"Melanie" Working Title, Story Under Construction

I thought I should put this up just so you can tell me if this is not at all the road you want me going down.1

x-x-x-x-x2

I was flawless. I was elegant, spectacular. I was like a f*cking ballet. I had the perfect plans, the perfect instruments of death. But it all fell apart, just like my old life did over eight years ago. My best friend disappeared, and so did my soul. 3

We were born together, we graduated high school and college together, and we entered the force together. We lived together every day of our lives, the epitome of twins, of sisters. But I was getting married; his name's Augustin Karl. I was moving into his place before the wedding, and it was actually my first night there. I slept like a baby while my sister was raped and murdered in the apartment we had both grown up in. 4

The crime scene had been well cleaned except for the bed and the shower curtain that was gone. The bed, I suppose, was a sort of trophy, a blatant message that gave him a feeling of accomplishment. The shower curtain he needed to use. Other than the bed, he left a note: "Inform the Department, and you both will be dead where you stand."5

I was barely able to walk and eat. I went crazy. I didn't sleep. I called us both in terribly ill, separately, and took the time to think. Augustin was worried out of his mind, but I had to move back into our apartment after I had re-cleaned everything the killer already had.6

When I felt up to it, first thing I did was do a circuit of ATMs, and I emptied all my fiancé's bank accounts. He had almost a million dollars in all there. After that, I drove all the way down to Philly. I called information and asked for a tattoo parlor. See only differences between me and Phoebe were a mole I had below my left eye and a tattoo Phoebe got in college, a twisting red dragon on her leg. In Philly, I got the exact same one done on my leg. My next stop was a plastic surgeon. 7

After the week I spent in Philly, I was back at work, regretfully telling everyone that Melanie was still sick. I was my sister. I spent every free second tracking down my own killer.8

Eventually, I thought I had the guy. This man's name was Robert Schwermer. He lived a few blocks away, and had met my sister a few days before. For some reason, in my state, it was him. He had done it. 9

So, I walked up to his door. I knocked three times. He answered. I shot him in the heart four times, and ran away. But his wife saw me.10

I wiped down the gun (my own, not Phoebe's) and ditched it in the dumpster downstairs in back the building. I ran to Augustin's, told him after he realized it was me that if he had ever loved me he had to tell the cops that I had been kidnapped a few days before. To tell them what happened to Phoebe had happened to me in his apartment. He grudgingly agreed.11

My next stop was the precinct. I quit my job. I told them I was moving to L.A. 12

With the cash from Augustin in a backpack, I caught a flight to Miami.