Chapter One: O'Death.
We believe that we are in control of life – and we are, but not in the way we believe. Have you heard of The Butterfly Effect?
A tiny butterfly flapping its wings today may lead to a devastating hurricane weeks from now – even the smallest decision can dramatically change the future. For example, if you knew that the flapping of the butterfly's wings could create the hurricane, could you then squash the butterfly to attempt to prevent it? Could you sink to so callous an act, just to stop something that may or may not even occur?
Or, maybe, you have already done something like that? Have you ever crushed a spider? Maybe that spider would have eaten a fly that, now safe, accidentally caused a car crash by distracting a car driver. Have you ever left a stray animal behind? Maybe that stray could have been the animal that saved a suicidal child's life.
What if you saw a baby who you knew would grow up to be a dictator who would slaughter millions? Could you then kill that baby to save all those millions of people?
Don't write it off so quickly.
We may not know it... but The Butterfly Effect rules our lives from the moment we're born, to the moment we die. It controls whether our mother dies in childbirth with us – due to someone else's butterfly effect – and it controls whether our death is peaceful or violent, whether we die old or young.
Maybe, then, we don't control our life at all?
Maybe... our life is just one big butterfly effect for someone else.
Maybe the only time we have left is...
UNTIL DAWN
The very early morning – One AM, to be precise – of February 2nd, 2014, was a dark and dingy night, especially on top of a mountain. Mount Braithwaite, situated in the deepest, darkest, loneliest wilderness of Canada, is a mountain – the mountain in question, in fact.
The Braithwaite Lodge, owned by Bertrand and Beatrice, was a chalet like building, built from locally harvested wood and locally dug rocks. Three stories high, the lodge could be seen from all parts of the visible mountain.
Currently, the lodge was inhabited by the Braithwaite Children – twins, Thelma and Louise, and their brother, William – and their friends: Arnold, Thaddeus, Matthew, James, Alexandrina, Annabelle and Mary.
Louise, hair black as coal, skin white as milk, starred from the window at the back of the lodge, dark eyes scanning the familiar surroundings; if she noticed the strange balaclava wearing, flamethrower wielding man through the thick snowstorm, she certainly didn't react to him, not even when he let a knife slide from his jacket sleeve.
While Louise was pondering on life in the back of the lodge, in the kitchen hell was about to break lose.
"Oh my god, I can't believe you actually did this!" Annabelle, dark haired, pigtailed and beautiful, turned back from her position at the kitchen's island, where she was placing a note, at the exclamation from Mary.
"Shh... shh... shh..." hissed Annabelle to her fellow female, a huge grin almost ripping her pretty heart shaped face in two. Arnold, stood nearby, couldn't help but chuckle to himself – the typical jock, he was anything but a good guy, at least exteriorly; muscled, stubbled and dark haired, he was the typical teen that made any mother groan when her daughter brought him home.
"Don't you guys think this is a little bit cruel?" questioned Alexandrina, frowning, arms crossed.
"Oh, come on, she deserves it!" snapped Annabelle, rounding on Alexandrina. "You're meant to be my friend, Al – you should be siding with me, not her! Are you on her side!?"
"It's not her fault she has a huge crush on Arnold-"
"Thelma's been making the moves on him!" interrupted Annabelle, silencing the woman who was, apparently, her friend, with a look. "I'm just looking out for my girl Mare."
"Just because he's class Prez doesn't mean he belongs to everyone... Arn is my man."
"Hey, Mare, I'm not anybody's man."
"Whatever you say, darling!" trilled Mary, as she and Annabelle flounced away to join the others, already in place in the downstairs guest bedroom that Arnold was inhabiting while in the lodge.
Alexandrina, frowning as usual, headed upstairs to warn Thelma of what was happening, calling her friend's name loudly. She was, after all, her friend and friends always stopped embarrassments from occurring, especially where assholes were involved "Bloody Anna," she sighed. "All this anger over a stupid crush? Thelma!"
Unfortunately, she was too late.
xXxUntilDawnxXx
In Arnold's bedroom, Thaddeus hid himself in the wardrobe, Mary behind the door, while Annabelle and Matthew hid under the bed.
"Oop! She's here! Shh!"
Everyone who had been laughing – namely everyone in the room – fell deathly silent.
"Arnold?"
Thelma, identical to Louise bar longer hair, glasses, a butterfly tattoo, and a predilection for black, was stood in the hallway. Like Louise she was pretty and beautiful and, when she bothered, could make men's jaw drop from a thousand miles away, even if she was not the sharpest tack in the wood.
Pushing open the door and being careful not to drop the candle in her hand, she stepped into the room. "Arnold? It's Thelma."
"Hey, Thelma," he greeted; the greeting was awkward, and anyone with brains and eyes for anything but Arnold could tell it was deliberately faked to be so.
xXxUntilDawnxXx
While hell was being wrought upstairs, in the kitchen, even more was about to occur.
"Hey... did you see that?" Louise, pouring herself a glass of water, frowned as she peered out of the window as the stranger outside moved. "Dad said it'd be just us this weekend? Bill?"
She frowned, turning to the island. Several bottles of beer – Jeremiah Cragg, 40% volume, assuming the labels were correct – littered the island. Bill and James both lay unconscious, heads on the island. "Jeez, Bill," sighed Louise, taking his arm and shaking him affectionately. "Once again, brother, you've outdone us all."
Moving further down the island, looking for somewhere to sit, she caught sight of the letter that Annabelle had placed there and flicked it over.
Thelma, it began, in Arnold's familiar looping scrawl.
You look so damn hot in that shirt...
but I bet you're even hotter out of it.
Come to the guest room at 2:00am.
Arnold.
xxx
"Oh my god," sighed Louise, momentarily face palming at her twin sister's idiocy. "What'd our naive sister get herself into now?"
Louise would receive her answer in minutes – and it would change her life in ways she wished it wouldn't.
xXxUntilDawnxXx
Back upstairs in Arnold's room, the conversation that would wreck lives was beginning.
"I got your note," said Thelma, grinning, as she put the candle down onto the dresser to her left.
"Glad you could make it," replied Arnold.
Thelma grinned – and he grinned back at her, in that typically lecherous way that he always did.
"Maybe we should start with a little, you know, making out," he began, playing his role perfectly. "And see where it begins from there." Thelma began to unbutton her shirt, first the button at her breasts, and then down to the second one, as Arnold growled: "Ohhh, hell yeah."
"Oh my god!" Annabelle couldn't help herself in her exclamation, even if it did give them all away a little too early. "She's taking her shirt off!"
"What?" breathed Thelma, not believing her eyes as people emerged from their hiding places, Thaddeus with a camera on a selfie-stick; a camera which, to Thelma's bone shuddering terror, was recording. "Oh my god! Thad? What are you doing here?"
The door to the bedroom burst open with an almighty bang, revealing, too late, Alexandrina.
"Uh, I'm sorry, Thelma, this all got outta hand, but..."
"Thelma!" Alexandrina gave Arnold a look that, if looks could kill, would have buried him alive and cut off his protesting. "Thelma, hey, honey... Don't... It's just a..."
"Arnold!"
"...stupid prank." Alexandrina's words fell onto death ears for Thelma had yanked the door open and raced away, having run out of protestations.
"Uh, damn?" sighed Arnold.
"You guys are jerks," hissed Alexandrina, glaring at each of them in turn. Thaddeus and Matthew completely missed her glare as the two of them were too busy snickering at the video of Thelma that they were watching. "You know that? THELMA!"
Alexandrina yanked open the door and raced after Thelma, the others following, only for them to be interrupted by Louise's voice: "Guys, there's someone outside!"
Louise had seen the back of her sister passing the kitchen window – and her positioning indicated that she'd come out the back door and had circled the house. "What the hell?"
Grabbing her jacket, Louise threw it on and rushed after her friends.
Alexandrina was the first to arrive outside and, hands to her face, hollered into the night air. "THELMA!"
"What's going on?" asked Louise, pushing through the gap and turning back to the group, facing them, face apoplectic with fury, hands on her hips. "Where's my sister going?"
"Ugh, it's fine..." sighed Annabelle, waving her hand in a motion that indicated that she believed Thelma had overreacted and was casually brushing her off. "...She just can't take a funny little joke..."
"It was just a prank, Thelm!" called Mary, in mocking agreement.
The rest of the group were in agreement that Mary and Annabelle were bitches, but just which one of them was the biggest bitch was a question that none of them could answer if they tried.
"What did you do?!" accused Louise, head flicking between the two women.
"We were just messing around, Lou... it wasn't serious-"
"You jerks!" yelled Louise, cutting off Arnold before taking off into a run after her sister, yelling her name into the night. "Thelma! THELMA!"
"So..." began Arnold, looking awkwardly amongst the group that was doing its best to look inconspicuous. "Should we go after her?"
Alexandrina looked at him with a look of disbelievingly apoplectic fury. "Y'know," she began, angrily, almost cracking her teeth under the effort it took not to grab Arnold by the neck and throttle him alive. "I kinda think you're the last person she wants to see right now, Arn. Get inside – assholes, all of you!"
She ushered them back inside and then glanced over her shoulder at Louise's footsteps which vanished into the distance.
"Be careful," she said, to no-one in particular and then shuddered as the grandfather clock in the back hall hit two thirty and rang out loudly as a loud whooshing gust of wind almost blew her off her feet as it threw a mound of snow at her.
DONG...
DONG...
DONG...
xXxUntilDawnxXx
Louise heard the faint chiming of the lodge's clock as she skidded to a halt at the bridge by the mountain river. Clambering down it, she started off into a sprint again, following the pathway, until she reached an unfamiliar fork in the path. "Oh shit!" she breathed. "Fuck, I don't recognise this! THELMA!?"
The left path in front of her was littered in footsteps and the right was lined with bushes that were rattling and rustling in the wind.
"Which way?" she breathed, squinting through the darkness. "Which way did you go? Are they your footprints or the deers'? Fuck, it's too dark!"
She knew that mountain deer inhabited this area for their father had always warned them to be careful, not to antagonise them, to leave them be for their own safety. She rummaged around in her pocket and pulled out her mobile phone. Swiping the screen, her face was illuminated in the darkness. Something behind her cracked and she jumped, whirling around to find nothing there. "Huh? Jesus! Fuck, shit!"
As she set off down the path again, shining her phone to illuminate the footprints so that she could see which were human and which were not, she frowned to herself. "Dammit, Thelma... Where are you?"
The path went down a cliff, turned right, then left, and Louise followed it, shouting for her sister.
As she rounded the corner as the path turned left, a massive gust of fire exploded out of nowhere on the hillside to her left. High up and in the distance, it filled the air with burning sulphur.
"What the hell was that?" she breathed to herself as she pushed aside a tree and came face to back with her sister. "Thelma?" she breathed. "Thelma! Oh my god, you must be freezing! Here, take my coat."
Thelma was knelt on the ground in the snow as it fell around her and was blown through the air on gusts of wind.
"I'm such an idiot!" sobbed Thelma. "I'm so dumb..."
Louise helped Thelma to her feet and the two of them whirled around as something that was definitely not a deer growled at them from amongst the bushes.
"RUN!" screamed Louise as the growling came closer. The two raced away, skittering back down the path; scrambling through the trees, they raced along another path, the main access to the lodge, rather than the back route Louise had followed Thelma along moments earlier.
Rushing across the covered bridge, which stretched the gap between a very, very cold river – a river colder than either of them cared to discover – Thelma stumbled, falling flat onto her face.
"Thelma!" cried Louise, rushing back to help her twin up as the bushes behind them rustled. As she heaved Thelma to her feet, neither of them noticed Louise's phone bouncing from the pocket of the pink jacket that she had wrapped around her sister, and neither of them heard the splash as it sunk into the water that had filled up the gaps between the planks.
"Oh Jesus Christ!" breathed Thelma as the two skidded to a halt; in front of them was the edge of the mountain.
"No!" breathed Louise as the thing following them came closer. "No! Shit! No! No! Get back!" she and Thelma linked hands. "Fuck! NO! ARGH!"
But it was too late to scream; Thelma had stepped back and the two toppled from the edge of the cliff...
... and Louise grabbed a thick branch sticking out the side. Below her, swinging in the wind, hung her sister.
Above them exploded another blast of fire.
"Hold on!" Louise cried, looking down to Thelma, who's hand was beginning to slip from her's. "Hold on!"
At the top of the cliff, leaning down, holding out a hand, was the balaclava wearing man. Louise looked up to him, then down to her sister.
"Don't you dare!" screamed Thelma up at her, realising what her sister was going to do. "Louise – NO!"
"I'm so sorry!" Louise sobbed, and released her grip on Thelma, who tumbled, screaming as she vanished into the inky blackness below – not even the familiar and comforting chiming of the clock from the house, those familiar sounds signifying three AM, could block out the ear splintering, bone shuddering noise. Louise, now free to save herself, swung her hand wildly, reaching up for the man...
...only for the branch to break on her, sending her plummeting down into the inky blackness after her sister, with a scream of her own...
DONG...
DONG...
DONG...
To Be Continued.