Final Blog

Winthrop place was just a rundown apartment building on the wrong side of town, nudged between a laundry mat and coffee shop. In the scheme of things, it really didn't matter to anyone. When the occasional tourist wandered away from the nearby city and happened upon the town, they usually avoided the stretch that was Blackburn Ave and focused on the "local color of the Rose Records" or the "charming little skating pond". 

No, Winthrop didn't seem like much to anyone else. A traveler would know nothing of the handful of wanders who found their way to Winthrop, or the girls who lived in the flats, attempting to escape the past, and the small children who miraculously survived alone, or the shut-ins too afraid to set out on to the dimly lit hall of floor 9. 

But to Sail, she could feel all these things as she glanced around her faded apartment walls for the last time. There's something cursed here she thought. Or at least something tragic and forgotten.

Maybe is was this that had pulled her and the wicked Primrose girls to the building in the first place. Or had inspired the gothic mystery party. Or the reason that three murders had been tied to Winthrop Residents. Like the nameless girl that Sep had killed last night. 

Yes, something tragic. Sail tucked her chin under her shirt and sighed. This was the end; no more murder, carnivals, strange children, or disappearing handymen. This was a goodbye to Winthrop, one final time. And there was something tragic about that too. 

Of Course

Sail never thought that a magical, glowing rainbow would whisk her off to the fluorescent, futuristic floors of her neighborhood IKEA. I guess I’m really not meant for adventure, Sail mumbled to herself.

Two seconds ago she had been standing in the center of the Winthrop Woods, reaching out for the shining arc in front of her. This was supposed to be her change, her new life, an escape. But all the anticlimactic rainbow had done was carry her a mile west to the giant superstore, which was now filled with seemingly hundreds of people milling around. This is what I get for trying to dip my feet into the realm of magical realism, Sail sighed.

After wandering around the Swedish furniture and brightly colored door knob BOGO bins (and moping in her lack of daring escapades), Sail found herself among a crowd of shoppers listening to an announcement.  

Glancing around, she noticed many of them were from her old apartment building, and Sail remembered how the last time she was with all of them, a dead body was found.

Suddenly, the booming voice on the loudspeaker rang out, “Now, we will finally find the Winthrop murderer.”

This again, of course. Sail felt like that rainbow was still in the woods, laughing at her. “How’s this for adventure?”