Screams. Blood. Tears.
He sank his knife again.
More screams, more blood, more tears.
It wasn't enough. He did it again.
"Help!" it croaked out.
But no one was going to help.
He would make sure of that.
Anything – Chapter 1: Look.
Darren Shan had everything he wanted: a supportive family, a beautiful house, a great job, amazing friends and the perfect girlfriend. Life couldn't go better. He was the front runner on his soccer team and had won several tournaments in the past few years. His girlfriend, Debbie, was the most beautiful, smart and funny girl he'd ever known, and his friends were even greater. Yeah, he had the perfect life.
And nobody knew this better than Steve Leonard, his once best friend. They had been together for almost ten years, until that day when everything changed and Darren pretty much sent Steve to hell. But, unlike his lucky former friend, Steve didn't have the perfect life. Actually, he had nothing. He'd spent his life shadowing Shan, admiring him and secretly loving him, so now there was nothing left for him to do.
Still, he had been watching him ever since they split. He was obsessed with him, and he kept on torturing himself with the thought that Darren will never feel the same way about him. He had nothing anyway, why would someone as bright as Darren even care for him? He said it himself. He said everything Steve kept repeating to himself every single day.
But we all have a limit, and Steve Leonard had reached his last night. And soon Darren's perfect life would stop being so perfect.
A normal day in Vancha March's life consisted in getting to work, watch a lot of papers that didn't really say anything, eat food, and go home. When he enlisted himself to work for the police he never thought his life would be so boring. At least he worked with his brother, Gannen, in the same unit: Homicides.
There wasn't much to say about their unit, though. Their town was so little and so peaceful that the sole idea of having a Homicides Unit seemed like a joke to the police staff. Vancha took his job seriously, and so did Gannen, so it was even funnier to their co-workers.
But when a cold blooded murdered report came to his hands, Vancha finally saw that there can be chaos in even the most peaceful place.
At first it was like any other report that came into his hands—an attempt to murder a young lady who was raped, and as soon as the word "rape" came to his eyes, he trashed the paper away and sent it to the Special Victims Unit. There weren't many examples to display anyway. A wife who tried to poison his husband, the occasional body found by the local pub (who always had an extremely high amount of alcohol on his body), some results of street fights, and stuff like that. He never had something that made his stomach wrench, or that made him had any nightmares. He thought he would never have to deal with something like that. Why would he, they lived in a peaceful town.
He tossed the paper away as soon as he saw the pictures. Who in Earth could do something like that? He took a deep breath and took the papers back into his hands.
"Gannen, you have to see this."
His brother wasn't much of a talker. He was more brains, actually. And it didn't surprise Vancha when he looked at the pictures without any display of emotion on his face. He could see that he was affected by it, though. There are some things we can't hide from the people that knows us since forever.
Gannen placed the pictures carefully on the table. He frowned as he read the report and he looked at the pictures again, still frowning.
"Is that supposed to be directed to us?" he pointed at the forehead of the girl in the picture.
"I guess. Otherwise, who?" Vancha frowned too, watching the letters in the girl's forehead.
"That's what I'm thinking, Vancha. Maybe is a code to someone," Gannen looked at the rest of the pictures. They didn't change; it was just a different angle. And the word "Look" was pretty obvious in every single shot. "It's her own blood," he said, tracing with his fingers the trail of blood that came from her forehead.
"I never thought it was someone else's," Vancha huffed, examining his brother more than the picture. It made him nauseous. The only thing that was visible was the girl's face, everything else was covered in blood, and it didn't have any shape. It was like someone smashed her body and left it as pulp. "Who could've done something like this? And why do you think it is a code? We have to research first."
"I know that. But we have to start somewhere, and if it is a code, we can focus on that instead of searching helplessly somewhere else," Gannen then went to his desk and took his notebook. "So, it says 'Look', right? Maybe we should start from the obvious, who is this girl?"
"Debbie? Are you there? Would you pick up the phone? I'm tired of this," Darren waited a little bit, then, when nothing happened, sighed and hung up.
"Shan! What are you doing? Come back, you have to finish warming up," he heard his coach said.
"I'm on it, Coach Crepsley!" he ran back to the field as he kept on thinking about Debbie's whereabouts.
"Coach! Someone is asking to see Shan in the entrance!" Jimmy Taylor, another front runner, said.
"This is not your society club, master Shan! We are here to work, so work!"
Jimmy came close to Darren, and as soon as he could, Darren held him by the arm.
"Is it Debbie?"
"You wish… but yeah, she's very angry. I don't know what you did, but hell you don't deserve that girl," he let go of his arm and continued exercising.
Darren sighed again and tried his luck with his coach, approaching slowly, thinking about how to ask him and see why was Debbie so angry.
"No, Shan. We have not come this far for nothing. You have to work and work and work as the rest of your partners. You are no better than any of them!"
"Just five minutes," Darren asked. "Please, I swear I won't take more, okay?"
Coach Crepsley grumbled something under his breath and then mumbled something like "Five minutes only" and Darren ran away.
When he came close to Debbie, she was talking through the phone with someone and she was yelling and pacing around irritated.
"No! I don't care, why should I go? I didn't know her that much, you go! For crying out loud, Lucy, she's your sister! Oh, so now—no, no! Listen to me, I won't do anything for you anymore, anything! This happened because YOU weren't paying attention, not me! No! Screw you!" she nearly broke the phone when she hung up. "Can you believe her? Her sister is nowhere to be found and she's blaming me! Me! I just met her for like, two seconds, and now I'm the responsible for her disappearance? This is a mad world," she kept saying more nonsense things and Darren just held her for a while.
"Are you alright now?" he asked after a few more angry rants. Debbie nodded. "So, what's with this girl?"
"After you drop me home yesterday Lucy came by with her sister. We had dinner and the girl showed me some stuff she did—some drawings. Anyway, they went home together and I went to bed. I have no idea of what happened to them, but I think they fought over something and then the girl went home by her own or something, I don't really know. The point is that Lucy is insane and she blames me for whatever happened between them. Now the girl's missing and… well, I don't know! Lucy wanted me to go to the police, can you believe it? Me! Why in Earth will I—" her phone started ringing again, she checked the number and scowled. "She's crazy. You talk to her," she passed him the phone and Darren picked it up, confused.
"Um… Lucy? Yeah, it's Darren. No, she's here with me. What… wait, what? Hold on, what? Lucy, calm down, it's fine—what are you… Oh, my God. Are you… are you sure?" there was a long pause in which Darren's face darkened. "Ye-Yeah, hold on," he held the phone in his hand. "Debbie, you better talk to her," his face was panicked and Debbie frowned.
"What happened?"
"Talk to her," he gave her the phone and ran his hands through his hair.
"Shan! What happened with your five minutes? Do you have a problem with the clock? Come back here!"
And without saying a word, and with Debbie crying over the phone, Darren ran away and focused on his work, so that his mind would stop thinking about that girl and how her life ended before it even started.
"So, we have nothing. She wasn't in any band, she had no problems with anyone, she was clean," Vancha growled, twirling his pencil over his notes. "Family?"
"Only a sister and her mother, the father died a few years ago," Gannen growled against his own notes.
"Any way the father left a debt or something like that?"
"No, according to the mother."
"And the mother, is she clean too?"
"Yeah, she works at home."
"There must be something…," Vancha closed his eyes tightly. "Sixteen years old, that's just a shame," he covered his face with his hands. "Do you think we have a serial killer here? I feel like this is a pretty M.O. to use."
"I still think it has to do with an inner problem, something between two parties," Gannen looked obsessed with the pictures, trying to see something there.
"Drop that, Gannen. This girl was clean, her family is clean, this was a random shot."
"But if it's random, then how are we going to find the killer? We only know that it is a male, because no woman could have such a force, and he used a knife, because of her forehead, but we have no fingerprints. We have no suspects. We have no motive. We have nothing."
"This is a small town, we can go and…"
"…knock door by door and claim everyone as a suspect?" Gannen smiled sadly. "You know we can't do that. There's nothing we can do."
"So, what? We just give up? Because I'm not a quitter and neither are you, Gannen."
"I know," he sighed. "And if it is a serial killer, then we should hurry up before he kills someone else. There must be something. It has to have something. It always does."
Vancha covered his face with his hands again, frustrated. Gannen was right, there was always something. There was something they were missing.
"Is the sister clean?" he asked, his hands still on his face.
Gannen looked at him for a while. Vancha took his hands away and saw him.
"You didn't ask anything about the sister, did you?"
"I'm an idiot," he ran his hands through his face. "I only know she came here because she wanted to report her sister as a missing person," he smacked his hand against the desk. "I'm such an idiot! Come on, let's go!"
"I'm really sorry, Lucy," Darren said while he hugged her.
"Yeah, such a shame…"
Darren froze and turned his head to meet Steve's eyes. He felt a shiver run down his spine.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"I met the girl once. She was so young…," he looked at Lucy and her mother, both crying. "It's such a shame people don't see what's in front of them, right?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Darren said, looking everywhere but him. He still made him uncomfortable after all those years. He looked creepier than before, but he was so sure of himself, it was really weird. Darren was used to see him different.
"Have you missed me? I have," Steve said instead, ignoring his question. "It's been a while since we last talked," his face darkened for some reason. "I know you don't want me near you, but since I saw you here I thought that it was okay to say hi, but I'm leaving if that's what you want."
"I… I…," he wasn't really sure of how to answer. Steve smiled sadly and Darren felt that something was wrong. He looked around and he saw two guys talking with Lucy. He then turned to Steve but he was gone. "Steve? Steve? Where are you?"
"Look," he heard someone whisper in his ear. He turned in a heartbeat and no one was there. "Look, Darren," he looked around, scared. "Look!" someone shouted on his ear and he screamed, making everyone watch him, especially those guys.
They turned to each other and then they walked their way to him. Darren looked around, dazzled, and he saw Steve winking at him. He pointed his index and middle finger to his eyes and then he pointed them to the police detectives.
"Can we have a word with you, sir?" one of the detectives, a guy who had his skin so tanned it seemed like he was burnt in the sun, said.
Darren stuttered something like "yes" and as he turned to see Steve again, he realized he was gone.
A/N: I... I have no idea of what the hell is in my head. This seemed like a good idea a few hours ago, before I started to write it. And I have everything, really... is just that... I'm scared about me. This is going to be pretty dark and weird and I just don't know. Also sorry about my grammar or any mistake you could find, I'm mexican so I'm working on my english and all of that jskbfdsfdkbf.
I just really don't know. I'm sorry if this chapter didn't have as much Darren/Steve as I wanted, but it was better like this, in the chapters to come it will be pretty crazy so... Also since this is a AU I will have regular CDF characters making their appereance over here. Mostly in a picture with letters on their foreheads but oh well... (in my defense, they will be alive! they will have interactions! they just will end up in a picture...). Also I don't know how in my mind Larten could be a soccer couch akjbksfsd it's the only part that made me laugh while I was writing this akjskbsdf but yeah whateeever I hope you liked it? Since it's really weird and messy and all of that... I'm going to try to update as soon as I can and... yep. That's pretty much it. Thoughts?
