I am very pleased to say that this is my fourth time being featured in this spectacular event, and for this post I have decided to contribute a short story that I may turn into a full fledged story, who knows? Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

Kara always had been different. There was something about her that set her apart from all the other children, even when they were small. It wasn't a bad different, but we all knew that Kara wasn't like the rest of us. Never in our wildest dreams could we realize how drastic the difference was.

As Kara's best friend and arguably her only friend, I was the one who knew her the best. Although, whether or not we were truly friends has been called into question due to recent revelations, but that isn't too important right now. I first met Kara at a movie night organized by the neighborhood parents, hoping to encourage friendships. They were showing Bambi, which turned out to be a horrendous mistake due to the traumatizing death of Bambi's mother. Kara had arrived with her mild-mannered looking mother and was looking around with big blue eyes. Even at the tender age of five, Kara didn't fit in. All of us were dressed in ragged jeans and t-shirts, as during the summer months nobody really cared how their children dressed. Kara however, was dressed very neatly in a powder blue sundress and black flats, hair done up in plaits with matching bows tied on the ends. All the girls began to envy her, all the boys wanted to be near her. Such began a pattern in Kara's life. We weren't friends at first sight, and I more or less ignored the quiet girl sitting in the back. However, I did notice one more detail about her. When Bambi's mother died, Kara was the only child who didn't cry.

Our friendship began out of necessity. When we both started first grade we were always the ones without partners, and this began to bother Kara. So, one day when we were asked to pair up, Kara immediately called me over, and that was the beginning. Soon I never did anything without Kara. We had our first sleepover a week later, spending a night giggling and watching movies. We remained close friends all through elementary school and middle school. While our friendship was very easy-going and happy, I sometimes got the feeling that Kara didn't really like me, but needed me to be her partner and so she wasn't known as a loser with no friends. For instance, Kara and I never really talked about our deepest problems. Sure, I would come to Kara for boy help and superficial issues like that, but Kara never breathed a word of her mother leaving her father when she was twelve, or of the constant absence of her father throughout her life, or even of the blatant emotional and physical abuse she suffered at his hands when he was home. Those facts came out at the trial.

Even if Kara only kept me around out of necessity, I was alright with it. Truth is, I needed Kara too. Despite being a fairly outgoing child, I grew very quiet and reserved once I started school. Social situations were always painfully awkward, and became terrifying once middle school rolled around, eventually transitioning to panic-inducing in high school. Kara never struggled with that. She was always my voice, ordering food for me, taking the speaking parts in presentations, doing her best to insert herself into every social situation possible so I wouldn't have to speak. Not to mention, Kara was smart. Actually, she was bordering on genius levels of intelligence. At best, I was of average intelligence, and with Kara as my partner, my grades hovered around the 70's to mid-80's, grades that pleased me and my parents, so I was happy with them. Kara of course, was always in the high-90's, getting perfect marks on tests and projects. Everyone thought that she would be valedictorian. She would not end up being valedictorian.

As we all grew older, Kara began to emerge as a true leader of our grade. She was magnetic, charismatic, beautiful, talented, smart, and to top it all off, funny. However, she was not conventionally popular by any means. No, the most popular girls in our grade were the ones who could get the most guys to sleep with them and do the highest kick. Kara never cared for any of that. That's not to say that she couldn't do all that. Kara had been dancing since she was three, and I had seen her acrobatic skills. None of the cheerleaders could compare to her. Plus, as previously mentioned, Kara was beautiful, and there was no denying it. With her deep blue eyes, winning smile, flawless skin, good body, and lavish brown locks, there were many a guy interested in her. They flirted, she insulted them, they flirted, she insulted them, they gave up. Rinse and repeat. She never wanted a relationship, not even kissing a boy. At least, that is what I thought. Turns out, Kara had a lot of secrets that would only emerge when it was too late.

As Kara got older, she also became more and more troubling. Always with a dark sense of humour, she began threatening to stab people with pens. She passed it off as a joke, but it wasn't funny when she actually stabbed a particularly irritating male pursuer. There wasn't any blood, but it did hurt the guy. When she saw the strange and disturbed looks she got, she quickly turned the crowds opinion in her favour, telling them that he deserved it because he was being inappropriate. Everyone believed her, and they promptly forgot. Kara always had been good at manipulating people. Another disturbing aspect of Kara emerged when I was looking through old pictures of us together. The oldest pictures made me smile, with me in ragged overalls and Kara in the neat dresses that she still prefers, the two of us smiling broadly at the camera. But as I continued to look at the pictures, up to the most recent selfies of us, I noticed that there was no more light in Kara's eyes. They were completely dead. This was around the time that children started to go missing.

Our town was not small, actually it could qualify as a small city, but there were enough people that no one knew who to suspect. They barely ever found bodies either. The ones that they did find were horrific. The victims were always nude, and the amount of gashes and burns on them turned the stomachs of even the most seasoned cops. Even worse, the cops had no leads. The victim type led police to believe that this was the work of a pedophile, but all the pedophiles and people on the sex offenders registry either had alibis or were not likely to have killed the children. No one ever suspected Kara. How could they? Smart, beautiful, charming, and perfect Kara. Anybody who suggested that she had killed those children would be laughed at, perhaps even called insane. So nobody suggested her. It wasn't as if she had done anything to raise suspicion. Kara didn't personally know any of the victims, at least until my younger sister disappeared.

My sister was six years old. She was playing in a park, alone, when she vanished. I had been watching her, when I walked five minutes to get a snack. The park was heavily populated, and I had taught all sorts of stranger danger tips. I was confident that she was in no danger. But Perri didn't encounter any strangers that day. She encountered Kara. When I returned to the park Perri was gone. Frantically I asked parents what had happened, but none of them could help me. Finally, a little girl told me that a teenage girl had come up to her and led Perri away by the hand. My gut twisted. Something told me that the situation wasn't right. Could a teenage girl really have done the damage inflicted on these children? Turns out they could.

A week after my sister's disappearance I went to the police. Kara had been giving off bad vibes all week, and I had taught Perri stranger danger. She wasn't going to go off with a stranger. However, she might go off with someone like Kara, who she knew as my best friend and had met multiple times. The police were overjoyed to hear of a lead, but although skeptical of the age of my suspect, they agreed to search the premises. I don't know a lot about the logistics about what happened, but what I do know is that at some point they gained access to the house, and after going into the basement discovered the stinking corpse of my sister. Kara was arrested on the spot.

I was in shock, and was also expected to testify as a character witness against Kara. From what I knew, the defense was trying to convince the jury that Kara was not guilty by reason of insanity, but Kara wasn't being cooperative with that defense. All of her testimony hinted that she knew exactly what she was doing, and little to no remorse for her actions. Sitting up at the witness stand, looking into Kara's cold and dead eyes was terrifying. The prosecution played for me a clip of Kara's interview. These are some of the quotes that stood out.

When asked about how she managed to do it undetected, she chuckled and said:

"There are perks to being left alone all the time."

When asked about the damage done to the bodies she shrugged and replied:

"Well, it didn't give me any pleasure, but I figured that severe damage would point to a particularly sadistic pedophile. So I did it, to lead police astray. It worked of course. They were alive, I figured it would add fuel to the fire."

One of the final questions was the police asking if she had ever engaged in necrophilic activities with the bodies, and why or why not. She looked scandalized and went:

"Of course not! I'm not a total psychopath!"

So that is the tale of how my ex-best friend kidnapped, tortured, and murdered nine children over the course of four months. She was convicted of the crime, and will spend the rest of her life in prison. Something tells me that she won't mind it too much. Afterall, she had already killed nine people, killing a few more wouldn't be a big deal, especially if they had wronged her. All in all, nobody really knows what Kara killed all those children. I don't think Kara knows either. This just shows that whoever thought that teenagers are more innocent than adults because of their youth are dead wrong.

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