2nd Annual Murder Mystery: Part 1

Hello reader, and welcome to Monsieur Jake and Señor Jared's second annual murder mystery™. In this installment to our "critically" "acclaimed" and best-"selling" fran"chi"se, you can expect nouns, adjectives, predicate nominatives, and even complex sentences! 

If you are unfamiliar with our unique and convoluted style of composing the story, Jake and I take turns each day for a month writing one part, not knowing what the other will write until it's published. Some say it's the greatest inventive writing style since Gandhi. Some say that.

Wishing you the best of luck comprehending the series,

Jared "Rembrandt" Seale


It was a dark, sunny, moist, and windy day in upper downtown suburban northwest Chicago. A man named Abraham Lopez was walking towards his car, eager to return home after a day's work as the manager of the city's famous Hamburger Monarch. Abraham was a 2'56" man (5'10" for our American readers), weighing in at around 2760 ounces (170 pounds for our American readers). He was somewhere between 25 and 32 years old and sported a mane of golden red hair that totally got all the ladies always. 

He climbed into his 1992 Chevy Pinto and started his drive home. He subsequently finished his drive home. 

As he pulled into his 700 square foot garage (complete with mahogany furniture and several black lights), he noticed a faint smell in the air. He instantly panicked, knowing exactly what had happened. 

Abraham put on his running shoes and sprinted up the steps to retrieve the pizza he left in the oven before work. He had set the oven on 50 degrees (Fahrenheit, for our international readers) so the pizza wouldn't burn by the time he got home, but he seemed to have missed it by a hair.

After peeling off the slightly burnt corners, he grabbed a plate and drink and sat down on his rad couch. He channel surfed for a while, pausing when he came across a showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button dubbed in a strange Russian dialect. He decided to keep it on for a while...

...

Abraham woke up. He realized he had fallen asleep watching the movie, which now was almost at the end where Brad Pitt becomes a kid and Cate Blanchett gets old and stuff. But something was different. The Russian dialect was even more odd. Abraham knew exactly what to do.

He took apart his TiVo™ brand™ DVR™ and retrieved the hard drive, hooked it up to his Windows 98 PC desktop computer, and opened a video editor. He found the point in the movie where the accent changed, isolated it, sped it up, changed the pitch values, slowed it down, reversed it, changed the pitch values again, and hit play.

"... to pay the ransom, else, you know what happens next. Come to 442 Southnorth Avenue tonight at midnight if you want him to live... We have your husband, Mrs. Lewith. You have one last chance to pay the ransom, else..." the file played on loop.

"Boinga!" exclaimed Abraham (his one-time catchphrase). He packed up his hard drive and hauled it to the police station.

...

"What is it, Mr. Lopez?" Officer Policemann asked Abraham.

"Officer, I really think you should hear this. I was watching—"

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Yeah, we've heard. All kinds of nerds like you have showed up all night with this message." he mumbled incoherently.

"So have you found the guy?"

"What are we, one of those shows on that channel, one of those police detective shows... uh... I think it's called CBI... no, that doesn't sound right... Crimitive Minds... maybe it's on the other network, one of those syndication channels, I don't know..."

Abraham let this go on for five minutes before interjecting, "So you can't just identify the voice from the recording?"

"Of course not!" Officer Policemann shouted entirely too loud. "We'd be searching for days before we got any leads on that."

"So what are you guys going to do? This sounds serious."

"We have a top secret plan that involves setting up a 10-man team on 442 Southnorth tonight around 11:45 CST. It's gonna be awesome and highly dangerous, wanna tag along?"

For the sake of the narrative and abandoning all logic from here on out, Abraham responded with an enthusiastic affirmative.  

"Good, I'll pick you up in a few hours." said Officer, "And please, call me by my rank."

"Yes sir, Captain Officer."

Abraham hurried back to his house, sweating moisturously in anticipation for the events that were to come. He played racquetball against himself for a few hours to pass the time until he heard Officer pull up to his driveway.

"Here we go," Abraham here-we-go'd.

TO BE CONTINUED BY JAKE "AUTOZONE" SMITH