Classroom Murder

A little taster inspired by a short challenge from creative writing class. I might expand of the idea of this one day, but this is it for now.

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I feel…surprisingly numb.

Time and time again in my youth I wore down the hours playing all manners of murder mystery games. I played them pretty straight faced, following the procedures laid out by the gameplay mechanics. Sometimes I felt a twang of empathy for the digital victims and a sliver of satisfaction when the culprits got their comeuppance.

But those games were never real. So how am I supposed to feel when it is?

The sound of static overwhelms my hearing. Through the small crowd of my class, I squint to get a better look at the half of the person I could see dangling from the window. The window itself is quite literally completely covered in blood. The legs hang limp against it. I can only gather the head is on the outside. The closest, and bravest, tugs lightly at the trouser leg, at some weak attempt to get a response.

Well, they got one. The lower half of the victim slides with a sickening slump to the floor. A few intestines remain caught on the open window’s latch. Like instinct of morbid curiosity I push through the crowd to the window, awkwardly leaping to a chair to gather a glimpse of the outside.

Like I gathered, there is the head, several floors down.

“What are you doing?”

“You should really get down from there”

“We need to call the police”

“Who the fuck did this!?”

The class erupts in a flurry of cliché statements and questions. All I can think about is motive and 

method. Clear signs of brutality. Possible revenge or insanity. I’m staring for far too long at the gore. 

I’m starting to get more attention than the body. But I’m just trying to solve the problem.

Is that so wrong?