Wattpad contests & competitions

Missing Person (Mystery Challenge)

The prompt is simple:

Someone has gone missing. However we are not interested in the actual disappearance, but the aftermath. Are friends and relatives worried out of their minds? Is the kidnapped person fearing the worst? Is the killer watching his victims with glee, satisfied that he once again got away with murder? It is totally up to you as long as you give us your best shot at their emotions.

The first few months, I didn't even know. I didn't find out until I'd come back. Nobody told me. They hadn't told me before and they had refused to tell me later. I found out on my own, when the rotting carcass of a buffalo stopped me in my tracks. Because it had been dropped at my doorstep with the promise of me finding my sister in the same state sometime in the near future. That was when I found out that she had gone missing. It took me months, but I finally got to know why my sister hadn't been responding to any of my text messages or calls about her trip to Europe. There had been no trip, Europe or elsewhere.

After having been unaware for so long about her kidnapping, my life was turned upside down in seconds. Questions started swimming around in my head. When did this happen? How did it happen? What exactly happened? And why wasn't I told about this? There was no reason for anyone to not have informed me of this. I didn't even know if my sister was alive!

A few days after hearing the news, I stood in front of her room just staring inside, completely numb. The first few weeks after she'd been reported missing, the police had tried hard to track down her kidnapper, following every lead and not giving up even after getting one dead-end after another after another. But that was six months ago, and everyone had been convinced that the kidnapper would be long gone by now. That was until the recent threat with the use of animal carcass came to light.

Stepping inside the room, I tried to ignore the sounds of the police interrogating my parents just down the stairs. Forensics were sweeping the entrance to our house for whatever they could find there. Everything was happening so suddenly and quickly, I just didn't know what to think. I leaned against the wall, putting my head in my hands and the tears automatically started leaking out of my eyes. They started flowing more freely as I slid down the wall, almost folding in on myself.

I sat in that room for hours, forcing myself to take slow and deep breaths with my eyes closed. I only opened them when I heard the sound of footsteps padding up the stairs. Quickly wiping away all the tears in my eyes, I stood up and walked out just in time to see both my parents standing in front of me.

"What did they say? Did they find anything? Do they have any leads?" I asked.

My mom and dad shared a look as my dad put his hand on my shoulder. "The police officers will be trying their best to locate and find her, but they warned us that after a certain point of time, there's not much that they can do."

I bit my lip, deciding to take matters into my own hands. Entering the police station, I headed straight in the direction where I knew the officer in charge of my sister's case was.

"Did the forensics find out which weapon was used to kill that buffalo?"

"Excuse me?" The police officer looked up from the file that he'd been going through. "Aren't you that girl whose sister has gone missing?"

"Yes, I am." I nodded my head. "But you haven't answered my question."

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to disclose any of the details we have on this case, but I've got my men working on every single aspect of it and we'll get back to you as soon as-"

"You do realize that she's my sister, right?" I coldly said, taking a step forward.

"Yes, ma'am and we know how you must be feeling-"

"My sister!" I almost screamed in the officer's face. "I just found out a week ago that she has been missing for months and not because my family told me but because of some corpse of a dead buffalo with a note that told me that I'd find my sister in the same condition!"

The police station had turned completely quiet, there wasn't a single noise, and I didn't have to look around to know that all eyes were on me. I didn't care. I just continued talking.

"So you tell me officer. How could you possibly know how I feel?"

And with that, I marched out of the office without a backwards glance.

Over the next few days, I tried everything in my power to find out as much as I could about my sister's case. But no matter how much I begged, nobody would show me anything because I was too close to the case and also because at this point, everyone was a suspect.

Although I hadn't been anywhere near the same vicinity as my sister when she'd gone missing, my parents had, which meant that they ranked high on the suspects list and I could just as easily have been involved in the planning. This made no sense to me though because why would any of us kidnap her?

A month later, my phone rang. It was my college roommate wondering when I'd be going back. The summer holidays were over and according to her, it was time for me to go back to college. But going a few states across from home was the last thing that I wanted to do. College would have to wait.

As more time passed, I started feeling and expressing a lot less. I felt nothing anymore.

Not when the police called in, telling us that they had no more leads on the case. Not when they suddenly showed up in the middle of the night, telling me that they thought that my parents had kidnapped my sister, and arresting them for her murder. Because she had to be dead, right?

I still felt nothing when the next day morning, I opened the door and saw my sister at my doorstep. Like the kidnapper had promised, she was in the exact condition that the buffalo had been. Dead and mutilated.