Story Battle(1)

Tag, you’re it! “What do you think,” John asked Sarah. She looked at the results thoughtfully and shook her head in amazement. “I don’t know what to think of it. This just doesn’t make sense!” she exclaimed. On the screen in front of her was the picture of a man named Arian Booshehri, who was apparently the person behind all of the strange deaths happening in town. The only problem was that he was living in Jordan (at least that is what his profile said), which was nowhere near California, where Sarah and John lived. Sighing, John plopped himself in a chair as he attempted to figure out what all this meant. He decided to think from the very beginning, when it had all begun. The killings had begun several weeks ago, and the first person to die was a man named Alex Trainer. Once his body had been discovered, he was quickly taken to the hospital to deduce the cause of his death; however, doctors were completely baffled by what they saw. Mr. Trainer was as healthy as a bull; there was no reason he should have died. Doctors then searched for any marks suggesting he had been shot, stabbed, strangled, poisoned, or attacked, but to no avail. Confused, the doctors took the strange case to the police department, thinking Mr. Trainer’s death could have been the product of murder. Detectives, including John and Sarah, attempted to find the cause of his death; they interviewed everyone Mr. Trainer knew, they looked over his body, and they even searched his house. They, like the doctors, failed miserably, but this time, there was one thing that stood out. Inside the house, there was a small card that stated, “Tag, you’re it”, right where Mr. Trainer’s body had been found. As childish as this card may have seemed, it led John and his fellow colleagues to believe Mr. Trainer was intentionally murdered. Shortly after Mr. Trainer’s death, several other similar cases came up. In each case, the man and/or woman seemed to be perfectly healthy, but there was always a card where the victim’s body was found. Finally, after weeks of hard work and dedication, Sarah had managed to find a DNA fingerprint. It was a small one, but it was still evidence. So, she decided to show John this new lead, and he attempted to find some matches to this fingerprint. After hours of searching, only one person had come up: Arian Booshehri. Now they were contemplating over how Booshehri could kill so many people if he was living in a completely different continent. “We can figure this out tomorrow, I need some rest. It’s getting pretty late,” John said. He glanced at his watch and his eyes widened in dismay. “It’s 1:00 in the morning!” he exclaimed. “Time flies by when you’re having fun,” Sarah said jokingly. “Yeah, we’re having fun alright,” John snorted. He closed his laptop, which was showing the picture of Booshehri, and he packed up all his stuff as he prepared to go home. “I’ll see you tomorrow, and hopefully we can figure this out and catch whoever is behind all this,” John said. “Bye,” Sarah replied. John walked out the door and got in his car. He listened to the radio as he was driving, but nothing interesting seemed to be on, so he just turned it back off. He got home at about 1:30 a.m., and he carefully shut the door behind him. He dragged himself upstairs wearily and went through his normal routines as he prepared to go to bed. After he had taken a shower he put on his pajamas and brushed his teeth when a sudden thought struck him. Booshehri‘s profile had been last updated in 1999! “Maybe, if I can get the updated version of his profile, then we will know where he really is!” John thought excitedly. He quickly hurried into his room, where his laptop was lying. He got on the internet and searched for quite some time before finally getting the updated version of Booshehri’s profile. John crowed triumphantly. He was living several miles from the police station! He was about to close his laptop once more when something strange caught his eye. He stared into the laptop in front of him more intently, seeing something in the reflection of the screen. Then his eyes widened and his face blanched as he whispered, “No, oh dear God, no!” Those were John Smith’s last words as everything went black and his carpeted floor rushed up to meet him. Behind John’s motionless body came a voice from a black clad figure that said, “Oh yes, Mr. Smith. We couldn’t have you sharing your findings with everyone else, now could we?” The figure cackled before putting a small card on top of John’s body. While leaving the room, the figure accidently caused the card to fly up, and it fluttered downwards on the carpeted floor. It read, “Tag, you’re it.”