Alex Bunting

The night was pitch black in the small Wellington city. People were sound asleep in their beds whilst others lit up the streets to have a joyous time on that hot summer’s night. However, one building was not having as a happy and joyous time. Deep inside, in the interrogation’s cells, sat five people that rotated seats as if it were musical chairs to share their stories on what had happened earlier that year. A singular light hung its warm light above each person who either sweat, cried or stone faced through the interrogations. One police officer seemed to have his head spinning as he interviewed friend after friend, but let us listen to the start of the interrogations, shall we?

“Miss Alex Bunting. What can you tell me about, uh…”

Forgetting the name, the Maori officer flicked through the thin pieces of paper trying to find a name that stood out to him. A blonde girl, no thinner than those pieces of paper, sat in front of him with a solemn face. Her blue eyes darted from him to the paper and back again. Her black manicured nails pulled at the seams of her cropped denim jacket that was slumped over a white crop top. Her white converse tapped the floor nervously, making her black ripped jeans scrub against each other.

“Claire.” She squeaked. Noticing the officer look at her, Alex quickly looked back down to her lap. “H-her name was Claire Davies, sir.”

Sighing, the officer closed the folder and leaned his elbows on the cold chrome table that separated them.

“Yes. Of course. What can you tell me about…Claire? Was she your friend?”

The petite girl smiled a little as if she remembered a sweet dream she once knew. Alex nodded lightly before clearing her throat to speak properly.

“She was all of our friends. We were the biggest group in high school, although we don’t look like it.” Letting out a soft laugh, she continued. “I am the quiet one, Elliot Franklin is the basketball champion, George Humphries is the artistic genius that paint just like DaVinci, Isla Jefferson is the high school Barbie doll that everyone wants to be and Claire…Claire was…well…lower than me, I guess.”

Alex became quieter and more reserved after she finished her sentence. This intrigued the police officer.

“And how was she lower than you, Alex? What-what do you mean by that?”

“She was an outcast. She never was one to talk to anyone else but us. Her parents died and she lived with me up until her death. She was always suicidal, but she would never disappear. She was never one to just leave without saying anything. Especially to us.”

Scribbling words down on a notepad, the officer leaned back in his chair with a few creaks and almost looked down on her, causing the girl to shrink further into her seat. With arms folded, he bellowed out more questions.

“So, Elliot, can you tell me how Claire was at school? Was she quiet and reserved? Was there really any reason why she would inevitably…decide to take her own life?”

Raising a bushy eyebrow, the mixed looking boy looked confused to the officer’s question. Elliot’s padlock chain jingled as he reached a muscular arm to scratch his blackish brown wavy hair. His white dress shirt swayed with each small movement.

“Uh, we’re talking about the same Claire, right?”

Surprised, the officer looked back on his notes that Alex told him and furrowed his brows before looking back at Elliot with confused eyes.

“Your friend, Miss Bunting, she told me that Claire was, as she said, ‘lower than her’.”

Scoffing, Elliot leant towards the officer and shook his head with a wide smile.

“What? I don’t know why she’d say that. Claire was one of the most outgoing between all of us. She was the life of the party. A real people person. Teachers loved her; students loved her. Hell, even Alex’s parents loved her. They took her in when her parents died.”

“So, she was ever really…suicidal or mentally ill or anything like that?”

“What? No. Never. She was sad when her parents died, but that’s about it. Come to think of it, I did see something weird when I went to Alex’s house to, y’know, pay respects.”

Intrigued, the officer ripped open a new note paper and began frantically writing down what the teenager was going to say.

“Well, instead of being downstairs with her family, this was around 6pm by the way, she was upstairs. So, me being nosey, I decided to make my way up there. I passed all these photos of the family with Claire, except in some photos she was completely missing. Like someone was tearing her out of the photos. It was like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie. I walked past Claire’s room, or the spare bedroom as Alex always called it, and saw that not even a bed sheet was there.

I then walked to Alex’s room and opened the door a little. She was using nail polish remover on all of Claire’s old clothes and was stuffing all her trophies into those little suitcases with the wheels and you can pull them around. You usually see them at the airport when there’s a lot of businesspeople. I just thought she was doing it for her friend because she said so, but now looking at it. It was kinda weird.”

“Huh, that is strange. Did you see anything else that she did out of the ordinary, Mr. Humphries?”

A red haired, blued eyed boy seemed way too nervous to be innocent. He kept twitching his chipped black fingers under the table or adjusting the strap of his denim dungarees. The yellow sunflower patterned shirt made his already pale face sickened and his red converse squeaked uncomfortably. He gulped hard before pushing up his paint stained, large rimmed glasses.

“Uh, we-well. I s-saw her doing something weird with her clothes?”

“I see. Care to tell me what she was doing?”

“We-well. Uh, well. We were having a campfire one time in the country and she was acting unusual. She wasn’t acting herself. It appeared she wanted to become Claire. She began wearing some of her clothes, putting her hair up into a loose ponytail like her. She’s not even a real blonde like Claire. She was brunette. Anyways, when we were at the campfire, she had this pile of clothes that she threw into the fire to ‘get rid of old clothes and keep the fire going at the same time’. Everyone thought she was starting to act strange. She always lived in Claire’s shadow ever since we were in primary school, but when Claire disappeared before we knew she died she began to impersonate her. She even dated her girlfriend at the time. Even she saw weird things in the bathroom and on a door in Alex’s house.”

“What did you see in the house, Isla?”

A girl with brunette hair perfect curled down to her hips whipped her phone from her skinny black jeans and wrinkled her perfectly made-up face into a frown. Turning on a camera app she moved her head from side to side before adjusting the shoulders of her over-sized Harvard jumper. She seemed very concerned about how she looked as she spoke with a very posh voice.

“I’m going to be on camera, right? This warm light makes me look very dull. It does nothing for my facial structure. Hmph. Do you mind if we use my ring light?”

Reaching into a large Prada bag, Isla pulled out a circular light before turning it on to show a bright LED light display. Obviously annoyed, the officer needed to urgently get her back onto the right track.

“Miss Jefferson, we need to be on the same page here, okay? According to Mr. Humphries, you saw some strange things in Miss Bunting’s house. Care to explain about that?”

“So, we can’t change the…”

“We are not changing the lighting! Just tell your story!”

“Okay. Okay. Jeez.”

Placing her bag away, Isla sat back in her chair and clicked her long red nails on the chrome table.

“So, this was maybe the day after or maybe even the day of Claire Bear’s disappearance slash death. I was going to use the bathroom when I saw a small daggary knifey thing on the sink. It was drenched with this thick brownish purpley stuff and the bathroom smelt so bad. It smelt like death basically.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about that?”

“Because her brother used it like two hours before me and I thought it was from him. Anyway, I asked Allie about it, this was the day we started dating, and showed her the knife. She smiled at me and said that she was trying to open up a Zooper Dooper ice block thing. She’s Australian and they have these little iceblocks called Zooper Doopers and when the reddy purpley ones melt they kinda look like blood. She also has this cute Australian accent that just makes me melt and...”

“Isla, please!”

“Oh, right. Anyways, I passed the door down to the basement to get some Whittaker from the fridge and saw the same coloured stuff in the shape of some fingers. Kinda freaky. I asked her about it, but she did not tell me anything about it. She was mean to me that day, so I went home after that.”

The officer had everything he needed. After Isla’s hour and a half rant about both girls, compared to other’s ten-minute interviews, he issued an order of house search for Alex’s childhood home. Dispatch went to the location as soon as possible as the other girlfriend came into the room one last time to hear her demise.

“So, you were jealous of her?”

With shaking eyes, Alex tried to act tough and strong although her petite structure made it seem like a bad prank on herself.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t play dumb with me girl, why did you do it?

“I-I don’t know…”

“I said cut it out. I know it was you. So, why did you do it?”

The officer was becoming impatient with the stunt actor as she tried to innocently pull her way through the interrogation session.

“You’re accusing me? Of all of us, me?”

“It all leads to you. Her belongings left in your room when she had her own room. The head band left behind. The clothes burned at the campfire. The knife left in the bathroom stained red.”

She knew it. She was defeated. In her head she played scenes of what her parents would do to her or what the investigators are going to do with her house. They were going to find what they needed whether it meant ripping her entire house to pieces or ripping her to pieces. She has to confess; the jig was up. They knew it was her.

“Ho-how did you…”

“Your so-called friends ratted you out, Alex. They saw these things. You wanted to murder her. She was taking your spot in the group. She was overshadowing you. She wasn’t the lowest member, you were.”

Becoming enraged, Alex stands up so abruptly that her chair sends itself to the back wall. Using her long lanky arms, she pushed all of the officer’s notes and papers onto the floor before being refrained by a man and a woman. The clicking of handcuffs could be faintly heard in-between the banshee screams that Alex belted out.

“Why did you murder her?”

“I didn’t murder her! She’s in my basement!”

Her eyes widened as she let the one last clue that the officer needed loose. Up until the end she kept resisting the officers as they pushed her through the door and into the main room. Looking to her side, she watched as her friends watched her in slow motion. Each face was a different version of shocked.

It has now been a month since the friends got to see Claire again and Alex has been behind bars. The only thing that the officers missed was the fact that it was not a one-person game. Someone else in friend group was to blame.