The Ties That Bind

Vineville was a seriously strange small town to start with, even before the mystery started. Which if you don't know anything about small towns is actually pretty normal. Small-town strange is uniquely different from any other kind of strange, in the sense that it is highly localized. What passes for local legend in one place is just plain crazy somewhere else.

But a small-town mystery? Well, that's different too. Because while folks in small towns simply adore their local legends? They do not like mysteries, especially murder mysteries. They like their monsters to be right out in the open, where they can keep on ignoring them.

My part to play in the mystery, started out when I was still new to Vineville. So I didn't know anything about the local legend, or the unwritten rules for the monster at large. Which probably explains why I stupidly allowed myself to get sucked right into the middle of the biggest murder mystery to ever happen here in Vineville?

Macabre mysteries are dark and powerful forces, that inspire both awe and fear. Mysteries of death are the catalysts that change the very fabric of society. Forever forging the character of those who delve too deep into dark mysteries of murder. Sometimes those changes are even for the better, but usually not.

Which I suppose is how I became my own monster, "The Killer Kid". Thing is I never wanted to be the villain of my own story. I always saw myself more as the hero of the terrible tale. But one of the terrible truths I have since learned about murder mysteries is that they don't really care what you wanted to be when they started. Mysteries only really care about being solved, one way or another.

Unfortunately for me, solving the mystery became a life-and-death struggle for my sanity and soul. So this is the sad but true story of how I became one of the villains of my own monster story. There are a million monster stories out there but this one is mine ...and I like it a little more than I should?