Chasing Karma

Chapter 2 - Whisper

"Kill them! Kill!" Marianne didn’t know where the voice was coming from, as she heard it. Those whispers in Marianne's ears were gradually turning into loud noises. She couldn’t escape at all as it was flowing through her mind. And it was making her head throb in pain.

"Stop!" she shouted. She covered both of her ears, trying to escape from their grasp, but couldn’t do so. She immediately hid under the table inside her room. Her eyes flashed through the place, sunken red eyes staring at her wherever she looked inside her room.

"I can't hear you! I can't hear anything! So please stop!" she shouted once again. She closed her eyes, trying to sink from the desperation of getting away.

"Marianne? Are you okay? Marianne? Are you there?" she could hear several knocks from across the other side of the door. Her aunt kept knocking on the door. She was worried about her niece’s state, especially when she saw her rushing towards her room without even glancing back at her.

Usually, whenever she came home, she would look at her with worried eyes, asking if she had eaten her lunch yet or forgotten to drink her medicine.

However, today was different. Marianne went straight to her room and heard her screaming from the inside. Unsettled by her change of behavior, she knocked several more times before the door creaked open. The screaming stopped. Marianne looked at her with such looming eyes as if she was drenched with desperation and suffering from something.

"Why were you not opening the door?" she asked. "Are you hurt or something?" she continued to ask, creasing her forehead, but her niece only kept quiet.

"Why don't you take a nap while I finish cooking our meal? After I finish cooking, I'll wake you up,” she continued, gently taking her niece towards her bed and tucking her in. Afterward, she came down from the second floor and headed straight to the kitchen.

"Breaking news!" Nilda immediately focused her gaze on the television upon hearing something. She loved watching the news.

"Just in--a teacher and a student were found dead in the abandoned toilet in Silverio National High. The student was found naked inside a cubicle lying on the floor while the teacher was dropped dead on the bed of dried leaves,” Nilda widened her eyes. “Based on the investigation, the student was raped and was choked to death while the teacher was found dead at the back of the abandoned toilet, stabbed on the neck multiple times as if the murderer was someone cold-blooded and had a motive of some sort. It was also inevitable as the cause of his death was a deep wound engraved on his head, leading to his immediate death.” Nilda shook her head upon hearing the news. It was her niece’s school.

"Was that the reason why she's acting like that?" she thought to herself until she smelled something burning. Running towards her kitchen, she let out a deep sigh as she discovered their food burned due to her negligence.

After turning off the stove, she walked right back to her niece’s room and woke Marianne to eat dinner. In the middle of them savoring the food together, Nilda opened her mouth, spitting a word.

“I heard the news earlier. Do you have any idea about the teacher and the student that was found dead in your school?” she asked. Marianne lifted her head. Her eyes looked surprised.

"What? Someone died in school?" she asked, frantically unaware.

"Yes, there was. It was all over the news earlier. I'm just asking because you were screaming earlier. I was wondering. If you have witnessed whoever murdered the victims,” she explained. Marianne only nodded, understanding her aunt’s words. “Well, in any case, if you don’t know anything about it, I think that would be better because you won’t be having nightmares,” her aunt said, smiling.

Marianne just shook her head and continued to eat her dinner. Her attention stayed on the food in front of her. It's as if she didn’t care about what was written all over the news.

After dinner, she helped her aunt clean up and wash the dishes. Upon drying her hands on a towel, a sudden thought crossed her mind. Of course, she'll never forget about what happened earlier. Left in deep thought as if she was trying to solve something from within her head, she only noticed water dripping to see the faucet left open.

As she reached her hand to close the faucet, she saw her reflection in the water. A smirk crept into her face as she slowly drained the water from the sink. Her gaze followed through the cold breeze coming from the outside of the window, and she saw something in the woods. Though it wasn’t clear, it looked like she saw a figure until, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. There were no traces of light coming from the woods. She creased her forehead.

"Marianne, after that, go to bed. I'll go ahead first.” Her eyes reverted to her aunt and she only immediately nodded.

"Sleep tight," she said in a low voice. Her aunt smiled back and left her in the kitchen. After a few minutes of cleaning, she decided to go to her room. She was about to turn off the lights when she heard someone screaming. It seemed like it was coming from the woods.

She went there to see what was happening. She walked inside the woods slowly and carefully so that no one could hear her. Upon reaching the middle of the woods, she heard some groans and moans. And right there, just like what she thought, there were individuals in the woods.

The guy was busy forcing himself towards the girl--who seemed to be his girlfriend, while on the other hand, the woman resisted him. She could hear her sobbing with a muffled voice as her mouth was covered by the man’s hand.

An eerie sound crept towards Marianne’s ear again. It was invading her head carefully. It was then followed by whispers turning into loud ones, saying, “Kill them! Kill them!” Her face turned reddish as she was enraged. She tried to stop her urge to kill, but it was too strong.

The man didn’t notice how he was too rough and forceful towards his girlfriend. The moment he noticed her unresponsive body was when he was done with his lustful acts. He didn’t realize he was gripping her neck too tightly, leaving her gasping for air until she suffocated and died. His face turned pale, not knowing what to do.

He just did it because she was planning on leaving him. He didn’t want that. She was his, and he loved her so much… even more than his wife. Left unaware that someone had seen the crime, he looked for something that might help him hide his crime. He took an ax from an abandoned house in the middle of the woods and started digging a hole.

Before him, sweating yet almost done, he suddenly fell to the ground, blood flowing down his head. His eyes were left open as Marianne stabbed his head once more, to her satisfaction. It brought happiness around her body as she crept down and enjoyed seeing blood.

In an attempt to finish quickly, she carved the same x mark on his forehead, putting whatever words she pleases. She dragged the man towards the victim, and as she walked further away from the crime scene, you can tell from a far-off distance; two people lying on the ground, the man with his forehead carved with the words “I am a killer.”

As she went back to her aunt’s house, she directly walked towards her room and cleaned herself up. There was not a trace of her crime.

Staring intently in the same mirror, she whispered, "I'm Karma. No one gets away from me." A devilish smile curled onto her lips.