If you have any questions about Dissociative Identity Disorder, you can PM me. Or use Google. Google is your friend. But be careful.

Big Brother's Watching You...uh, whatever that means. I never said anything.

Window to the Past

Chapter 3: The Miller

As the sun sank lower into the horizon, the grass began to take an orange hue. The evening air began to get progressively cooler, making Toby a little more uncomfortable. He had been walking for a while now, about fifteen minutes. The lights he had spotted earlier, while conversing with the others, didn't really seem to be getting much closer, which annoyed him a little. He began to worry about what the Adrian guy might do to him if these lights didn't help the way he thought they would.

"I want to survive just as much as you do, Adrian," Toby whispered, hoping somehow Adrian was listening. The grass began to fade from orange to purple as the sky began to get darker. Toby's ambling pace turned into a brisk walk as his fears of the dark began to get the better of him.

At least I'm making progress, he thought as the lights on the horizon began to get brighter. Though they seemed to be getting dimmer as well. Toby found it strange, but flickering light was better than no light, so on he went.

The sun's harsh light was gradually replaced by the moon's softer glow. That, Toby noted, and the glow of the village. Yeah, that's definitely a village, he thought, nodding to himself. He could make out the pointed roofs, the smoke from the chimneys, a loud crackling from the streetlights.

"Oh, so this is it?" Daphne asked, taking in her surroundings. "Toby was right. Huh. Well, that's good. That means Alice won't have to sleep on the ground, and Adrian doesn't have a reason to take vengeance on Toby for wasting our time. Might as well find a place to stay."

Daphne wandered up and down the empty cobble streets, looking for some sort of sign for a hotel of some sort. The cobblestone road was wet and seemed to reflect the light of the lampposts. Daphne called up and down the streets, listening for some sort of sign of life, but she didn't hear a thing.

Weird...there should be at least some people out and about at this time of night. Daphne looked to the east, watching the moon slowly rise over the rooftops. The sun's barely set. She sighed, also noting that there didn't seem to be any sort of hotel in this entire village.

Adrian shivered, not used to the cold air. "What happened to the afternoon sun?" he mumbled. After noting that he was in a town of some sort, acknowledging Toby's correct intuition, he looked up and down the streets.

"Hey! Anybody awake and feeling generous? I am a poor soul in the middle of the night with no place to go and no friend to turn to!...Oi, anyone there?!" he yelled.

No response. He huffed angrily. "Great. The kid finds a village, and it's frickin' abandoned."

The sound of metal sliding behind a door startled him. He whipped around and was faced with the frazzled glare of a woman, peeking at him through a doorway.

"What are you doing out there?" she whispered harshly.

Adrian gave her an exasperated look. "I've been trying to find a living soul in this ghost town!"

"Shh!" she stressed, her eyes wide. "Don't talk so loudly! You'll attract their attention!"

"Whose attention?" Adrian demanded.

"They're dangerous, you know," she continued, ignoring Adrian's question. "You should get out of there. Otherwise, you'll be on the chopping block."

"What are you talking about!?" Adrian began to grow sick of this woman's cryptic way of speaking.

"Get off of the streets. The streets are scummy at night..." she whispered, not taking her eyes off of him.

Adrian saw an opening. "Okay. Fair enough. Get off the streets," he agreed, walking towards the girl and the doorway. "Maybe you could help with that? I mean, if you're going to go on about me getting off the streets, you should be willing to follow up and-"

"DON'T COME NEAR ME!" she shrieked, and suddenly Adrian was staring down the double barrel of a shotgun. "GET AWAY!"

Toby screamed in fear. He fell to the cobblestone road and began scrambling for footing. Finally, he found it, and he was off, running down the streets in a panic. He didn't look behind him, for fear of seeing the maniacal woman chasing after him.

BANG!

"AAAAUGH!"

Alice woke up with aches all over her body. Frowning in discomfort, she slowly opened her eyes.

She was in an alley, resting on a trash bag. A short yelp and a quick hop later, she was frantically checking herself for any sort of unknown substances.

I am going to DESTROY THEM, she thought angrily. Looking around for the journal, she began to form a scathing paragraph in her mind revealing to the others just how she felt about sleeping on top of a trash bag in an alley.

This paragraph combusted when she realized she couldn't find it. It wasn't anywhere near her. Alice pursed her lips.

"They sleep in an alley. They choose not only to sleep in an alley, but on top of trash. And they lose the journal. And the pen," she noted, anger lacing her tone.

A crackling filled the air. "ATTENTION CITIZENS. MEET IN FRONT OF BELL TOWER FOR DAY CYCLE."

Alice sighed in frustration. This was not going to be a good day. She stepped out of the alley and observed about five or six bleary-eyed people trudging to the right, down the street. She shrugged, and decided to follow them. She fell in step next to a woman. She looked down at her, and her eyes lit up in recognition.

"It's you," she breathed, "from last night."

Alice looked up at the girl. Her hair was all frazzled; she looked like she didn't make her appearance much of a priority. She clutched a shotgun in her hands; Alice wasn't sure what to make of it. Then what the woman had said registered in her mind. "Oh! Uh...if I did anything stupid, I'm sorry. I, uh, wasn't myself last night."

She narrowed her eyes. "How did you survive...?"

Alice blinked. "I-I'm sorry, what?"

The woman ignored her. Instead, she began counting on her fingers, mumbling to herself. Alice tilted her head in confusion.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked, in what she believed to be a polite tone.

The woman's head jerked upwards, then she turned back to Alice. "It's a game to him, you know. To the Mayor. It's all a game. He thinks it's funny," she gave sideways glances to the crowd in front of them as they walked. "But it's not a game. People die every night. But they're not getting me. I'll...I'll get them first."

Alice was even more confused now than she was before. "I blanked out at the word 'die'. What's going on here?"

"There's one left," she whispered. "If we kill the last one, we're free."

"Please," Alice tried again. "I'm new here. What's happening? Who are you trying to kill?"

The woman said nothing. She simply dug her hands into her pocket.

Alice sighed, and simply continued walking. Eventually, she saw the small field in front of the bell tower everyone had been summoned to. It was an unnerving sight.

In the field, there was a large circle of chairs. These chairs were quickly being occupied by the citizens of the village. Some of the chairs were already occupied by

Oh my God. There are corpses in the chairs.

Numerous men and women were slumped over the chairs in various positions. They all had something in common; they either had a visible bullet wound somewhere on their chest or red marks around their throats. Alice began thinking about where the red marks could've come from, until she looked beyond the macabre circle, at the bell tower. But it wasn't really a bell tower.

Yes, there was a bell suspended underneath a wooden beam. But the bell wasn't the only thing hanging from the beam. Small hoops of rope swayed in the light breeze, chilling Alice to the core. It wasn't a bell tower.

It was a gallows.

Alice, in a daze, sat down in one of the chairs. She looked beside her, to see the paranoid girl she was walking with earlier. There was a man in the center of the circle, pacing.

He was dressed in a double-breasted suit and had a black newsboy cap on his head. The brim hid his eyes in shadow, but Alice could see his mouth was curved into a sly smirk. His shoes were polished to an almost blinding sheen, so much that it bothered Alice that he was wearing them in the grass. Once all the seats were filled, he lifted his head.

"There was another death tonight. The doctor was unable to save the victim this time. Raymond, an innocent villager, is dead," he said slowly, in a monotone voice. He pointed to a chair, and everyone followed his gaze. Slumped over a chair was a young man in a plaid jacket. A bullet hole was through his shirt. "There is one murderer left. Begin."

Alice turned to her neighbour. "What's happening?"

"You're a miller, aren't you?" she asked quietly. "Be careful what you say...millers are easy bait."

"What are you talking about?" Alice retorted. "You've been speaking in riddles this entire time!"

The woman pointed across the circle. "See that man?" Alice followed her gaze and saw a man in a white vest. He bore a very sour expression. "That's Hercule. If he has anything that has anything to do with you-"

Hercule stood up. "People! We have among ourselves a murderer! And I have a very good idea who it is!" He stormed across the circle, headed directly for a quickly paling Alice. He stopped two feet away from her and pulled out a journal. "Is this yours?" he asked, his voice laced with venom.

"You're toast," the woman breathed.

Alice stood up. Unfortunately, due to her stature and the height of the chair, she appeared shorter than she had when she was sitting down. She quickly jumped up and stood on the chair, which didn't really help either. "Where'd you get that!? It's mine! Did you read any of it?!"

Hercule thrust the book back to Alice, who snatched it from his hands. "This book was found outside the door of Cathy," Hercule continued, pointing at the woman beside Alice. "The door...that was only one block away from the murder!"

A collective gasp sounded around the circle, and Alice felt a lot more glares directed at her.

"Hold on, what?! I didn't kill anybody!" Alice protested. "I didn't! I don't even-"

No, I can't say that. If I tell them I don't know what I was doing, they're going to rip me apart.

"I don't even...know Raymond all that well. Why would I kill him?" she finished uneasily.

Hercule huffed. "The Mafia needs no motive. They kill because they can."

Alice sat back in her chair. These people were going to kill her.

"Dang it, you guys," she whispered under her breath. "Why couldn't you have just behaved?"

"I saw this one wandering the streets in the middle of the night," Cathy said, jerking her head to indicate Alice. "After you tried to get into my house, I scared you off with this," she said, stroking her gun lovingly. "You dropped the book and ran away. As soon as you rounded the corner, I heard a gunshot and a scream."

"The gunshot was instantaneous with the accused rounding the corner?" Hercule inquired.

"My name is Alice!" Alice interjected.

Cathy nodded. "Yes, that's right."

Hercule turned back to Alice. "You rounded the corner, saw Raymond, and shot him in cold blood!"

Alice bit her lip, trying to come up with some sort of retort. Something clicked. "Cathy, other than the book, was I holding anything?"

Cathy looked straight at Alice, her eyes seeming to look straight through her. "...Yes. There was a pen in the binding of the book."

"This pen?" Hercule asked, holding a generic pen that he had taken out of his pocket. Cathy nodded.

Alice smiled. "Alright. I wasn't holding anything other than the journal and the pen, and I dropped it when I ran away from Cathy. Now, Hercule," she turned back to the angry gentleman next to her. "What did I shoot Raymond with?"

"A gun!" a small voice called from somewhere in the circle.

"Hmm..." Hercule put his hand to his chin, to appear in deep thought. "I don't suppose you have pockets, then?"

Alice looked down at herself. "Uh...I'm not even sure if I'm wearing clothes at all..."

It was at this point that Alice noticed something. All these people in the circle were one species. She couldn't really tell what they were, but they were all radically different from her. And yet they accepted Alice's appearance as mundane and ordinary.

"Alright, then. You're off the hook for now, Alice," Hercule said curtly. "However, should your name arise in suspicion again, I will not hesitate to volunteer you to be hung."

Alice nodded. That shouldn't be a problem. However, she was left wondering what did happen last night.

The meeting flew by like a blur. Names were called, and possibilities explored. A vote was reached; a man named Cecil would be hanged. The man in the center of the circle, revealed Cecil to be a doctor, then took him away. Slowly, the rest of the villagers dispersed from the circle.

Alice slumped back in her chair and released a breath. "I'm fine. I'm okay."

"WHAT DID YOU GUYS DO LAST NIGHT!? I almost got hanged for murder!" Alice wrote angrily.

"I don't know! One minute I was walking into the town, the next, this freaky woman was pointing a gun at my face!" Toby replied.

"I was only looking for some sort of place to stay. If someone did something incriminating, it wasn't me," Daphne wrote.

"Adrian, what did you do?! People were saying I shot somebody!" Alice accused.

"Hey, I was doing the same thing as Daphne, okay? That chick that nearly shot Toby? I was trying to get her to give us a place to stay! There are no frickin' hotels in this place, okay?" Adrian finished.

"Speaking of places to stay, which one of you geniuses slept in an alley?" Alice asked.

"Okay, I know it was one of you! I had to wipe this weird slime off of me! Who was it!?" Alice insisted.

"...Fine. Don't tell me. But we need a place to stay," she relented.

"What about the gun chick? You make nice with her?" Adrian asked.

"No WAY am I going back to her! She almost shot me! I heard a gunshot behind me!"

"...Behind you? Didn't you round a corner?" Alice asked, confused.

"No, are you kidding me? If I turned a corner, she would've caught up to pump me full of lead!" Toby insisted.

"But...Cathy said you rounded the corner," Alice trailed off.

"Alice, I recognize and understand that you're frustrated, but it's in the best interest of all of us to find a place to stay, because it's getting dark," Daphne wrote.

"Wait, what?" Adrian asked.

Adrian looked up from the journal. Somehow, the sun was setting.

"What?! It couldn't have been thirty minutes!"

"It's day...it's night...it's day...it's night..." Cathy whispered as she trudged past Adrian into her house. "Nothing in between..."

"Uh, hey. Do you think I could bunk with you tonight?" Adrian asked as he passed her.

"No...one house per villager," she shook her head absently. "Can't do it."

Adrian groaned but started wandering the alleys, looking for a suitable place to sleep. As the sky grew darker, the alleys became blackened, the awnings and roofs hiding the moonlight. From street to street, Adrian walked, passing the time by idly talking to himself.

Blissfully unaware of the serial killings going on.

Adrian stretched his back, resting against the wall of what looked like a shop. "At least it's warmer tonight than it was last night..."

His eyelids began to grow heavy. Adrian felt the pull of sleep inviting him to engage in inactivity. He attempted to fight it off, but finally gave up. He slumped down on the wall and closed his eyes.

He was woken up by the sound of footsteps. He opened one eye, to survey what had made the noise. He didn't move; not yet. There was some sort of figure in the light of the lamppost, a shadow.

And it was holding a gun.

Adrian stood up warily. "Who's that?" he asked, calling to the figure.

It didn't respond. At least, not in words. Instead, the butt of the gun lifted off of the cobblestone road, and under the arm of the suspicious individual.

"Listen, you put that gun down or I'm going to show you mine," Adrian threatened.

Chug-CHUCK

The cocking of the gun meant no more kidding around. It was fight-or-die. And Adrian chose to fight.

Reacting quickly, Adrian darted away from the wall just as he heard the crack of the gun. Refusing to look behind him, he cringed as he heard the shatter of a window behind him. He instead chose to focus on his assailant, who had already moved away from the streetlight, bathing them in darkness. Adrian stopped. He knew that they had to cock their gun again before they could shoot. He just had to listen for that.

Chug-CHUCK

He turned around, jumped, and aimed to kick whoever was there. But there wasn't anyone. Another shot rang out, and Adrian winced as he heard something whiz past his head. The gunman had missed their mark, but Adrian once again heard the cock of the gun.

"You don't waste any time, huh?" he asked wryly.

Whoever it was didn't respond. Adrian heard footsteps running to his left. It was at this point he realized he was in the light. If he was going to survive, he'd need to copy the gunman's tactics. He stepped away from the halo of light, into the shadows. He knew this tactic wouldn't last long, but he just needed to get his eyes used to the darkness. He began darting back and forth as fast as he could to throw off the aim of his attacker.

BANG

Okay. There was a bang. No pain. That's good, he noted. He was beginning to see shapes in the darkness. Sparks flew from midair as the sound of the gun cocking once again filled the silence.

"How much ammo do you have?!" he yelled. Another shot. This time, Adrian felt a searing pain as something grazed his side. He needed to go on the offensive.

He once again began running, but now he had a target. That shape began moving again, and he saw sparks fly as the cocking of the gun once again rang out.

Gotcha, he thought, smirking. He began pumping his feet harder against the cold cobblestone, and when he felt he was close enough, Adrian launched himself into the air. He swung his foot forward and felt it hit its target. The assailant crumpled under the sudden impact and fell to the ground. Adrian landed and eyed the body carefully. He began approaching slowly, to make sure they were at least unconscious.

The gun raised, and Adrian was once again staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

If you can guess the namesakes of Hercule and Cathy, I'll be impressed. Moreso if you guess Cathy, because the namesake is nothing like the character. The Cathy I named her after does not own a gun.