September 24th, 2010
119 Bismarck Straße
Nordrhein-Westfalen
Bonn, Germany
3:22 p.m.
The wind brushed gently against her cheek as she sat on the window-seat of her bedroom window. Outside the leaves were swirling towards the green grass in shades of autumn as the cold weather began to close in on them. A warm breeze flooded the bedroom and her hair tumbled from her shoulders as it was brushed aside by the greeting of fall. The girl was silent as she stared at her world, her inquisitive green eyes lost in thought as they gazed forever onward. Her long hair blew about her softly, reaching down and past her lower-back in waves of an odd mixture of blond and brunette. Hugging her knees tight to her chest she sighed. Behind her the bedroom door opened and another girl stepped in. She too sighed upon seeing her sister once again at their bedroom window. Pulling a chair from their desks she sat next to her, taking a strip of hair and stroking it lightly. After a moment of silence she spoke.
"There's a Mystery Five marathon on today. You know you want to watch it with us." Her sister made no movement and she continued to stroke the long strip of hair. "There'll be Pepsi and Coca-Cola and all other sorts of sugary goodness downstairs," she coaxed. When no movement came she dropped the hair and sat directly across from her sister on the window-seat. "No amount of brooding is going to change things, Col." Finally looking at her sister, Colby shook her head gently. A knock on the door came and Jaz called out for them to step in. The last of the sisters entered their bedroom and sat in the vacated chair next to Colby.
"Any luck, Jaz?" Jasmine shook her head no, her straightened red hair tossing slightly as she did so. Pia nodded and rested her head on her twin sister's shoulder. Looking at them this closely you'd find it difficult to believe they were identical. Pia's shoulder-length brunette hair was bouncy and slightly curled and her eyes were anything but green when you looked into their misty gray depths. They were an oddity to science, appearing to be fraternal. It wasn't until tests were done that they had realized something had gone wrong. They were meant to look exactly the same, but for an odd reason the DNA rearranged itself thankfully only affecting the eyes and hair of the sisters physically. Internally nothing had changed but their way of thinking, making each an individual out of what was supposed to be the same. The world's first known pair of Semi-Identical Twins; SMI's as they were called.
"I just don't understand it." Colby finally broke the silence. "No one just disappears off the face of the Earth, not even the dead."
"So that's why you're all upset," Jaz concluded, "because our father magically disappeared twelve years ago? That happened forever ago, they've found nothing on him and they probably never will, it's no use brooding on it."
"Well not exactly," Pia spoke up in her twin's defense, "ever heard of the Zodiac Killer?"
"I thought they eventually caught him?"
"Nope," Colby stated calmly, "they thought they had when they arrested a man for a petty crime and after they let him go the murders continued, but there was no evidence it was him. Besides of what evidence they have, little is known about what's real and what's not. People like to play pretend." Jaz sighed.
"Alright, you make a point. Maybe our father isn't dead and missing, but there's nothing we can do about this anyway. Nothing we do is going to change the fact that we're fatherless. Besides if he's still dead they never caught his murderer, so we'd never know who to even ask about it."
"Well not necessarily, there are still a few people we can ask about it." Pia said, nodding her chin towards the floor. "Uncle Stan's never gone past saying that dad died, so maybe Colby's right and there is more to the story than we've been given."
"Look, let's just leave this alone, it's gotta be tough for Uncle Stan to speak about it. I mean, he was his baby brother and all."
"Alright, point valid. Let's just go downstairs and enjoy the marathon." Pia said as she took hold of her twins hand. Colby smiled and together they walked down the stairs and into the lowest level of the home, the study. The study was easily their favorite place in the entire home. It was enormous, filled with small alcoves and corridors and mazes of bookshelves everywhere that were filled to the brim with books in German, English, French, Italian, Latin, and several other languages. All over the place couches and armchairs and tables with plush dining chairs dotted the room. The walls were a deep purple and the bookshelves black as night. In total there were five fireplaces scattered throughout the room. Walking into an almost invisible alcove in the maze, Pia lit a small fire in the hearth of their favorite fireplace, the sweet smell of perfumed wood filling the air with the scent of sandalwood and jasmine. Above the fireplace a flat-screened television was turned on.
Walking over to one of the bookshelves that lined the walls of the alcove, Colby pulled back the shelf on it's hinges and opened the refrigerator beyond it, passing sodas and snacks back to her Jaz who placed them on the small coffee table that lay before the couch that hugged the wall of the small room. Next to the couch Pia placed a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Settling into the warm depths of the couch together they watched the marathon.