MARIELLA
Mariella. Marie. Ella. Riel. Riella. Ariella. Ariel. El. Arie.
I've always loved my name. Why? Because it's cute. I can make so many cute names out of it, and that's cute too.
I've always been cute, from the very first day I was born. I started gazing into the mirror when I was five. I'd stand for hours before my mum's oval mirror with the tiny cracks at the corners, and stare and stare at my bright red hair with its waves and sheen and gloss. At my sparkly green eyes, large and almond shaped. At my beautiful hands, tiny and dainty and perfect. I grew up in a family of seven. We were poor, and that wasn't cute. My two elder brothers and two elder sisters called our mum "mother". It sounded stiff and formal; it wasn't cute. So I chose to call her mum.
She wasn't cute, either. Her neck was too fat, her bust too full, her hips too large, her hair too short. Her eyes were tiny and hidden among crow's feet, and her mouth was too long. I hated her. More so because I knew my siblings might have turned out cute if only she had been cute.
Not that my dad was any better. He was loud and stinky and plug ugly. He drank too much liquor. My brothers looked a lot like him, with the same scruffy buff hair and every inch of their faces covered in large freckles.
My eldest sister Mae was very tall and very thin. Her hair was very long,a lacklustre burgundy. She was kind, but she was terribly plain. My other sister Martha looked even worse. Her hair was an unpleasant dirt brown color. Day after day, I wondered how I could have come from such a family and still turned out so cute. When I turned ten, it finally struck me. I'm special.
I was, I still am, too good for them. I saw proof of this day after day. Whenever I helped Mae carry a basket of fruits from mum's little garden to the market, people would gawk at me. Mae would introduce me as her little sister, and everyone would stare with disbelieving awe. This always happened, no matter which of them I happened to be with.
Dad beat mum a lot. Since mum was also a huge one, she gave him some beatings too. They fought everyday, like Roman gladiators. It wasn't cute. They disgusted me. So I made up my mind that,in order to remain cute forever, I would never get married.
My siblings and I never went to school for a day. But I had a friend whose parents could afford to send her to school. She was cute. Her name was Lily. She had curly carroty hair and kind liquid blue eyes.
Her parents were pretty well off. They lived in a cute blue bungalow house with lots of furniture, lots of space, and cute lawns with bright flowers. One day, she invited me over. We sat on her soft bed and munched popcorns and watched so many Barbie cartoons. Barbie is so cute.
Since that day, I named pink my favorite color. When I turned sixteen, I was scouted by an agent from a modelling industry. Life became all sunshine and rainbows. I was rich. I had a cute home. I could go anywhere I wanted, do anything I wanted. I lacked nothing. Then by the time I turned twenty five, I realized it would be a good idea to get myself a little girl to keep me company.
As a model, I could not risk getting pregnant. A ruined figure would put me out of business. Thanks to that, I even made all my boyfriends use protection. And I took regular contraceptive pills.
After considering all these factors, I decided to adopt one. I couldn't find a cute enough girl in the first four orphanages I went to. In the fifth one, I finally found her. A cute little four year old. And her eyes were green too!
I wasted no time at all in adopting her. I named her Barbara, but of course I taught her early enough that "Barbie" sounds much cuter. For ten years I watched her turn out just like me- so delightful, so cute. And of course I put plans in motion to introduce her into the modelling world after her fifteenth birthday.
My life has been going exactly as I want it... until today. Until I got that phone call. Now I'm sitting on my favorite puff, my face buried in my palms, mascara stained tears dripping onto my baby pink silk skirt. I never knew such pain existed, pain that grabs your heart in both hands, and squeezes and squeezes until you feel you might throw up blood.
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ANNABELLE
As soon as Lieutenant Farmer put the telephone down, I knew that we, the homicide department, had a job to do.
"There's been a shootout near Beacon Academy"he said, already rising"the victim is one Barbara Jones,an eighth grader at said academy".
I shut my novel, Tasha put away her YSL compact, Neil slipped his phone into his pocket, Logan gobbled the last of his cookie, and Carlos shut his laptop computer.
Without further ado,we all headed outside to our waiting van. We were all silent during the drive, as if in respect for the young life that had been lost.
We arrived at the crime scene quickly and began to inspect it. It was a narrow stretch of dirt path that linked Beacon Academy to the main roads. The shootout itself had occured at the middle of the path, near a confections store. A careful look around helped me discover that the showcases had been riddled with several holes, but the seller was unharmed, according to report. The bullets had been fired over quite a wide area. The fence of a residential house had also taken the brunt of it. I looked towards the direction the bullets must have come from. From where I stood, all I could get was a view of the back of a warehouse under construction. There were lots of gaping, square shaped holes that were yet to be made into windows. That made sense. The killer could have shot from any of those. But they were so small, and I know no ordinary shooter can aim through one of such holes and yet cover such a wide range. Even I am not confident I can. But... they fired over such a wide range, and there was only one victim? That can only mean, either the killer is not skilled enough,or they are way too skilled.