Macaroni Macaroni 2: It's All in the Pasta Now

Chapter 1

It's long into the night when the clock on the wall chimes again. You sigh, looking from the clock to the papers littered on the desk in front of you. This would be the third time this week you worked past midnight and not the first week in which you had done so. You were starting to feel the effects of sleeping so little, rubbing your eyes as you considered your next move.

A little more couldnt hurt and you were so sure you were close to the bottom of this mystery. Or these mysteries. All across the region, there had been disappearances all with one thing in common. A familiar pasta side dish for some (a main course for others), macaroni and cheese, being somewhere at the scene the victims were spotted last. It sounds weird and it wasnt a detail investigators had taken seriously, but the public had begun to refer to these disappearances as the Manic Macaroni Misplacement. With the public's push for an investigation, a few people decided to look into it. It couldnt hurt could it?

But there just wasnt anything to it. Macaroni at the scene of the crime each time? Could it not just be a coincidence? Did the potential suspect or suspects happen to commit their evil deeds without any surveillance whatsoever? What is the point of a macaroni trail? You couldnt imagine what kind of sick freak(s) would be doing such a thing or what the motive could possibly be. You try not to get ahead of yourself but you were finding it increasingly harder to do so. You didnt think you would be able to make sense of any of this.

A framed picture across the room catches your eye. You and someone very special to you. You sink a little in your chair as your mind takes you down memory lane. God how you missed them. You looked back down at your desk and moved a few papers aside, holding one up in particular. A missing persons poster. You clutched it tightly, remembering what motivated you to look into this in the first place. If there was even the slightest chance that this stupid macaroni connection could lead you to finding them, you may as well take it. You refused to believe anything about them going missing wasnt weird. They were out there somewhere and you were going to find them.