I'll take it from here #3

K

Kitti

Guest
The first sentence of a story can reel in the reader as they wonder what it means, what will happen next, or how it will tie in to the rest of the story. It can also be one of the hardest lines to write because it all begins with that first sentence.

Well, you're in luck! The purpose of this challenge is to see what you do with the rest of the story when the first sentence is provided. Use the sentence given as the first line of your story and see where it takes you from there.

First sentence:
There had been many witnesses that day but every story I heard was different from the ones before it.​
 
There had been many witnesses that day but every story I heard was different from the one before it.

Every detective's worst nightmare, unreliable witnesses. Most people were sure they knew what they saw, but he knew from decades of police work that was the farthest thing from the truth. Most people were so self involved that they couldn't even tell you whether a man of woman just passed them, or stood next to them in the elevator. So it shouldn't shock me to get ten different accounts of a murder in broad daylight, but it did.

The young woman had been brutally sliced open and stabbed repeated right on the sidewalk outside a popular cafe. One witness used their phone to record the assault, but only managed to get the back of the assailant's head saying he was trying to capture the anguish on the woman's face. Sometimes I wondered at the state of the world when someone says such a thing and sees nothing wrong with it or them. He did at least see that the assailant was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and had a bit of brown hair sticking out the bottom of a baseball cap.

In spite of the video giving those details, one witness stated that it was a tall black man in white pants and a blue shirt, another that it was a blond man with a stocking cap with a mask on it and many other variations. I think most of them felt like they SHOULD have seen something so they gave a statement. In the end all but that short video were a complete waste of my time.

The coroner's report wasn't much help either. Jane Doe. No ID, and her prints weren't a match for any known criminals or missing persons. I closed the file and added it to the huge stack on my desk and rubbed my eyes as the phone rang. "On my way..." Another body...another file.
 
There had been many witnesses that day but every story I heard was different from the one before it.

Every detective's worst nightmare, unreliable witnesses. Most people were sure they knew what they saw, but he knew from decades of police work that was the farthest thing from the truth. Most people were so self involved that they couldn't even tell you whether a man of woman just passed them, or stood next to them in the elevator. So it shouldn't shock me to get ten different accounts of a murder in broad daylight, but it did.

The young woman had been brutally sliced open and stabbed repeated right on the sidewalk outside a popular cafe. One witness used their phone to record the assault, but only managed to get the back of the assailant's head saying he was trying to capture the anguish on the woman's face. Sometimes I wondered at the state of the world when someone says such a thing and sees nothing wrong with it or them. He did at least see that the assailant was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, and had a bit of brown hair sticking out the bottom of a baseball cap.

In spite of the video giving those details, one witness stated that it was a tall black man in white pants and a blue shirt, another that it was a blond man with a stocking cap with a mask on it and many other variations. I think most of them felt like they SHOULD have seen something so they gave a statement. In the end all but that short video were a complete waste of my time.

The coroner's report wasn't much help either. Jane Doe. No ID, and her prints weren't a match for any known criminals or missing persons. I closed the file and added it to the huge stack on my desk and rubbed my eyes as the phone rang. "On my way..." Another body...another file.
 
There had been many witnesses that day but every story I heard was different from the ones before it. Some said that a huge black matter appeared out of nowhere, crashing the building down within seconds. Others mentioned a few people in black and gold, chanting some words while they took the building apart.

Many versions of the same story happened in different places, buildings being set on fire on one side of the town, and one mysteriously flooding in the other. One by one the town was torn down to pieces, thousands of innocent lives seemingly sacrificed by these supernatural occurrences. A normal detective would've not believed what had happened, as all the footage that were taken during the attacks would somehow end up just being white noise. Some civilians even questioned their own eyes.

For us however, it wasn't something that surprising at all. We deal with these supernatural occurrences almost every day, although at a much smaller scale. After shuffling through all of the information that we had found, we finally caught onto a very important clue.

Gold.

This important clue points us to one of the leading trouble makers of our kind. The ones that misuse their magic for destruction, with a leader that has a huge thirst for bloodshed. The followers of this leader are either brainwashed or exactly as sadistic as he was, and we could only think of one reason as to why they had begun this mass slaughter of innocent civilians.

"The blood moon."
 
There had been many witnesses that day but every story I heard was different from the ones before it. It took me a long time to realize why. Sometimes people's memory changes, ever so subtly. Even your friends, even your family, want to look good in your eyes. They tweak a detail here. They edit a little there. They filter things out. Sometimes, you just have to look at every memory, every story as a whole. If you don't, all you'll get is somebody's Spark Notes of an event, a highlight reel that benefits them the most.

Mom always told me that I started it. I had pushed her by saying too much, confronting her in a place where it wasn't appropriate, that hallowed table where we all ate dinner. She said that she'd just come in from a hard day at work, and I was always upset with her and her decisions because she wanted me to do the hard thing, rather than 'laze.' Never mind that I had never been someone cut out for medical school. Never mind that I had no desire to waste over ten years of my life in a profession I'd hate.

My father always told me that he ended it. He said that when enough was enough, he had put his proverbial foot down, along with his literal mug, and told everyone, "We can talk about this later." My father was always a meek man, someone whose catch phrase seemed to be "somebody should do something about that" while shaking his head and going on with his day.

My sisters always told me that they supported me through it. While I'm somewhat inclined to believe them, they had been oddly silent as Mom and I sparred over the Hawaiian bread rolls and lamb chops, deflecting and sniping and flanking and curtailing. For support, they never did try to supply me ammunition or hold the line. They just ate as I flung it back at her that she was only mad that I wasn't letting her live through me, occupy my skin with her dreams.

I say that I was rude, and maybe arrogant, and a little combative, and, most of all, right.
 
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