A Murderous Story

A Story in One Part

A Murderous Story

"How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?"

Richard Siken, Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light

Before him lay the massive enclave known as Myota. Walls of buildings filled up the sky which was visible minutes ago, prior to entering the enclosure. One had the same feeling he found himself in Kowloon back in the 80s. People thrived strongly in an amount of space so limited. A quick glance around, he found the population predominantly Korean and Burmese. Shops, restaurants, clinics surrounded him with signs displayed in languages he could not make out. The residents, showing a total disregard for the foreigner, were having their afternoon breaks over the smell of tea or strolling along the disarrays of pavements covered in rainfalls built up from the earlier rain. His feet, soaked wet up to the point over his ankle, were the last thing on his mind. Having spent considerable time since moving to this city, one quickly adapted to the environment and the infrastructure of the roads, which were lamentably lower than the sewer drainage in most places. He instead focused on the looks of countless faces in front of him. They seemed like normal people, leading lives of their own in this trapped corner of their lives. How, he asked himself, could this place ever give rise to such evil, one of the murderers he had asked to track down?

They were a group of five, aged between 8 and 13. While others at their ages were receiving schooling and spending their time in the care of their families, friends, these kids were focusing their energy on entirely different activities instead. The name of the murderers' group began to be a trending topic on the lips of household wives three years ago, when a series of gruesome murders happened in certain parts of the city at nights. The Press Release Authorization Committee failed in their attempts to suppress the news as long as the citizens started to find body parts in their places of waste disposal in the morning, in their way to work or trenches across their homes. There were panics as the identities of the murderers were subjected to all kinds of speculations. Some said the murderer acted alone, some said it was an organised act of a group of killers, some rumour even went so far that the military was involved as some sort of terror campaign against the underground resistant group. The police were lost in the sheer audacity of the crimes. The fact that most of the murders took place in the death of night also means that there were virtually no witnesses. Then a curious circumstance developed. A victim while in the midst of the fatal blow being dealt upon him managed to break away and made it to the nearest police station, still being chased by his own adversary. The on-duty officer noticed a little girl standing afar, watching. It was 3 a.m. He promptly took her into custody and informed his superior. The puzzle then became unravelled: the murderers everyone was looking for were the girl with a group of little girls she called sisterhood.

There has been a key person involved in the case. He was not a member of the police force, though not once did I suspect he was working with the government. He was young yet articulated in speech and refined in manners, the sort of person one would not expect to find in this country. He referred to himself by the name Alyosha, after the name of the acolyte protagonist in Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov. Much like the character from which the name was taken, he was a passive bystander from the sufferings that happened around him. He was gifted a brilliant mind of syllogism and the ability to tell whether someone was speaking the truth, traits that were almost too apt for a profession within the police department. Regardless, he was shaken as well when hearing about the girl's being kept captive and the stories of murders she carried out with her sisterhood. Alyosha asked to be allowed to conduct interview sessions with the girl in private and was granted request easily. With his ability, the police had expected they would get hold of the truth soon. So came a series of sessions where he would carry out interviews with the girls. A little bit about her. She was surprisingly composed and well-behaved during her time of being kept captive. She talked little, and only when she wanted to eat or drink. She had no ill feelings towards the people who were keeping their eyes on her, nor towards Alyosha. She received him in her usual state of expressionless, of which mien and demeanour did not, at all material times, give off a slightest clue for Alyosha to make things out. He knew he was up against a unique one, unlike anything he had come across before. As a result, he needed to adopt a change of tactics.