The Ugly Truth — Week #2
Prompt: After accidentally starting a forest fire, a clumsy gymnast solves a ten-year-old murder.
“Oh shit! Shit shit shit shit!” she exclaimed, eyes wide, staring at the horror that she had created. Fire blazed across the woods, licking at every shrub and fern as it travels nearer and nearer to her. She could feel the heat searing her golden locks as she tries to escape from the ugly truth.
It was all her fault.
Curiosity kills the cat, her grandmother had warned her repeatedly, yet she had stubbornly ignored these grave warnings. Truth be told, nobody could blame her, even her father had given up on trying to talk her out of this. She needed to find the answer on her own, even after the Court of Justice had declared that it was an accident, she knew deep down that it was more than an accident.
The lack of witnesses had not deterred her from searching, it was precisely because there was a lack of witness that she believed that it could not be an accident. Even after all these years, the images were seared into her brain. She had countless nightmares of that mangled body, with limbs positioned at angles that were impossible had he been alive, and his wide-opened eyes that were stricken with horror.
For ten years, she had questioned every person that lived around the area, dug through every police report she could get her hands onto, analysed every file and messages that were in his laptop. Ten solid years with no leads, ten excruciating years of not having an answer.
And then, there was today. Today was the day she followed a hunch and wandered into this dense forest. As she hiked through the forest floor, she felt an unbearable pull that was leading her deeper and deeper into the forest. Unable to shake off a sense of eeriness that was growing in her stomach, she started smoking, a habit she picked up right after the incident. She could remember the exact moment she had tripped on a gnarly tree root, causing her to fall head first onto some rocks.
She must have lost her consciousness right after that, because when she opened her eyes, all she could see was fire. She started running, dodging left and right to avoid tree branches. She ran as fast as she could, without any direction, all she wanted was to get away from the blazing heat. Fear coarsed through her veins and all of a sudden, she jerked to a stop at the sight of a cliff 300 meters in front of her.
The cliff looked so familiar. She thought to herself. The cliff with a steep drop of over 70 feet, was not for the weak-hearted. All thoughts of escaping the fire had vanished, she could not shake the feeling of horror as she started to remember.
She had been here before.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Colin! You knew how much I hated that!” she shrieked, as anger consumed her rationality, she shoved him with all her might. She watched as he tried to regain his balance, her anger ebbing away and turning into terror in the split second that his left foot stepped past the edge of the cliff.
She remembered every single detail now, the way his eyes widened with fear as he fall off the edge, the way his body tumble down the jagged stones like a rag doll, the feelings of impending guilt that had crushed her heart.
With the fire blazing behind her, she knew without a doubt that she could not hide from the ugly truth anymore.
This creative fiction piece was crafted in 30 minutes based on a writing prompt as part of Written Weekly, a writers’ group held weekly in PJ.
