The Butcher in the Mist

Virginia City

『Mid-summer, 1999, Virginia City, Montana』

   The Acherontia Atropos, also known as the death's-head hawkmoth, viewed as a symbol of death. 

      The morning had drawn stifling and hot, with the sun rising up to mark the coming of a new day. Children's screams and laughter were heard from outside as they usually awakened early to enjoy the warm weather and play. Alain Parker was not one of them. She lay there, strewn across her bed, her mind filled with fog, as she stared at her navy blue bedroom wall while blinking slowly. The children usually woke her up around this time due to how light of a sleeper she was and how loud they screamed. Her body felt like lead as she laid there, and she mentally combated with herself over whether or not she wanted to move.  

  She'd soon sigh out, willing her body to move. It'd start with a twitch of her fingers, leading to a move of her leg, before she finally motivated herself enough to sit up and get out of bed. She was never much of a morning person, but she felt that it was important to be up early anyway. She'd release a soft yawn as she made her way across her bedroom, glancing over and seeing the second bed adjacent to hers in which held her twin sister. Her mind did mental gymnastics as she pattered her way over to the other bed; it was always a bad idea to wake up her sister. 

"Arya..."

Her voice would mumble as she forcefully shook the sleeping girl in the bed. Her brow would then furrow as she got no response. Perhaps her sister was too deep of a sleeper, and although it was irritating- she slightly envied her for it. 

"Arya!"

Her voice would raise with a shout as she shook her sister even harder. Getting her up was always such a hassle, she often wondered why she even did it. A hand would shoot up, striking Alain across the face, a groan of annoyance was soon heard after. "Shut the fuck up," Arya would groan out as she sat up with a scowl on her face. As per usual. Alain would merely sigh, rubbing her jaw as that was where she was hit. 

"Let's go. Mom and dad probably already made breakfast."
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     The dining room was small, heat easily trapped in by the amount of people eating at the table. The windows were open to release some of the heat, but that didn't help much when there was a lot of people packed together in one space. It was loud as they all chatted to one another; it was all a large family living in a small neighborhood. Nothing much had ever happened around in the small area, until recently...

   "Still readin' the newspaper?" Alain's mother, Marilyn, would ask as she eyed up her daughter. Alain would not even glance up at her, her eyes scanning over the article covering from the incident that took place just a few days ago. "Another child was abducted recently," Alain would say in response to her mother as she then took a sip from her black coffee. "This one was just 10 months old." At her words the chatter that once buzzed around the table grew silent. 

  Hardly anything ever happened in the small town of Virginia City, Montana; but as of late, news reports of missing infants have been popping up like daisies. The town was becoming unsettled, panic beginning to rise among the population considering nothing as severe as this had happened in years. Alain was interested in the information the articles gave about the disappearances, so she often read through and kept them. She planned to be a future detective one day, and this was the perfect sort of practice for her. 

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     After breakfast, Alain now found herself outside with a look of dread on her face as her cousins came and asked her to play. Arya had managed to worm her way out of it, so Alain was stuck here with them instead. The sun was now higher up into the sky, beaming down onto the area and making it even hotter. "I hate the Summer," Alain would say with a small sigh as she wiped off some sweat from her brow. She always wondered how kids could play in the blistering heat so easily; the thought of running around in this horrible weather baffled her. Montana usually wasn't this bad in temperature, but today seemed to have had different plans. 

    Alain would stand there along her lawn as her cousins and the neighbors children ran around her in seemingly endless circles. Her dark blue eyes would squint from the sunlight, and she seemed to scan her vision along the street and neighboring houses. "That's odd..." She'd comment to herself once her line of sight landed on a poorly taken care of house to the right of hers. That house had been abandoned since she was in elementary school, and she was sixteen now; what she saw at the house truly and completely baffled her. A car. 

     Her vision was now clearer than ever before. At first she hadn't paid any mind to the house right next to hers, she had assumed it wasn't worth monitoring with how totaled it was. Now, someone was appearing to be using it- no, living in it. She could tell there was work done to the old rotted wood and overgrown lawn. Someone was fixing up the place to dwell in it permanently. The question was: who? No townsfolk would ever be stupid or crazy enough to actually live in that place. It just made no sense when the town had other better living quarters. So who would actually go as far as to remodel a broken down house to live in it?

   As Alain focused more onto the house before her, she soon realized that she could see small faint outlines of people conversing inside of the house through a murky window. Just what were they doing there? They must have been new to the town as she knew every person in the population and no one was actually brave enough to live in that abandoned house. She was going to go over there and actually see what was up, but she got distracted when she felt a faint tugging onto her sleeve. When she looked down, she saw that it was one of her cousins.

"Come play?"

 Alain would release a heavy breath as she mentally rolled her eyes. Of course they would want her to play with them- it was why she was out there in the first place. "Sure." She'd soon begrudgingly respond. There was no way of getting out of this one. Honestly, Alain was never fond of kids. It became apparent when she was thirteen. She found them to be gross little walking terrors. "No, thank you.."

  After the child left, Alain would divert her attention back up towards the direction of the newly inhabited house once more. At seeing a blurred shape coming towards her in the distance, her eyes would narrow a bit, and she noticed it was the outline of a boy. He was coming from the house. She figured it must of been a new neighbor- he most likely was coming to introduce himself. 

   As the boy came closer, his figure became more clear. He had dark olive skin, curly black hair, and as he came nearer his eyes could be made out into a deep sea green eyes. She was quite taken aback by how normal this kid seemed for moving into the next door withered house, but she supposed she shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The boy seemed to be around her age as well. 

"Hello,"

   His voice was deep, but also sounded soothing. As Alain faced this new boy, she found herself admiring the way his skin looked in the sun. She would greet him back, as it was the polite thing to do; she even went as far to introduce herself. Once the boy heard her name, he'd hold his hand out for a handshake, in which she was too quick to accept. His hands felt calloused and rough against hers. 

"My name is Daniel Wright."

    He introduced himself back to her, and she found that she had rather liked his name. 

Daniel Wright, was a boy to remember, with a burning hatred.