Poisoned Letters

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 1

ᴏᴄᴛᴏʙᴇʀ 7, 2005
ADAM LOCKE

The smell of rain fills the fresh morning air. I've always wondered about rain, the millions of minuscule raindrops falling from various points in the sky invisible to us. Raindrops are so simple and gentle like some humans. At times they fall, other times they just disappear and wait for the perfect time to come out again. As they fall, they're bubbling with feelings along the way, and when they reach the surface, they break.

Others are different, they aren't gentle or as simple as raindrops. They're more complex, harsher. They can resemble hail, painful when they hit you and hard to break. Even if you think they're at their breaking point, they're not. They withstand any force against them, and in the end, you're the one who's hurt instead.

I preserved this thought and mull over it everyday.

My point of view is different now than before, ever since what happened. My sister went missing exactly one month ago.

No one knows what happened to her.

No one knows where she is.

No one remembers her.

It's almost pointless to keep looking for her. She's been gone for too long, and there's no trace of her. It's like she fell of the face of the Earth. As if one day, she just dropped everything and left.

I can't blame her, and I refuse to. It's not her fault that an anonymous writer threatened her into leaving.

Most of the people in our small town have gotten mysterious letters. The letters stated their secrets, and threatened them in some way. All of them are too afraid to search for this anonymous writer.

It wasn't like that in the beginning, however. It seemed like someone was writing the letters for personal entertainment, so no one took much to it. It wasn't until one day, people started to fear the writer. The writer left a note on an authority figure's front doorstep. The usual was stated in it, but another item was left. It was strange because the previous victims only received a threatening letter. It was in the moment, the authority figure picked the letter up that he noticed the other item, a bloody knife wrapped tightly in a plastic bag. News spread and people began to fear the writer.

My family kept quiet in hopes of not receiving a letter. I had thought our family had no secrets and were so invisible in this town, that we couldn't possibly receive a letter.

I was horribly mistaken.