want an answer. He's dead.'
Mister M sighed, and began to rub his temples. 'Well, that's hardly ideal.'
Anka nodded. 'I passed by the mansion this morning, and it was crawling with police. I spoke to one of the officers, and he said it was murder. Stabbed, apparently.'
Mister M looked at the egg, yolk pooling at the side of the cup, as if it were bleeding. 'Well, then we have no choice anymore. We've got to go.'
'Go??'
'Yes. Leave. Get out of here. Now.' Mister M was shaking his head. 'We can't stay, It's too dangerous.'
Anka laughed. 'Don't be ridiculous.'
'If they came for Zortegus then they will come for us as well.' Mister M picked up the letter, shaking it in her face. 'Did you not read this properly? I'm not sitting around waiting for whatever happened to him to happen to us.'
Anka wrenched the letter from his grasp, and tore it into shreds, letting the pieces fall onto the floor 'Then don't. Just forget about it. Nothing is going to happen, and I will hear no more of it. I'm going for another walk.'
She slammed the door behind her as she left, and Mister M sat, silently, feeling ever more lost.
-//--
Roxy had to wait until evening to make her move.
The police and other investigators were still skulking around for most of the day, and she wanted to make sure that her actions would be unobserved. Lately there had been too many house guests, and she didn't like it. She needed her privacy, otherwise her secrets began to leak out of her. It did not matter though, soon she would be gone from this place.
As the sun began to set, she decided it was time. The last of the police had departed, bear had taken a trip into town, and Terry was locked up in his room.
She went into one of the many drawing rooms that had been unencumbered by activity for many months, and lit a small fire in the hearth. She warmed her hands against the flames, and waited as they grew taller and stronger, licking there way upwards.
Roxy reached into her dress and took out the letter. When she had seen it arrive yesterday morning, her heart had almost broken. She had thought that Zortegus was one of the good ones, but yt turned out he was just like everybody else. When she had opened that letter she had had no choice but to act.
She threw the letter onto the flames, and watched as the secrets it contained burned into ash.
--//--
I heard a sound from outside, possibly a car door slamming, maybe a window shutting, I couldn't be sure. Whatever it was, it was enough to pull me back from the world in which I was immersed. I noticed for the first time the darkness that had surrounded me, and sighed. The day was done, and yet I had achieved nothing.
Semblance had informed me of the situation at the mansion, and so I had set him to the task of asking the towns residents if they had seen anything unusual in the previous twenty four hours. It was important work, helping to build a picture of what had been going on before the murder, but it also kept Semblance out of the way. I needed to focus.
Ever since I had joined the force, I had begun to keep dozens of files and notes on each of the citizens of Dark Avenue. They were filled with every thought, note, and theory that I had amassed over the years, and as such the files were so large and dense that I could not simply peruse them briefly for a tiny speck of knowledge; I had to lose myself.
The trouble was that I never know where to stop. There was so much detail that it was impossible to find anything of use. I had lost myself in my own maze, and I couldn't see the wood for the trees. But it made no difference. Everything I had searched through, every thought that played over and over in my head, it had led me nowhere. I was the DAPD's premier detective, and yet I had nothing. I had no ideas, no suspects, no clue.
I heard the sound again, and realised that it was somebody knocking. There were gentle knuckles rapping on my door, and I could ignore them no longer.
'Come in.'
Semblance opened the door gently, and I could read a look of disappointment at the darkness of my office.
'Have you found out anything?'
'Sir.' Said Semblance, a touch of sadness in his eyes. 'Something has happened.'
'things happen all the time Semblance. I'm going to need you to be more specific'
'There was a break-in last night, sir, at Twiggy's Tisane's.' There was a somber note to Semblance's voice.
'Was anything taken?'
'No, there wasn't. But it's Twiggy, sir. She's gone. She's missing.'
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Post by R. on Oct 3, 2022 11:35:17 GMT -5
Jean Lucio pushed open the door to the near-deserted café, where I had been waiting patiently for the DAPD to arrive since I had called to tell them that the window had been shattered and Twiggy was nowhere to be found. I come here for coffee and breakfast often, and I know Twiggy well enough to know that she’d never be this late to work. “Hello, Bee,” he said, with a suspicious look in his eye. “Hello,” I said, too distraught to meet his gaze. “This place is in a terrible state,” he muttered, “are you sure nothing was taken?” “Nothing that I know of, at least. All the money is still in the till, none of the equipment has been stolen, and I’m pretty sure nobody would break in here to steal a bag of coffee. In other words, I’m almost certain they were after Twiggy herself.” I felt my heart speed up in my chest as I said that, but at the same time voicing my fears out loud instead of keeping them closed up in my mind was strangely reassuring. At some point while I was talking to Mr Lucio Semblance had also entered the room, and was thoroughly searching behind the counter. Suddenly he stood up from where he was checking the floor of the café, and I saw a piece of paper clutched in his hand. As he approached the Chief Inspector I saw that it was an envelope, with Twiggy’s name typewritten on the front. It was empty, but Mr Lucio was peering at it as if it were a vital clue. He swiftly pocketed it and joined in the search himself, sending me and Semblance to look upstairs in Twiggy’s flat. But despite the clutter everywhere in the flat’s two tiny rooms, I found nothing suspicious at all save for a mud stain on the carpet which I foolishly neglected to tell Mr Lucio about when we came down to declare the fruitlessness of our search. I think I’ll regret that for the rest of my life. The two inspectors thanked me sincerely, before telling me to leave so they could have an important conversation among themselves. I decided to walk home and take some time to process these two terrible tragedies, and how they could have happened in such a small time within our beautiful community. I gazed at the scaffolding that still surrounded the Hermes Monument, and the familiar places where the red paint peeled off my front door. Everything the exact same, but at the same time so changed by the events of the past few days. As I turned the key in the lock, I wondered why that envelope had been so important to Mr Lucio and Semblance, and when I opened the door, there, my name typewritten on its ivory surface, was my answer.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 3, 2022 14:51:05 GMT -5
This story deserves more love and reaction from the 667 masses, otherwise we will just murder you all.
(In the story, obviously)
(...)
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 18, 2022 5:56:14 GMT -5
Chapter Five By ResemblanceJean and the inferior version of myself hadn't visited in a while, which I was fine with. I moved away from the city to get away from all of the chaos, sadly it seems it followed me here. I walked into Lord Zortegus's study room to tidy up a bit, he may have been gone, but that was no excuse to not maintain a clean environment. It almost killed me to be in the room, almost as much as it killed Lord Zortegus. I took notice of a patch of blood, Lord Zortegus had accidentally cut himself a few weeks prior and bled all over the place, seems I had missed a spot. It didn't matter now. Afterwards I busied myself with the dishes, I extracted several ceramic bowls, spoons, forks, plates that once belonged to the Duchess of Winnipeg, and one long knife. I looked at the blade and saw my own reflection. "No amount of cleaning will ever wash away the atrocity you helped commit," I said to the utensil. I placed all the dishes in their respective location and decided a break was necessary. The library was full of such a vast collection, I was worried by what would happen to them all, and decided to sneak a few of my favorites out. Nobody would miss them. Ding DongI opened the door and averted my gaze. It was Lord Zortegus's business partner, Glittery. True to her name, she wore very dark clothing and her makeup made her eyelids sparkle. "Hello," she said, as if she wanted to be somewhere else. I know I did. "What brings you here?" I asked. "I misplaced my umbrella, and I'm sure I left it here." "I have been cleaning the house since your last visit a few nights ago, I can assure you there is no umbrella." "Don't test me," Glittery said, a hint of danger in her voice. "I think it would be best if you left, who knows when the police will return." The business woman looked around, scoffed, and walked away. She was rich, why was she so hung up over an umbrella anyways? Before I shut the door, I picked up the newspaper and was appalled at what I had read. Twiggy, who had been missing for almost a week now, had been found. Dead. I didn't know what to do, should I tell the police the truth about that night, or should I keep protecting someone dear to me?
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 18, 2022 18:34:29 GMT -5
True to her name, she wore very dark clothing and her makeup made her eyelids sparkle. This is weirdly accurate.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 20, 2022 16:33:25 GMT -5
I just read the first chapter. I'm very flattered! Glad to have been portrayed as a detective, narrator and protagonist! I'm sad that I only paid attention to this now... I hope this time I don't die tragically (this is a real fear since Semb is a two author). But the first chapter is really good! Sounds like a real detective story to me. What was the killer looking for? Why does Roxy claim to have heard a gunshot? (I mean, was the shot fired by the victim before death? Was there more than one invader and did the invaders fight each other? Why does Roxy seem to be hiding something? Could it be that she is friends with a possible suspect and she doesn't want to incriminate him?
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Oct 21, 2022 4:56:34 GMT -5
I have finished reading what has been written so far. I'm satisfied with the path the story is taking. I believe we are in the narrative arc of explanation. I'm glad that Dark Avenue is being portrayed as a small community and not just a building. It really makes things more difficult. I like that the killer or killers have some sort of secret motivation, and it's not just a serial killer. I also like that material evidence is left and investigated, but that at the same time the psychological characteristics of the crime are not disregarded. I also like that supernatural abilities a
re not on the table. Mysterious letters about a dark past is a topic that I really like. However, I would like to read a scene, however brief, in which someone introduces a character new to the community to the citizens, geography, and some history of this Dark Avenue portrayal. I think that would allow the reader a little more involvement with the story. I loved the mental description of my character. I want to read more of this, but only about me. It may seem like a self-centered statement, but it's not. I think for the structure the story is taking, it would be bad if many characters had such detailed descriptions of their secret thoughts. I would be happy if only my narration was in first person, and everything else in third person. (As in the Alex Cross novels). I think first-person narration works like a stream of personal thoughts, and unless someone has reason to try to deceive yourself (or do a narration type writing literally something to someone), I think it's weird that the person doesn't reveal secrets to yourself.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 1, 2023 14:40:01 GMT -5
Truth be told, my head was spinning. I used to be the man with all the theories, but after all these years I had nothing. I couldn't understand what happened here, or where to begin making sense of it. All I had were clues that led to nowhere. 'I wish Dante were here', I said, to myself more than anybody else. As we headed back up to the mansion, Robert and a group of officer were exiting the front doors, Zortegus' body lain beneath a sheet on a trolley. Semblance went up to him, and rested a hand gently upon the corpse. 'Rest pleasantly, Zortegus.' said Semblance. This is one of the best things i've ever contributed to this site. It's a shame this project fell apart.
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Post by Reba on Oct 1, 2023 15:34:15 GMT -5
let's we two do a fic collab @ Mr. Marrow
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Oct 1, 2023 16:28:08 GMT -5
I'd forgotten about this, shame it didn't continue.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 2, 2023 6:40:24 GMT -5
let's we two do a fic collab @ Mr. Marrow Pm me your ideas then
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Oct 2, 2023 6:40:28 GMT -5
let's we two do a fic collab @ Mr. Marrow Pm me your ideas then
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