Mystery Puzzle

When Todd opened his door and saw a package lying on the floor outside his apartment, he was both excited to see a package and curious at who could have left it.

Ever since his accident, and being stuck at home recovering, he was slowly going out of his mind with boredom.

He picked up the package, looked around, expecting someone to jump out and take credit for it, but no one did.

After he closed the door, he turned the package around in his hands trying to guess what could be inside.

Excitedly, he quickly tore open the package and was pleasantly surprised that it was a puzzle. He wasn’t much of a puzzle person, but he was at the point where even watching TV had gotten boring.
He looked around the box for a note or something that would tell him who had left it for him, but as far as he could tell, there wasn’t one.

A quizzical look crossed his face as he realized that it wasn’t just a normal puzzle. It was called a Mystery Puzzle.

He looked over the directions to see how it worked. The directions were simple enough. Read, Assemble, and Solve.

Inside the box was a booklet. The first part was to read the booklet about the crime. As you went along, it would tell you what pieces to put together. In the end, it would reveal who the criminal was.

Todd shrugged and went through the rest of the contents. He didn’t care what it was, he was just happy to have something, other than TV and video games, to do.

He started reading the booklet as he walked to the fridge to grab a drink.

It was a weird story. A little close to home.

The killer was someone who drove down a girl who was walking on the side of the road. The booklet went on to describe each of the suspects, who happened to be all friends, and what their motivations could have been.

Once the crime was laid out and the suspects revealed, it was time to start putting the puzzle together to see who it could be.

The puzzle itself was packaged in 4 plastic bags. Each bag was labeled one through four. The idea being that as you read the booklet, you would do only certain pieces to reveal the guilty person.

A part of him wanted to just rip all the bags open and put the puzzle together, ignoring the booklet all together, but he decided to do it the right way. After all, when he was done, he would be back to being bored again.

Part one of the story was about the events leading up to the crime. A group of friends went to a party celebrating one of their birthdays. The victim was part of their group.

The booklet went through what each of the suspects thought of the victim. Apparently, she was rich and beautiful, which caused a couple to be jealous.

To others, she wouldn’t give them the time of day, which meant they instantly thought of her of a stuck-up snob.

Since this was a Mystery Puzzle, and not a Mystery Novel, the descriptions of their dislike of her were vague.

It was as if someone had just copied and pasted from a teen story of how everyone was jealous of the pretty girls.

After he had read the first part of the booklet, he opened the puzzle and began putting the pieces together.

The complete puzzle was 500 pieces, so it took him a while, and when he was done, he couldn’t even tell if it was a male or female. Only the color of the hair, which was brown, and the tone of the skin, which was slightly tan.

The booklet didn’t give a physical description of the people, so he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to know who the picture would be of in the end, but he hoped that as he read, more clues would be given that would let him know what each of them looked like.

It wasn’t until the next day that he was able to get back to the Mystery Puzzle. The first part had taken forever, and he just assumed the second part would too.

The second part of the puzzle described the actual crime.

According to the story, after a night of drinking, the victim had been stumbling home, finding herself on a vacant road.

The killer, seeing his or her opportunity, ran her down with his or her car, killing her and leaving her body on the side of the road.

Todd felt a little distaste. After all, he was himself recovering from a car accident. Even though the story didn’t mirror his situation, it still bothered him that a car was involved. He would have felt a little better if the killer had stabbed his or her victim.

He thought that if this puzzle had come from any of his friends, they would have been a little more sensitive when they picked one out for him.

Once he had finished the brief description of the crime, he sat down at his table and began putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Afterwards, he stared at the puzzle, trying to see what clues it gave him. This piece of the puzzle was of the country road, the car and the body of the girl.

Todd rubbed his head. Looking at the picture gave him a headache, which he couldn’t understand.

He looked out his window as he continued to rub his temple.

‘That’s enough for today,’ he thought.

While the puzzle was a nice break from all the TV watching and video game playing, it was giving him a headache, and making him recall his accident, which he still had some memory loss from it.

The nurses told him that was normal after the concussion he received, and though the memories may never come back, the headaches should subside with time.

He wasn’t able to bring himself to work on the puzzle the next day. For some reason, the imagery of the second part rattled him.

The third day, however, he was so bored, he didn’t care how he had felt about the second part of the puzzle. He just assumed he was overthinking anyways.

The third part of the booklet was about the funeral and the wake, where the story described their thoughts of the victim after her death.

Surprisingly, and probably intentionally, the suspects were narrowed down to just three. Two men, and one woman. He was able to narrow it down by the tone of the group of friends. The others were remorseful, but the three obvious suspects still showed disdain for the victim.

Todd chuckled a little to himself at the ridiculousness of the story.

After finishing that section, he went back to the puzzle to see what clues it would give. This part of the puzzle showed the wake. It was a picture of the coffin, with a small group of people looking on. He wondered if one of them in the picture was the bad guy or girl.

What surprised him about this part of the puzzle was that it looked like an actual picture of a funeral, instead of a drawing like the other parts were.

He shrugged it off to laziness on the part of the puzzle maker.
‘Too much to draw a funeral, huh?’ he thought, smiling slightly to himself.

Another part of the puzzle showed that it was probably one of the guys, based on some of the features that were added, seeming to be more masculine.

Seeing that he was so close to finishing it, he decided to move on to the next part of the mystery.

The Fourth and final part of the book, explained how it seemed the criminal would never be brought to justice, unless the one reading could solve the puzzle.

The final part explained how the police were frustrated at the lack of clues and hoped someone would be able to use a vague description that someone had called in to figure out who the criminal was.

Todd was excited when he opened the fourth and final bag of puzzle pieces. Even though he knew it would take him some time to put it all together, he knew he would feel a sense of accomplishment that he hadn’t felt since the accident.

At first, he was curious of who could have left him the puzzle. Then he had felt confused why someone would get him a Mystery Puzzle that involved a vehicle, and now he couldn’t wait to find the friend who had gotten this for him and thank him.

He focused as he fit each piece of the puzzle together. This last part was all about the reveal.

The other sections of the puzzle had shown the different parts of the story, with only a small portion of the pieces making up the picture of the person in the center.

This last bag was all about filling in the final pieces. He couldn’t believe how excited he was to finish this and go back through to see what clues he might have missed that showed who the criminal was.

As he put the pieces together, his eyes went from excitement to confusion.

The more pieces he put together, the more confused he was at what he was seeing.

When he placed the last puzzle piece in place, he looked at it thoroughly confused.

‘It’s me,’ he thought looking at the picture of himself. ‘The picture of the criminal is me. What the…?’

He didn’t get to finish his thought as he sensed movement to his right, but before he could see what it was, he felt a sharp pain, and everything went black.

The world around him was gray. He blinked, trying to get a sense of what was going on.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that he was still at his place and in his living room.

There was somebody at the table, though he couldn’t tell who it was.

“Wha? What’s going on?” he mumbled.

The figure turned around. It was a woman.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said, walking over to him.

“Who are you?” he asked, trying his hardest to clear his head.

“We’ll get to that,” she answered. “Did you enjoy my Mystery Puzzle?”

He didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t say anything.

His silence prompted her to start talking.

She sat down opposite him and began.

“I’m the sister of the woman you ran over,” she stated flatly.

She gave him a moment to let that sink in.

“You see, you were out drinking with your friends,” she explained. “You had too much to drink but decided to drive home anyways.

“My sister’s car had broken down. She called me and I headed out to pick her up. When I arrived, she was lying on the ground badly injured on the side of the road, and you were unconscious in your car that you had just wrecked into a tree.”

Todd tried to comprehend, but he couldn’t remember anything from that night, and no one had told him what had happened.

“I called 911. They took you both to the hospital, where my sister died, and you remained in a coma for a couple of months.

“When you came too, your speech was messed up, and after some scans, we realized that you had brain damage. And not just any brain damage, but apparently the kind of damage that if you were to overexert yourself, you could hemorrhage and die.

“Now I would have been fine with that, but everyone else saw you as a poor, hurt little animal that they had to protect. I attended my sister’s funeral while you were unconscious, and because of the concern of your injury, they chose not to question you until you were better.

“That’s why you don’t have a phone, haven’t had any visitors, and you aren’t allowed to leave. You’re on house arrest. See, you even have that nifty ankle bracelet on.”

Todd looked down confused. He had no idea what it was, but there were days he couldn’t even remember what he had done that day.

“I even used an actual picture from my sister’s funeral in the puzzle. I was hoping the puzzle would break you, but except for a few headaches, it didn’t. So, I had to take matters into my own hands and punish you myself.”

Todd’s head started to hurt as his fear grew.

She stood up, walked over to him, and laid a folder in front of him.

“Take a look,” she said, sliding a gun out of her purse.

Hesitantly, he picked it up and opened it.

It was the police file of the accident, including pictures of her dead sister.

His head began to hurt as he looked at them, but every time he tried to look away, the woman pressed the gun hard against his temple.

Tears ran down his cheeks and blood ran from his nose as he looked at each picture.

His head hurt so bad and the world started to turn gray, then black.

Seeing that he was dead, the woman collected the file and the Mystery Puzzle, gave his dead body one last look, and walked out.

Antonio Garcia