DAY ELEVEN, part two

Sprankje woke up a few minutes later with dirt in her mouth. Had she tripped again? Then Sprankje remembered her knee. She'd fainted. There had been her blood...

Don't think about it, don't think about it, she told herself.

Training her eyes on the tree branches above her, she sat up and took off her left shoe and sock. Still looking up, she wrapped the black sock around the knee she remembered was bleeding. As she did, a song started to play in the distance. Likely something from Hamilton.

She looked down. The blood was completely covered by the sock.

"Good," she sighed. She wouldn't have to worry about passing out again. "Now where was I...oh, yeah, the flag." After putting her shoe back on, she picked up the flag and ventured even deeper into the wood.

Suddenly she heard a voice. "One of these will give you ten agnonizing minutes to live. Two will knock you dead right away."

Sprankje whirled around and her breath caught in her throat. There was a figure wearing a navy hoodie several sizes too large, so large in fact that it hung over the figure's face. Hoodie Person, she decided to call it. Hoodie Person was holding a gun-like weapon six inches away from her face. Protruding from its end was the head of an arrow (or would you call it a dart?), its tip glistening with a greenish liquid. Poison, Sprankje realized.

"Don't move or cry for help, or I'll give you one," Hoodie Person said, their voice shaking a little. "You'll die a slow, painful death."

Sprankje obeyed and didn't move. She closed her eyes. I am going to die. At least it wouldn't be a painful death...

After a few seconds, she cautiously opened one eye. Hoodie Person was still pointing the dart-gun at her. But why hadn't he shot?

She scrunched her eyes shut once more. The killer must be truly heartless, toying with her like that.

More than fifteen seconds passed. Why wasn't she dead yet? Was she already dead, and she just hadn't felt the pain of the dart? But no, she was pretty sure she could still feel her heart pounding, and when she opened her eyes again, Hoodie Person was still standing there.The hand holding the gun was trembling.

"Well what the heck, weren't you gonna kill me?" Sprankje blurted before she could stop herself.

"I am going to kill you," Hoodie Person whispered.

"You feeling guilty or something?"

"No! I am going to kill you," Hoodie Person said loudly and more forcefully, though it sounded like it was trying to convince itself rather than Sprankje. Its hand continued to tremble.

Hoodie Person took a step forward, and in that moment Sprankje knew what it was going to do.

With a war-like cry, she dropped to the ground as it fired a dart. The dart flew through the air where her head had once been.

Sprankje rolled over, and Hoodie Person fired again. It missed again, but just barely; she could literally hear the swit sound it made when it landed only a centimeter away from her ear. 

She grabbed it by its knees, causing it to stumble.

Swit. Another close call.

Sprankje pulled herself up and kicked Hoodie Person in the stomach. It fell back, its hoodie falling back and revealing its face.

But Sprankje didn't have time to gawk when she saw who it was. With the speed of an experienced pickpocket, she dashed away. She'd escaped. But she could've died. She almost died. She could've died... 

She felt herself burst into tears as she ran out onto the field. She didn't think she was being followed but she kept running and crying...

**********

When Owlgirl saw Sprankje burst from the forest, crying and screaming, she knew something was very, very, very wrong. Sprankje never cried.

Sprankje sprinted to a palm tree a couple feet away and collapsed underneath it, hysterical.

Owlgirl dropped her popcorn bucket and ran to her. "What is it? What happened?"

Sprankje could barely speak. "I...it...I..." She wailed, shoulders shaking.

"Sprankje, tell me!"

"A...I...k-k-killer!" She sobbed.

Make that very, very, very, very wrong. 

The Capture the Flag players rushed to the palm tree. They'd seen Sprankje too.

"K-killer, killer, k-k-k-killer..." she stammered.

The vacationers crowded around her, not believing what they were hearing.

"Oh. My. Gandalf."

"This can't be."

"The killer is dead!"

"This is impossible."

"Who is it? Tell us. TELL US!"

"Everyone be quiet and give her space!" Owlgirl shouted, taking three big steps back and holding out her arms, forcing the crowd to step back too.

"I saw the kill-killer-k-killer! It...it...was...it..." Sprankje cried incoherently.

"Sprankje, you ned to tell us right now," the Manager said desperately. "Please."

Her sobs came sharper and quicker, with hiccups in between. "It...was...it was..."

"Spit it out!" Mirax urged.

"It was...it was..."

Suddenly there was a loud creak. Owlgirl's head jerked up. There was something big and black in the tree, connected to the hotel by an almost invisible wire...

Oh no. 

"Get out!" Owlgirl yelled to Sprankje.

BOOM!

It was too late.

Where Sprankje had been curled up a moment before, there was now a huge, four-foot anvil.

There was a long, terrible silence.

Teacup quietly hopped out of Hermione's pocket. "Hermi?" her little voice squeaked. "Snce Spkj dspd into a potl, does that mean she won't show me lock pick today? Will Spkj come back tomorrow?"

Hermione struggled for words. "Oh, my dear Teacup...Sprankje didn't disappear into a portal. Sprankje...she isn't coming back.

Teacup's expression was heartbreaking. "Nevr?"

"Never."

What was more upsetting to the CBers besides the fact that Sprankje was smashed was that they'd been wrong. The murders weren't over.

The killer was alive. 

**********

R.U.A. Sprankje. Rest Under Anvil.

And that concludes Day Eleven!

Micna says envi. How could you possibly envy the people in this ski lodge? 

Theory: the killer could be Mirax. The Killer seemed hesitant to kill Sprankje, almost as though she had an emotional connection.

Save us from the Wicked!

Shield us so we won't be hexed!

Give us warning:

Where will she strike next?

Where will she strike next?

Where will she strike next?"

DAY TWELVE, part one

A dismal mood hung over the CBers at breakfast, like a gray cloud on a rainy day. Even the chef seemed somber--the cookies she made were shaped suspiciously like tombstones. People talked in low voices.

"I couldn't help but wonder...were there two killers?"

Hermione shook her head. "That's a possibility, but personally, I think Marie was innocent. She seemed so scared. Perhaps she was framed?" 

"That's disturbing," Mirax shuddered. "I've been thinking of the killer as an evil, spontaneous, crazy person. But the fact that they may have planned out a framing? That's scary."

"The smart bad guys are always the worst," Danie said. 

"I think Marie was framed too. The whole theory of September stabbing Marie at the last moment...in hindsight, I'm not sure that really would've worked. I mean, can you imagine September doing that?"

"No," CL agreed, then sighed. "But people really can surprise her."

"Clearly," Hermione said gravely. "The fact that someone in this room--a CBer, an AE, a CAPTCHA is a killer is surprising enough."

"Ya think?" Danie snorted. 

"Bumblebuddy's hasn't said much since Sprankje was...you know," SHadowmoon commented.

Mirax felt a pang upon hearing her AE's name and told Hermione quietly, "I've been trying to move on. I don't want to be super angry like Bumblebuddy, or super depressed like September, or super scared like Marie. Yet I'm still finding it hard..."

Hermione patted her hand. "Take all the time you need, Mirax."

The others were still discussing Bumblebuddy.

"She's mad and embarassed that she was wrong," Shadowmoon said.

Danie nodded. "She does not like to be wrong."

"I must say," Clouded Leopard said. "I like it better when she's quiet than went she's calling everybody murderers."

The Manager entered the room, and the "discussion table" fell silent. 

Today Owlgirl was wearing a dark navy shirt with the words, "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" in white letters, next to a white quill pen.*

"Fellow Ozians--I mean, CBers, Alter Egos and CAPTCHAs," Owlgirl chuckled at her slip-up. Then she continued. "As terrifying as terror is, let us put aside our panic for this one day...and celebrate a little bit of good news." The vacationers waited. "The slides--which, if you remember, used to be closed because of a substance leaking into their water--is now fixed and open! So when you go to your activities, you now have the opportunity to visit the three slides: The Plunge, Loopty-Loo, and Aquatica. I wont describe them--I'll let you go out and discover them!"

**********

*I actually own this shirt. I love it because it's one of my favorite Hamilton references from one of my favorite songs, and it's a writer-y thing too, since I love writing.

Everyone wanted to go to the slides.

The crowd got to the three slides, their excitement escalating when they saw them.

On the right was the shortest slide, Aquatica. It was a inner tube ride--stacks of double and triple inner tubes sat next to the entrance of the series of stairs leading up to it. It was open, painted red and blue stripes. It didn't have any steep drops. The slide curved around the stairs a few times, the opened out with two turns, then gently emptied into its catchpool

In the middle was the second tallest slide. This one was enclosed, painted bright yellow. At the beginning it had a confusing tangle of curves and twists that the CBers realized was the reason the slide was called Loopity. After the "loopty-ness" was over, the slide sloped downwards.

On the far left was a slide that made the other too pale in comparison. It was simple but deadly-looking. It was seven stories tall, and dropped almost straight down into a large catchpool. Instead of stairs, it had a spiraled ramp. 

The Plunge.

"There is n-no way I am g-going on that!" Squeak stammered. A bunch of others agreed.

"MP, bro, you wanna go on the tube ride with me? Then we can hit the Plunge. Dum dum DUUUUUUUUUMM!" Nougat said.

"Totally, bro!" MP said, and the headed to Aquatica.

"I am going to stay here and watch you all scream, and hope that the world falls apart as you do," Crypto said. " That the end of the ages comes, the shattering of the dawn, the slow seep of our reality into the next. The gibbering, half-formed netherbeasts rise from their prison in the earth's crust and break the fabric of reality itself, shrouding the earth in death and decay."*

Whistler beeped twice.

Crypto grinned evilly. "Oh yes, Whistler. There will be robots and droids--evil ones. With no sense of morals, they will raze the human civilization with their merciless--"

"I think you've been watching too many apocalypse movies," Saphira rolled her eyes.

"You want to hear about one of them? So there's these zombies--"

Saphira cut him off, "You know what, I'm just going to go ride Loopty-Loo."

"I want to too, but the stairs are so long!" Cortana whined.

"Haha, well I can fly," Saphira said, cnaging into a dragon.

"Race ya!" Nougat yelled, sprouting his scarlet macaw wings. The two took off. 

Hours passed. The vacationers breaked for lunch, then went back to the slides. By the end of the day, they were all exhausted. They retreated to their rooms. sleep would come easy, after such a fun, exhausting day.

********** 

*A real Crypto quote 

Awesome Owlgirl! I love this!

I was wondering for some advice about ski lodge things. I'm doing one right now, and it's really hard keeping track of when to do it. I've given up on paper drafts. Do you have any advice? 

Yay!!! Wicked!!!

Quite a lot of description today...sorry if the entry is too long!

DAY TWELVE, part two

Squeak had yet to fall asleep.

It was late; 10:00 at night. He was sure everyone else had travelled to the land of dreams. But he hadn't. He was too nervous to fall asleep.

He'd been nervous the entire vacation. He was never been a very a brave person to begin with, (and he'd had a stammer all his life, so even when he wasn't feeling nervous or afraid, it sounded like he was) but the killings made his nerves escalate.

He was nervous at night. Nervous in the day. Nervous he would be accused of being the killer. Nervous when the Manager prepared to make her announcements. Nervous the chef didn't cook the hamburgers enough, and they were all going to die of E. coli. Nervous someone would tease him. Nervous he would click on a malicious link somewhere, allowing his computer to be hacked. Nervous about what people would think of him. Nervous, nervous nervous. It was like some creature lived inside of him, skittering around, making him feel unsteady and unprepared. Unprepared. That was the core of his problems--he constantly felt like he was unprepared for whatever was coming, and most of the time he didn't know what was coming. His brain was always racing with wild possibilties of what could go wrong.

He thought it couldn't get any worse, and then it did, when Sprankje died. He was shaken up. Badly. He couldn't even bear to think about it.

Ding!

He rolled over and checked his phone, reading the name of the sender of the text message, and then the message itself, which consisted of only two words:

Plunge. Now.

Strange. If they wanted to talk to him about something, couldn't they have just come to his room? Perhaps they wanted a more private place.

Squeak polished his glasses then put them on. He opened his room door, praying that it wouldn't creak. He shut the door, changed into his mouse form, and sped down the hallway.

He was quiet as a mouse of course, since he was one.

**********

Okay, I am SO SORRY everyone, the next part was supposed to be posted hours ago. I had it typed out, and it close to being done.

Then I restarted the computer by accident.

I actually cried a little--I thought I'd lost everything I'd just wrote, and I wrote A LOT.

Fortunately, I had copied and pasted most of it onto a Word Document, so the majority of it was still saved. However, I still did lose quite a bit.

So I opened the computer again, and there was a virus alert so THAT took a while to fix. I'm going to try to submit tonight, before I forget what I typed. 

Oh no, Clouded Leopard, your fear has come true. They ARE at The Plunge! Dum dum DUM... 

**********

Squeak arrived at the base of The Plunge. It was dark, but he could still see it towering above him. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, the way it stood like a giant against a backdrop of hundreds of stars sprinkled in the sky that he would never able to see back at home. Beautifully terrifying or terrifyingly beautiful? The terrifying factor of the slide was definitely dominant. Squeak was very glad he hadn't gone on it earlier that day. 

He backed up and craned his neck. He could see a sillouhette standing at the top of the slide, their light coat blowing in the warm breeze, their face turned in the direction of the hotel. 

Squeak took a few steps forward and placed a hand on the handrail that started the ramp leading up to the summit. (Although "summit" was moutain terminology, it seemed appropriate for the remarkably high slide.) 

He hesitated. He took a deep breath and held it for as long as he could, then released his air in one big huff. According to Google, the exercise was supposed to help settle his nerves. Instead, it made Squeak feel like he had almost drowned. You can't trust everything on Google.

The killer was now leaning over the railing. "Well are you coming up or are you coming up?" it called impatiently. 

"Coming," he called back. He transformed into a unicorn and galloped up the winding ramp. 

When he reached the top, he changed back into human form. 

The killer leaned casually against the somewhat weathered railing. A large green duffel bag rested next to it. The bag was so stuffed it looked like the zipper would burst open any moment. 

"What's in the duffel?" Squeak asked. 

"None of your beeswax," the killer replied coolly. "Why didn't you come up right away?" 

"Um..." Because he had to breathe? That would be a dumb-sounding answer. "Th-thinking." Drat his can't-be-helped stammer. 

"About what?" 

"I d-don't remember." 

"Hmm." There was a silence. "What do you see in the water, Squeak? Go ahead, you can sit down." 

Squeak sat down and scooched close to where the rider would sit to begin the ride, where the flow of water began. He peered closely at it. He couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. He followed the slide down with his gaze, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed that it had...color. Water in a pool with a white bottom was supposed to have color. 

"The w-water is brownish. Wait, b-but it was clear when people were sliding into it..."

The killer nodded. "Good eyes." It half-smiled in a slightly unsettling way that Squeak couldn't quite place. Was it amusement? Sarcasm? Foreboding? "Kerosene, I believe."

"Kerosene? W-what do you mean?Are...are you the one who's been p-polluting it?" Squeak was confused.

The killer smiled that strange half-smile again. "You're supposed to be smart. You really think I'd do that?"

Squeak almost replied right away, but he stopped himself. He waited a few seconds to see if its question was rhetorical or not.

Apparently it was, because the killer asked, "Now, Mr. Thinking, what do you have to say about Sprankje's death?"

Squeak couldn't speak. A jumble of words was caught in his throat. "I...I..."

"You can't even talk about it?" the killer said mockingly. "Aren't you used to people dying by now? Did you think it would just end, just like that?" Squeak flinched at the harshness of its words. "How sappy. How pathetic." 

Squeak stiffened as the killer shifted so that it was blocking the exit.

This had just gotten serious.

"What were you thinking about, Squeak, when you were at the bottom of the slide?" the killer said sharply. Its face was eerily illuminated by the moonlight that fell across it, its features sharpened, its eyes swallowed by shadows, the pupils undectable. It made it look so cold and inhuman.

"I..."

"I'll tell you what you were thinking about," the killer said, its voice rising. "You were thinking about how nervous you were. You're so freaking nervous, and it's aggravating! I'm surprised you haven't gotten a whole bunch of accusations. I'm surprised they aren't locking you up in a room for interrogation, demanding to know why you're so nervous! But then again, that's probably becasue you hide from them. You hide from them all."

"You are a coward," it spat. Squeak was trembling now. "A coward. You don't have and you've never had the guts to do anything! You don't even have the guts to do what you need to do! You don't have the guts to do what you're supposed to do! You're gutless!" The killer was breathing hard, the air still vibrating with its anger. It might even shove him off the tower in a rush of fury. He inched away from it, bracing himself for more yelling.

But then the killer...laughed. Although it was really more of a packet of wild malice disguised as a laugh. "You think I'm going to throw you over the railing, don't you? HA! Don't be daft, I'm not going to do that. I swear on my life!" It laughed again, then suddenly grabbed its green bag and unzipped it. 

It pulled out two large Ziploc bags full of a brown liquid and opened them sloppily, drops of the substance splashing out. Then it threw them into the water and started talking again, making a routine of taking out bags, opening them, and throwing them. "You see, the kerosene used to come in through one of the drains on the island that connected to a sub-pipe, which connected to one that pumps extra water and chlorine into the water here." The killer was fast at this; the duffel was more than halfway empty.

"Then the Manager blocked that sub-pipe, so it couldn't go through there anymore. So the kerosene had to be collected, and bag by bag, dumped into the catchpools. I didn't have enough left for all three slides, so it's all been going to just this one. I've gone through one green bag already." Now the duffel was completely empty, and the water was now a dark brown.

Squeak didn't know what to say. This was madness. What the heck did it all mean?

Suddenly the killer lunged forward and grabbed Squeak's arm, pulling him close. He trembled more violently.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you now?" it said quietly but deadly. "You think this is all random. You think I'm throwing kerosene in slide catchpools for no reason, don't you? Well it's the exact opposite. It's all planned out. All of it. But you've seen and heard too much, and you're too pathetic for me to be able to keep you quiet. I can't afford you messing up my plan, Squeak."

The killer whipped out something from its pocket and held it in front of Squeak dramatically.

Squeak was thoroughly confused. "Lipstick? Your b-big p-plan is lipstick?" 

"You wish," it sneered. "And funny, it so happens that this is not lipstick." The killer pulled off the gold cap and pressed the bottom of the tube. 

A small flame appeared at the top of it. It was a lighter.

The killer pulled Squeak even closer, so close he could feel the warmth of the flame. The killer leaned back, holding the lighter, and Squeak closed his eyes, sure that it was going to throw it at his face. Instead, it flew over his head and towards the water.

The killer gripped both of Squeak's shoulders. "The thing about kerosene...it's very, very, very flammable."

Flames burst to life on the surface of the dirty water, dancing around like fire demons. Fire on water. It was a horrible thing, an unearthly contradiction, and yet it was right there.

Squeak's eyes widened with horror as he realized what the killer was going to do.

"Goodbye, Squeak. You are not going to be part of my big plan," the killer whispered.

Then it shoved him back into the slide.

He screamed as he hurtled down the slide towards the burning water. His stomach felt like it was flipping over and over again...

In a panic, he transformed into a unicorn, the realized that made him too big for the slide, and quickly turned into a mouse. That was an even worse choice; the powerful water pulled his tiny body down faster...

He turned into a human just as he hit the flames.

The killer watched from atop the sky as the fire grew higher and higher, until Squeak disappeared beneath it forever. 

********** 

R.I.F. Squeak. Rest in Flames

Okay okay, I'm aware kerosene is not actually brown, but for the sake of the story, it is, kay? 

*waves evil magical writer plot-weaving pencil* Go to page five, Day Seven continued, the part where Brookeira is strangled by teh scarf. See if you recognize one of the...objects. Tell me what it is.

Haha, I read the part where I died! "Lighters shaped like tubes of lipstick..." good touch!

Also, why were there minion USBs and emoji pillows in an otherwise nice giftshop? IT'S SOILING THE ZOMBIE MERCH AND LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA $10 BILLS!