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Young Writers Society


16+ Language Violence

24 Hours -- A Thriller pt 2

by bigbad1993


Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.

Read part 1: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work.php?id=131761

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part 2 

7:34am

I decided not to look further into the contents of the box until I got back home. For some reason, I felt safer opening and deciphering exactly what had happened if I was in a very safe environment. The note scared me deeply. The entire drive home, I couldn't stop thinking about how I could have possibly managed to do this, if for some reason it was me. Which I knew it wasn't.

Nevertheless, I called Chris, one of my friends that I went drinking with last night. While I may not have remembered much of my night, perhaps he did.

"Hello?" Chris' voice sounded groggy like he'd just woken up.

"Hey, man. How's it going?" I asked, trying to keep any sign of fear out of my voice.

He sighed on the other end. "I feel awful."

"Yeah, me too. Hey, man, I had a question for you last night. After the bar downtown, you took me home, right?"

"Ummm," Chris mumbled. "Yeah."

"Are you positive? We didn't stop anywhere?"

"Yeah, man. You were wasted and we took you home."

"And you would say that I was too drunk to go anywhere. Say, you'd say I was too drunk to drive and move and stuff, right?"

"Yeah… hey what's going on?" he asked, his voice becoming more clear.

"Nothing, nothing. I'm just making sure. Alright man, I gotta go, I'll catch you later." I hastily terminated the call as I pulled into my driveway. The box was sitting, closed, on the seat next to me. I rushed into my house with the box in my arms and sat down on my living room couch. I placed the box on the coffee table in front of me and opened it up again. I took out the wedding knife and the letter, reading its threats once more before reaching into the box and pulling out what seemed like four or five printed photos on photo paper.

My heart froze as I spread them out on my table.

The pictures didn't seem to be in any particular order but there were four of them. Each one pictured either Ruby or her two girls, Rosalia and Maria, but something was terribly, terribly wrong. In the first picture, Ruby was in her upstairs hallway. It was dark and she was lying on the floor in a sick, twisted position, with her hands above her head and her neck looked like it had snapped to the side. Some sort of bone was protruding from her neck and her skin was pale and heavily bruised. Her eyes were closed.

As if the horrifying pose she was in wasn't enough, she was covered in dark red blood. There were many obvious signs of cuts and marks up and down her body, across her throat and her wrists and hands. Her clothes were stained and cut open, revealing flashes of her skin underneath.

It appeared she was murdered, somehow, by someone completely brutally.

I covered my mouth in horror as I looked at the next two pictures, which happened to be of her little girls.

They were similar in style to the first one, but these two pictures were shot in the little girls' bedroom. Both of them were standing on their playchairs with a noose around their necks. In one picture, they were standing on the chairs, grasping onto the rope cutting into their skin frantically. In the next picture, the chairs had been tipped over and each girl was hanging lifelessly by the rope around their necks. The room was incredibly dark and it was hard to make out much more other than the two bodies in the middle of the room.

I almost couldn't look at the next picture, but its content grabbed my attention and made me nearly vomit.

The photo was a selfie of me. I was standing in the same hallway that Ruby was lying in, dead on the ground. I wasn't covered in blood or killed in this picture. No. I was smiling. I was smiling wide, showing nearly all of my teeth as if to say, "Look what I've done!"

I shoved the pictures off of my coffee table and froze, unable to focus on anything else. How were these pictures possible? I know for a fact that there was no way for these pictures to exist, and yet they did. They were lying on the floor of my living room, and they were real. This wasn't a dream anymore. Someone was seriously messing with my mind and I had absolutely no idea who could have done this, or why they would have done it.

"Okay," I whispered to myself, clutching the nearest pillow on the couch to my chest. "Okay. Okay. What do I know for sure?"

I knew that last night, I had passed out and my friends had taken me home.

I knew that I had been woken up by Ruby's call I'd left a something at her house.

There has to be some sort of creep, some sort of psychopath that wants to watch us suffer in fright.

"Okay," I said. I picked up the photos off the floor and looked at them again. Obviously, these were not real photos. As real and as gruesome as they may seem, they are not real. Ruby and her daughters are not dead. Ruby is not in the hallway, the girls are not hanging by a rope in their bedroom. They are alive, that much I knew.

While I'm sure someone could have photoshopped their faces onto these people, what truly startled me was the fact that these pictures were taken undeniably inside of Ruby's home. In looking at the photos again, I could see her family photos hanging up in the hallway, and a sliver of light reflecting back from the doorknob to the bathroom. I'd spent a lot of time in her house and I knew that it was hers. Additionally, the daughters' rooms look exactly the same. The rug underneath the chairs is the same crazy rainbow rug that they had this very moment in their house.

Completely at a loss for answers, I decided to reach into the box to grab another item.

There were two small necklaces in the bottom of the box. I did not recognize them, and I doubt I'd ever seen them before. One was red, with faux rubies and golden trinkets. The other was purple, similar design but pretty, silver metal pieces inbetween the purple gems. Perplexed, I set them down on the coffee table and laid out all of the items before me.

The threatening note. The wedding knife. The four photos. The two necklaces.

I unfolded the note again and read it.

4 - Be at 4523 Roxanne Street with Benjamin Reece at 7:00pm tonight, or one of your daughters will die.

What was 4523 Roxanne Street? I knew that Roxanne street was on the outskirts of downtown. Perhaps by a shopping mall or something like that. I pulled out my phone and typed in the address to Google and was surprised at the result.

4523 Roxanne was the address for a restaurant named Mikey's, a local American-Italian joint. They were famous for their parmesean garlic lasagna and unlimited breadsticks.

It was also where I took Ruby on our first date, and that fact made me incredibly sick to my stomach.


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Fri Sep 30, 2016 12:24 pm
Mea wrote a review...



This is really good. And now I'm going to try to review it.

I enjoyed this a lot, even though I don't usually read thriller. I like your main character as a character - he clearly has some flaws, but also is far from unlikable, so I'm happy to read from his point of view.

Something I thought could do with being addressed - clearly, Ruby and her daughters have not been murdered, although they appear to have been in those photographs, and I feel like Ruby would have commented on that. At the very least, it's something that should have given her pause - if the person who did this can fake a picture that well, to make it look like she's dead, then isn't it completely feasible that they would have photoshopped the main character in as well? That doesn't explain the handwriting, of course, but I feel like at least something along the lines of her shouting "how did you do it?" would be logical to include.

Overall, I really liked the tone and pacing throughout this chapter and the last. It's starting to get more worrying already, which is great, and I like how you use simple statements like the last line of this chapter to great effect. There's really just a few parts where I think you could do a little bit better.

It appeared she was murdered, somehow, by someone completely brutally.

I covered my mouth in horror as I looked at the next two pictures, which happened to be of her little girls.

The "somehow," "completely brutally," and "happened to be" all made me feel just that little bit more removed from the scene at hand, and they lessened the emotional impact of those lines.

Completely at a loss for answers, I decided to reach into the box to grab another item.

"Completely at a loss" sounded too, well, normal. It's just not a phrase that I felt conveys the severity and horror of the situation, if that makes any since.

That's really all I've got! If/when you post the next part, do let me know and I'd love to read/review it.




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Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:32 pm
tigeraye wrote a review...



This is really fascinating...if I didn't sympathize with Ben last chapter, this time I definitely do, even if he's still making irresponsible decisions like talking on the phone while driving. Those pictures are just horrifyingly gruesome, but also well-depicted on your behalf. The fear Ben felt when viewing those pictures was also well done. It seems like the direction we're headed is that an ex-lover of Ruby is the one behind the terrible photos or something.

There are a lot of variables going on here that I really like -- who was inside of Ruby's home, what exactly happened when Ben was drunk. And Ben's friend Chris had to be introduced for a reason too, I guess. You have a really interesting story, keep going with it.

I decided not to look further into the contents of the box until I got back home. For some reason, I felt safer opening and deciphering exactly what had happened if I was in a very safe environment.


I don't think this needs to be explained -- just have him tell us that he's going home with the box. It's obvious as to why he wouldn't look it up in the car. It'd also be a nerves thing, so you could touch on that as well. As it's worded, it seems just like an excuse for Ben to call Chris instead of fitting naturally to the rest of the plot.

Each one pictured either Ruby or her two girls, Rosalia and Maria


HER girls? Is he not the father? Why would he say her instead of ours, that's strange. If they're not his kids and he doesn't feel that sort of connection to them, then it lessens the intensity story overall because there's not as much at stake here.

They were famous for their parmesean garlic lasagna and unlimited breadsticks.

It was also where I took Ruby on our first date, and that fact made me incredibly sick to my stomach.


I really like the lighthearted detail contrasting the stomach-wrenching twist in the very next line. It's really clever.




bigbad1993 says...


Thank you for reading part two! Just to clarify, I mentioned in the last part that Ruby had married Josue and had kept sole custody of her two daughers, Rosalia and Maria. So the girls are not Ben's. I don't know if I've mentioned it, but Ruby's divorce happened a little over a year ago, and since then she has been dating Ben. And now they have broken up.

Just so you know!

Thank you, again.



bigbad1993 says...


And by married Josue, I meant divorced Josue* haha. She got the house and custody of her daughters in the divorce.




'Hush, hush!' I whispered; 'people can have many cousins and of all sorts, Miss Cathy, without being any the worse for it; only they needn't keep their company, if they be disagreeable and bad.
— Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights