Murder at Cedar Park (Big Scary First English Assignment)

English 9
Trenton Stevens (he/him)
Ms. Frommlet’s 3rd Period
September 3, 2020

Murder at Cedar Park

It was one of those chilly days in November. When all the sky sends down are torrents large enough to raise the ocean by a meter each, even when it was cold enough to be snowing. I turned on the stove and placed the kettle over the flame. I picked up the book I was reading and pulled out the bookmark before finding the line I had left off on. I resumed reading and waited for the sharp whistle signaling the water was hot. I poured a cup of tea and continued reading, while I waited for the police to come for the body in the master bathroom’s bathtub. It just so happened to be my small community’s part- time billionaire, and full-time whore. Just then, the doorbell rang and I set down the book on the open page, for later reading. I opened the door and put on my warmest face for the police-woman that stood on the front porch. I showed her the bathroom and answered her questions.

“No, I do not know why she is in my house.”

“I found her there when I came home from Fred Meyer’s.”

“The neighbor was cleaning out his pig pen, hasn’t done that for as long as I can remember. He does have a key, so he could have easily gotten in.”

“Her jewelry is missing!?”

“No, I don’t mind if you take a look around. Just mind the full-length mirror, it’s a family heirloom.”

I walked out of the bathroom and back downstairs where I took a sip of tea, realized I forgot to put honey in it and walked around the bar into the kitchen where I did so. I took another sip, which went down easier. I picked up my book and walked over to the couch where I continued reading while the officer poked around upstairs.

Eventually, she came down the stairs. She said she would look around downstairs, but so far no incriminating evidence had been found (at this, she gave me two thumbs up). I put my head back down and focused on the words. Harry just figured out he was a wizard!

The police officer eventually left, saying that someone would be by shortly to clean up the dead body, and some more people would do a thorough investigation. She recommended that I stay at a hotel or a relative’s house just until this whole shebang was over.

“When will I be able to return?”

She said they would contact me. Taking her advice, I went upstairs to pack up. Except for one small detail, I wasn’t coming back. No one in their right mind would want to live in a house where someone was murdered. Earlier this morning, I had posted the house. I loaded all that I could into my sedan and took off down the twisty private road. I drove into the city and booked a room for a few nights so I could figure out where I was going. Obviously away from the murder, who would want to live in a house where a brutal murder took place? But where would I go? I took a globe out of one of the bags of stuff and spun it. I put my finger down and pulled it back to reveal: Europe. I pulled out my laptop and booked the cheapest flight I could find. Then, I went out to buy the largest suitcase I could find. I stuffed the suitcase until the stitched seams seemed to not be able to take any more and got some shut eye before my flight early in the morning.

At three o’clock in the morning, I rolled over and turned off the alarm clock before jumping into my clothes and vacating the room. I sprinted through bag check and TSA, and all that other good stuff. Stopped for some coffee, then sprinted towards my gate. I plopped into my seat in economy and read until we reached Atlanta, then sprinted to my next flight, for France. From there, I rented a car and drove all the way down through Italy and pulled into Vatican City. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Later that day, I got a call from someone. The police said that they found fake jewels in my ex-neighbor’s pig pen. With my DNA on them. I dropped my phone into a fountain, and got to work writing a confession.

You see, I murdered that lady, for she was my real mother and never bothered to share that information with me. I stole her jewels, because she kept all that wealth to herself.

I woke up at two AM to a rapping at the door. I silently slipped out of the sheets and over to the door. Looking through the peephole, I saw a man who didn’t look like a door to door salesman. So, I slinked back into the far-reaches of the room and hoped he would disappear if I was quiet enough.

Big mistake, two seconds later he was breaking down the door and had a gun on the pillows I had stuffed in the bed. I grabbed the most important suitcase and made a break through the busted door. I hoped the man was satisfied by the bottle of ketchup in the pillow, until I heard two gunshots echo down the hallway. I took the next left, hoping to maybe lose him with a few turns, but reached a dead end. Since I was only on the second story, I ran straight out the large window encompassing the wall. I landed in a tree. Or, more accurately put, a few branches loosely connected, which is what it felt like when I fell through the tree. Let me make this clear, jumping out of a window isn’t as fun as they make it sound. It hurts, a lot. You have to persist, lest you get shot, which would probably hurt a lot, too. I rolled into the thick shrubbery some like to call a hedge and screamed in pain, inside my head.

When I heard a car drive away, I rolled out of the bushes, breathing a sigh of relief. This was like the third mistake I made that night. It turns out, the man after me was still in the parking lot unlocking his car. He turned and looked straight at me. I used whatever drive I had left to propel myself away from the situation. I decided to try the method of taking a bunch of random turns again. This wasn’t working as well as I had hoped, so I slunk into an all-night pizzeria and locked myself in the bathroom. The bathroom smelled so bad, it could probably be counted as a mistake I made as well.

The final mistake I made was walking out of the bathroom, where I was shot in the foot. The rest is history, I was hauled away, sentenced to prison. Strangely enough, no one ever found the jewels. I don’t plan on revealing their location, anyways.

Note: I do not plan on murdering people, I just started writing and ended up here. However, I do like reading, tea, and often go to Fred Meyer’s, which I mentioned in the beginning of this story.

The Key

Blog

The Key

By: Thornton Sterling

Harley knew that her grandmother had said never to go too deep into the old wood. She said to stay on this side of the creek. She had even made up anecdotal stories about her brother getting lost. The last statement Harley knew wasn’t true. She had been to Uncle Raymond’s funeral herself and seen his pale face. She knew that he hadn’t got lost, he had died of natural causes. Still, she knew that she shouldn’t be this far. Even if it was just past the creek. Even if she had a cellphone that still had plenty of service. Even if she could still see the steady stream of smoke from the chimney of her grandmother’s house.

She turned around and faced the overgrown path in front of her. It was early summer, so the forest was overgrown with stinging nettles and blackberry vines galore. She had thought about bringing a machete, but that would’ve resulted in too many questions. So, she had opted to hope she didn’t need one. She was now wishing she had brought one. The stinging nettles on the this side of the creek were so potent that they stung Harley through her clothes. The blackberry vines seemed to reach out and grab her when she wasn’t looking. She was determined to find out why her grandmother was so against her going across the creek! An icy wind blew, which is highly unusual at the start of summer. Harley shivered and hit a stinging nettle. She jumped back in surprise and got ensnared in blackberry vines. She groaned loudly, this wasn’t how she had planned this day to go. She just wanted to see what in the world her grandmother was hiding, that was all. Now, she wondered if it was worth getting stung and poked. She looked longingly in the direction of the house. Sitting next to the nightly fire would beat this peculiar form of punishment. However, if she turned back now, she would never make it out of the house again. So, she pressed on.

It began to get seriously dark, and Harley wondered why she was pressing on. It was less of a leisurely afternoon activity and more of a necessity. She could feel it deep down in her bones. Something was calling her, and she was willing to forge through nettles and blackberries to see what it was.

Eventually, she reached a clearing. Here the calling was stronger. She could feel that she was closer. Something was pulling her to the center of the clearing. As she walked, she noticed a shiny gold object in the exact center of the circular clearing. Soon, she was close enough to tell that it was a key. She bent down to pick it up. It was in the style that keys were made in eons ago, which meant that it could’ve been here for a very long time. However, if it had been there that long then it wouldn’t be so shiny and clean. Something strange was going on.

The key was heavier than she thought that it would be. And as she picked it up, a rather large old house appeared in front of her. It was nearly identical to her grandmother’s house, except it looked evil. The brightly painted window shutters were painted with peeling red paint. They were falling off their hinges against windows so dark that even at night, you couldn’t see in. The house was painted a very dark black and seemed to leech all of the light from everything around it.

Now she knew why her grandmother didn’t want her to come on this side of the wood. It was clearly an evil part of the world. She was glad her grandmother wasn’t there to see her direct disobedience.

Then the doorknob turned and began to open with the noise similar to that of an old coffin opening for the first time in a hundred years. Harley instantly wished for her grandmother to be there. She knew it was a bit strange to want an old lady to come to her rescue, but right now she really didn’t care.

The door opened wider and a lightning bolt came down from the clear sky, which is a bit strange to witness. The bright flash illuminated the person opening the door. Harley couldn’t believe her eyes. The woman standing in the doorway was her grandmother.

“Hello, Harley,” the woman in the doorway said. Her voice was different than usual. It chilled the air around it and made a shiver run down Harley’s spine. “I’ve been waiting for quite some time for you to come here.”

Harley’s jaw dropped. She never thought that her grandmother was so evil. Then, the woman standing in the doorway pointed her finger at Harley. Harley felt the need to drop to the ground. And for good reason. A split second later a bright bolt of lightning zapped over her head.

She heard the sound of an engine starting up. It sounded too small to be a car. It sounded more like that of a power tool. She turned around and saw her grandmother standing at the edge of the clearing, panting. She looked a lot like the woman who had nearly killed her except she looked like she had hiked a few miles through blackberries.

“Run back home, young lady, you are in big trouble,” she said while looking at Harley. Then, she turned and looked at the woman in the doorway and yelled, “Back off, Bathilda.”

Harley really didn’t understand grandmothers these days. First, they tell you to not cross the creek. Then, you do it and find them in a creepy old house claiming that they were waiting for you to cross. Followed by them sending a bolt of lightning at you. Then, you realize that that woman wasn’t your grandmother and find your real grandmother holding a chainsaw.

Harley did what she was told and ran home. Her grandmother followed with the chainsaw still running. The plus side of having a grandmother run into the woods with a chainsaw, is they blaze a pretty nice trail.

The moral of the story: A grandmother’s love is eternal. So, you should never disobey them because they know what they are talking about and don’t want you to get hurt.

Plan for Future Blog Posts

Blog, Everyday Life

Over the past few months, I have written journal entries every so often. I realize that this can’t be the most interesting thing to read about on the internet. So, I have had to come up with a better idea. Hopefully this new idea will be more interesting and make it so that this website actually has people that look at it.
Now, I realize that I haven’t said what I am going to do yet. So here it goes (please don’t laugh): I have a book of 642 things to write about. Since I haven’t had a chance to use it quite yet, I figured this would be it. Plus, hopefully someone out there finds it interesting as well. I will plan to post weekly, with new posts appearing on Friday, though the starting date is unknown (though I hope that I can start soon). I hope you will enjoy this as much as I think that I will.
With love,
Trenton Stevens

P.S I feel bad about writing posts without a picture. Since I went bike riding today, I figure I’ll put that in here.

Monday, May 18, 2020

Blog, Journal

I asked a friend to describe me in a few words. The response that I got was “sarcastic, witty, closed off (in a good way)”. The first two are self explanatory if you have ever been treated to a conversation with me. The last one was slightly less obvious. But, yes, it is true. I rarely like to spend a lot of time talking about myself. Even when I do, I tend to go pretty shallow. I also don’t do a lot of talking. I tend to find it a little bit more fun to listen to everyone else and analyze what they are saying for use later. 

I feel like some people are taking the whole coronavirus thing a little lightly. Obviously, it is less deadly than some other diseases. However, it should not be taken lightly because of that. It is like not taking the 500 million dollars because you could’ve gotten a billion. (Terrible analogy, but what the heck). I believe that if we start regarding it as a common cold, then the cases will spike again and more quarantining will be in order. However, if we go on in this panicked sort of hide-in-your-house-with-the-blinds-drawn sort of manner, then there will be a longer period of quarantining, but overall less quarantining.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Blog, Journal

This morning, my alarm didn’t go off. I mean, I was going to get up on time. Then, I got up an hour late because my alarm didn’t go off. It really is sad being one of the only two people who participated in Mr. Broeckel’s doc chat. It is sad because a) those who don’t show up clearly don’t care about their education, and b) because what they are doing sounds like way more fun. 

My cats are so fluffy. I mean, not meaning to brag, but they are amazing. 

Disregard the above statement, it came out of nowhere, and really doesn’t have anything to do with anything.

Outside, currently, a storm appears to be brewing. There is a rather dark cloud over us. It doesn’t seem to be raining, but I have no doubt there will come harsh rains. Where I want to be it is 13℃ with a low of 9 and a high of 16. It is currently clear. It should be sunny there tomorrow. But spring weather there is currently happening. So, rain is expected within the week.

 

Photo by Sebastian Huxley on Unsplash