A dark figure walked down the seemingly endless halls. It stopped to listen for a moment. The voices where soft, laughing at times. The figure walked until his target was in site. Two people sat, drinking from coffee mugs and talking. As the figure walked around the two, unnoticed, he raised his arms so that one hand would be next to each of their heads. Quickly and quietly, he clapped his hands and whatever was between them together. The two bodies fell to the floor. As the figure walked out, it sang to itself.

"Hear them speaking of my death, heard the laughter in their breath, but the laughter quickly dies, when their heads collide."

It was the same thing everyday. Wake up, go to school, stop off home, do some business, do homework, go back to sleep. Kathleen sighed as she walked with Kenny to the bus stop. She had often wished for a change in her life. Of course, the current events of her small, piss ant town where not what she had expected…

"Did you guys see the news last night?"

Kathleen nodded her head at Kyle. Of course she had. That had been the third murder in two weeks. The first had been found in his bed, his head literally squeezed together by something. The indents where perfectly lined up, at the man’s temples. No one knew what had caused it. The second, found in his room by his wife, suffered the most gruesome death so far. His jaw had been broken almost all the way off, and it seamed as though the murderer had attempted to shove a large object down the victim’s throat. An autopsy reviled that the victim was most likely alive while all this happened.

"I wonder who it is." Kyle said, more to himself than anyone.

"You know what I think? I think…"Cartman started before he was interrupted by Kathleen.

"You know how to think? I never knew that." Kathleen stated, smirking. The others laughed.

"AYH! Anyway, I think it was Mr. Garrison."

"Nah, Mr. Garrison is too busy spending his days screwing Mr. Hat to be a serial killer. It was probably…" Kathleen was interrupted by the ringing of the school bell. The children all walked inside, quite reluctantly. There were a million other things they would rather do then spend six hours in school. Like slowly pounding wooden splinters under their fingernails.

The classroom was invented to teach people things they would need to know in the future. This is still true today. Of course, as Mr. Garrison’s students can tell you, there is no guarantee this information is accurate.

"Now class, as we learned yesterday, Hanson became the top spoke person for the building of the original European pyramids. Now, can anyone tell me who replaced them? No one? Well, it was George Washington Carver. This was of course after the German Revolution, which was won by France…"

Kathleen yawned. She was bored. Searching her mind for an interesting thought, it happened again. The tongue. It was a normal human body part, but why is it so big? Couldn’t it be smaller, so that it would not rub up against the side of your mouth when it was closed? Sure, it might be harder to talk, but wouldn’t you get used to it after a while? Are the bumps on it in a certain pattern, or are they as random as chaos theory? Why does the tongue have no taste?

This led to other thoughts. Why do humans still have long hair on their heads, while the hair of other body parts is relatively short? It serves no real function, body heat is still lost through the top of your head no matter how much hair you have on it. What real purpose do eyebrows serve? Is there really a God? If there is, why does everyone not believe in him? Just what is the deal with Religion? If it is so good, why does it hurt so many people? All this, hard as it may be to believe, happened in only a few moments, two minutes the longest.

Then she got to the murders. Why did they all seam so familiar? Did they connect somehow? She tried to think of where she had seen of heard of anything like the murders. Nothing. Then she thought she’d made a connection. Then it was lost. A connection, then a loss. Over and over, until she could take it no more. Kathleen screamed.

I should like to say a few words here, if I may. The human mind is a complicated thing. Even more so are the workings of the mind. It tells us who we are, what we can be, keeps up alive. But let us go back to that first statement; It tells us who we are. How do we know the mind is telling the truth? Our entire existence is simply memories, all strung together by the mind. They criss and cross inside the mind, traveling through tubes, carrying all the information necessary to tell us who we are. Some of the memories are ours. Some are not ours, but instead someone else’s real memory, and to us only a story that was told. But what if, somewhere between the crissing and the crossing, these memories became entangled? What if what was once someone else’s memory became your own? Would you presume the life of that person, or simply see the memory as your own? Can we even answer that question? Not now, not defiantly. It is like asking a schizophrenic what it’s like to be that way; they can not describe it, and we can not imagine it.

The buzzing was starting to bother her. Why would it not stop? Must it be so annoying? It finally stopped, and was replaced by the sound of Kenny getting up out of his bed, and getting dressed. Kathleen rolled over. She couldn’t even remember going to sleep the night before. As strange as it may have sounded , she couldn’t remember anything from shortly after school started.

"Alright, get your ass up so we can leave."

"Fuck off Kenny, I’m staying home today." Kathleen told him, rolling over again. If only she could get confertible…

"What? Why?"

"I feel like it. Now shut the Hell up and leave me alone.!"

Kenny walked out. As he did, Kathleen thought she could hear him mumbling something about PMS, but she was too tired to fight back, or even care.

Kenny sighed. God did he hate Kathleen. Well, maybe hate was too strong a word. He was sure that if he didn’t have to share his room with her it wouldn’t be so bad.

"Well, that makes four."

"What do you mean?"

"The murder last night. Another person was killed. This time a chick." Kenny was surprised to hear a word like "chick" being said by Kyle. "Hey, where’s Kath?"

"She’s staying home because she’s a big pansy and said she was tired." Suddenly, an image flashed through Kenny’s mind. It last only a second, but he could see it clearly. It was a woman, being killed. He tried to remember who the murderer was. He couldn’t see. Deciding not to tell the guys, he went and stood beside Stan.

The pain was unbearable. Blood lay all around him., But that didn’t stop him. Cutting away, he could see under her skin. He kept cutting, first the crooked smile, then the wide eyes…

Kathleen sat up suddenly. She was panting, sweating, nervous. She wasn’t sure why. It was probably the dream…She had never had dreams like this before. All of a sudden, she was having violent, terrifying dreams, all ending in another murder. In all of them, Kathleen was not herself. She was someone else, some one she had never seen before. She had remembered in this dream, while he was attacking, the man was slashes in the arm. She suddenly realized the pain working it’s way up her arm. At first she considered it her imagination, but it soon became apparent it wasn’t. She looked over, and rolled up her sleeve. There, in her upper arm, was a slash mark.

To be continued….