What a bunch of bombshells I laid down last chapter, huh? Anyway, new chapter! Some shit is going to start to go down today! And maybe we'll find out Kyle and Kenny's secrets soon. But probably not. But we will be seeing the start of the blackmailing this chapter! So, there's that.
Chapter Four – Blackheart
Kenny woke the next morning feeling considerably lighter than he had the past few days. Maybe their teacher was right in giving them that secret project really was a good idea. He had never felt this relieved before, and he was pretty sure only part of it came from not having to share his secret with anyone else. He shuddered to think what would happen if Token had found out. Or Cartman, which might have been even worse. He didn't want to even think of all the horrible things Cartman would have him do if he had found out his secret.
He was already in a much better mood by the time he greeted his friends as usual at the bus stop. Although, the project had forced him to think about his deepest, darkest secret. It was something he didn't like to think about, and it still shamed him five years later.
"Hey Ken, whatcha thinking about?" Cartman said suddenly, cutting into his thoughts. Kenny turned and gave him a look.
"What makes you believe that I'm thinking about anything?" he wondered.
"You had a guilty look on your face," Kyle told him. Kenny let out a sigh.
"I can't stop thinking about what I wrote down for my secret," he confessed. "It's been eating away at me and I'm just glad that writing it down actually kind of worked. It's amazing how confessing to no one really seems to help."
"Is this really all we're going to be talking about for the next week?" Cartman growled, rolling his eyes. "We wrote down our secrets and then buried them. What is there left to talk about?" His friends looked at him in surprise.
"Jeez, Cartman," Stan said. "What's got you all hot and bothered? Was your secret really that bad?" Cartman glared at him.
"Who said this had anything to do with my secret?" he snapped. "I'm just sick of talking about that stupid assignment, that's all! Can we talk about something else now?"
"I'm with Fat ass," Kyle said in a soft voice. "I'd just rather forget about this whole thing already."
That was going to be harder to do than they expected, because that was the only thing their friends seemed to be talking about as well. No one would shut up about how nerve wracking the whole thing had been and how relieved they were now that it was over. Everyone was also constantly trying to get each other to reveal their secrets to no avail.
"Give it time, Cartman," Kenny said encouragingly. "In a couple of days everyone will have forgotten about the entire project and we won't have to think about what we wrote down until someone decides to dig it up."
Cartman couldn't relax, however. That capsule buried in the ground lay heavy on his mind, and his thoughts kept wandering back to it and the secrets that it contained. What he wouldn't give to know everyone else's secrets, and what he wouldn't do to make sure his own secret stay hidden forever…
The room was a modest bedroom. Several letters were laying on the desk beside the bed as a person sat there, tipping the chair back with their legs casually crossed on the table. They had an amused grin on their face as they read over what was written on each paper.
The person's classmates certainly had some juicy stuff to work with. There was not one, not two, but three affairs going on in that classroom. Looks like someone was sleeping with their friend's girlfriend. Or at least, he had slept with her once. At a certain party. Oh, and it looks like someone else got pregnant from her one night stand and hasn't told anyone yet!
"Lot of closeted homosexuals in our class too," the person muttered to themselves. "Looks like there's about five of them. Pity."
The teenager chuckled to themselves. Two of the homosexuals were even having one of the three affairs. What a treat. Their classmates weren't going to know what hit them.
"Two people in love with Wendy," the person gasped, reading over two of the papers. "Well, isn't that something? I wonder if poor Stan even knows? I wonder if Wendy does? Hmm…" They looked over the papers again.
They found it interesting how a lot of their classmates seemed to have gone on a theme. A bunch of affairs, a bunch of secret crushes, and a bunch of closeted gays. They could work with this. Only three secrets didn't fall into one of those three categories. But they were still useful. Already a plan was formulating. They would all pay soon enough.
Clyde woke with a start as lightning lit up his room and a loud crash of thunder followed shortly after. He looked around, dazed, trying to figure out what had woken him. It wasn't the thunder and lightning, he hadn't been afraid of that since he was five. It probably had something to do with the dream he had just had. And the painful memory of what had happened. A shudder ran through him as he thought of it now.
The clock on his nightstand told him that it was almost one in the morning. Figuring he wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep anytime soon, he reached over to his nightstand and unplugged his charging phone. He figured he'd just play some Bejeweled or something until he could fall back asleep, but he paused when he saw that he had a bunch of new message.
"Who would be texting me at this hour?" Clyde muttered to himself. The number wasn't one he recognized either. Curiosity taking over him, he opened the first text and almost dropped his phone in his shock. There were only four words written, and they sent a shiver down his spine in pure terror.
I KNOW YOUR SECRET.
A cold sweat formed over him as he stared blankly at the message. This couldn't be happening! There was no way whoever this was knew his secret! With shaking hands, he continued to scroll down and saw his secret stated clearly back at him.
IF YOU DON'T DO EXACTLY AS I SAY, I WILL EXPOSE YOUR SECRET TO THE ENTIRE SCHOOL read the third text. Followed by a text signature: BLACKHEART.
Clyde felt himself start to hyperventilate. How did this person know? There was only one other person who knew his secret, but he knew it couldn't be them because they had as much to lose from this as him. How could he have let this happen in the first place?
With blurred vision, he slowly texted a response.
CLYDE: How do you know?
It took a long time for this "Blackheart" to text back, but eventually they did.
I HAVE MY WAYS. MAYBE I HAVE AN INFORMANT OR SOMETHING. NOW, ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHAT I WANT, OR WILL I BE SHOWING YOUR SECRET TO EVERYONE? DON'T WORRY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DECIDE NOW. I'LL GIVE YOU A DAY OR TWO. BUT DON'T WAIT TOO LONG! ;)
Clyde stared down at his phone, his vision almost becoming too blurry to read what it said. Then he realized he had tears in his eyes and he quickly wiped them away. He could barely breathe, and his whole body was shaking. This couldn't be happening! It had to fake! Who could do something like this? When he looked back down at his phone, there was a new message.
SWEET DREAMS.
Clyde tossed his phone back on his nightstand and curled up on his bed. Why was this happening to him? How could he ever sleep again knowing that someone else knew his secret and could at any moment reveal it to the entire school? What would his friends think of him if they ever found out? And it was all his stupid fault in the first place!
"What am I going to do?" he groaned to the dark, empty room. There was another flash of lightning, and the tears flowed harder than ever down Clyde's face.
Kyle almost didn't want to go to school, but he knew he had to. He needed to know if his friends had gotten the same message he did. He didn't know if it would be better or worse if he was the only one who was being blackmailed. But he didn't know if he could even look at his friends without breaking down.
He asked his mom to drive him to school, because with the state he was in, he really shouldn't be trusted to get behind a wheel. His mom tried to make conversation while driving, but he was silent the entire ride to school.
"Are you ok, bubby?" his mom asked as she pulled up to the parking lot. "You seem awfully quiet today. And you look worried about something." Kyle let out a sigh.
"I'm fine," he lied. "I'm just feeling tired, that's all."
As soon as he stepped into class, he could see that his fears were justified. What yesterday was a relaxed and joyful day had now reverted back to the paranoid looks and obvious fear on everyone's faces. A lot of his friends were trying to hide the worry on their faces, and to an outside observer, they would have succeeded.
"Hey Stan," Kyle greeted in a low voice, sitting down next to his friend. Stan let out a start and looked at him in surprise before relaxing slightly at the sight of him.
"Oh, hey Kyle," he replied. Glancing around to make sure no one was listening, Kyle leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice even more.
"Did you get a strange text message last night concerning…you know, our Psych class?" he asked him. Stan stared back at him, wide-eyed and didn't speak for a moment. That was really all the proof Kyle needed, but he waited for him to speak anyway.
"D-Did you?" his friend asked. Kyle sighed and nodded.
"I thought it was just someone trying to freak me out because they heard about our project or something, but then they showed me the paper with my secret written and everything," he told him, struggling to keep his voice calm.
"Me too," Stan whispered. "I don't know what to do! Do I just ignore it? Should I do what they tell me? I don't know!"
"Calm down," Kyle ordered, though he was freaking out inside. "I think our entire class might have gotten the same text as we did." Stan looked at him. "I think we can use that to figure out who might be doing this."
"You really think so?" his friend asked, his voice still shaking slightly. Kyle nodded. "But, I don't think anyone here showed their secret to anyone else. And our class is the only ones who know where all of our secrets are buried."
"Exactly," Kyle replied. "So, either there's someone who saw us bury the capsule, or it's someone in our class. I think we need to go over to the hill after school and have a look at the capsule again and make sure it's still buried."
"Good idea," Stan agreed. "It might give us some clues as to who would want to blackmail us." He glanced across the room and saw Kenny and Cartman talking in low voices at the other end of the room. "I just hope Kenny and Cartman aren't having the same problem we are."
"I just hope the blackmailer isn't Cartman," Kyle muttered under his breath.
The rest of the school day was tense. Kyle noticed that nobody in their psych class would look anyone else in the eye. Clyde kept falling asleep at each of his classes as if he hadn't slept at all the night before. Token was looking absolutely paranoid, Red and Heidi looked like they were going to burst into tears at any moment, and Tweek was much twitchier and paranoid than usual. When they got to psychology, Kyle saw that Jason, Pete, Nichole and Michael hadn't even bothered showing up to school that day.
In fact, the only one who didn't seem bothered by anything was Craig. Craig sat at his desk, looking as bored and deadpan as usual. He didn't seem to notice the distress on his classmates' faces. He just stared forward, lost in his own thoughts and not caring about anything around him. As per usual.
"Craig seems nonchalant about all of this," Stan pointed out in an undertone to Kyle. "Almost like he doesn't have anything to worry about. Kind of suspicious, don't you think?" Kyle rolled his eyes in response.
"If Craig was blackmailing the entire class, I don't think he would be that obvious about it," he argued. "He didn't seem too worried about having to write down a secret either. Maybe he just doesn't have a secret."
"I guess that's true," Stan muttered.
Class went on as usual, with Mrs. Simone seemingly not noticing the somber mood her class had taken on. Kyle wondered if his teacher even knew that something was wrong at all. He had a hard time concentrating on anything she was saying. His mind just kept wandering back to his secret and the text he had received.
I KNOW YOUR SECRET.
He couldn't help but shudder as he thought about it. What was this person hoping to accomplish by blackmailing everyone? They couldn't possibly be asking them all for money, could they? He looked around and couldn't figure which one of his classmates would have reason to dig up all of their secrets.
There was no talking as the final bell rang and they were all dismissed. Stan kept close to Kyle's side as the two of them quickly made their way towards the front entrance of the school. They were almost there when they heard their names being called and they turned to see Kenny and Cartman hurrying towards them.
"Where are you two going without us?" Cartman asked. Kyle flinched.
"Nowhere," he lied. The two of them gave him a look.
"You're going to see if the capsule is still there, aren't you?" Kenny guessed. Stan and Kyle stared at him in shock.
"How did you know that?" Stan asked.
"Cuz we were going to do the same thing," Kenny told him. "We also got threatening text messages, so we wanted to see if the capsule was still there. We're not sure what we're going to do if it is or even if it isn't, but it's a start."
Stan and Kyle exchanged glances before looking back at their two friends. "Well, there's really no point in hiding it," Kyle sighed. "So, let's just go and get this over with."
The four of them headed the opposite direction of the parking lot and towards the cemetery. They were all silent as they walked, too afraid of what was waiting for them at the top of the hill. What they would do when they got there, they weren't sure.
The hill seemed untouched when they approached it. Kyle didn't know if he should be surprised or not. He almost hoped to find the hole dug up to confirm that someone had found their secrets this way and not by some other means. At the same time, he could have denied that his secret was really his if it weren't for the physical evidence that they had all written themselves. In that sense, he hoped that the capsule would be undisturbed.
Cartman pulled out a couple of shovels from seemingly nowhere, and he and Stan silently got to work digging up the capsule. The other two waited with bated breath as Stan and Cartman dug further and further down, until they heard the metal clunk of one of the shovels hitting the capsule underneath.
"It's still there," Stan said.
"That could mean anything," Kenny replied. "Open it and see if it's all right!"
Stan and Cartman quickly brushed away the dirt until they found the lid and the tiny clasps holding it closed. After a moment of struggling, they managed to open the compartment and almost immediately let out a gasp. It was as they had feared. The capsule was still there, but everyone's secrets were gone.
I'm going to stop this chapter right here. Sure, it's not too dramatic, since we already knew that someone had gotten their hands on everyone's secrets, but still, this seemed like a good place to end it. Anyone want to guess who the blackmailer is going to be? It could be anyone! Also, who wants to guess what everyone's secrets are? I'll give you a shout out if you're right (when appropriate for me to do so, obviously).
We're going to see a few more people's secrets next time, and we'll also get into some of the blackmailing. And hopefully I'll get some of the other characters more of the spotlight as well. We'll see!