#god I hope this is actually good and doesn’t sound lame af skfndjfksnfksjs

[murphy-kitt]

I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything about my original works, so here we are! (Finally, something that isn’t DP or fanfic 😅).

I’m in the progress of writing a story called “Even If I Die”, which is a sort of murder mystery with a bit of suspense thrown in there. It focuses on the main protagonist, Zachary Fleming who’s determined to solve the disappearances of his missing uncle and cousins, only to end up in over his head when he ultimately becomes the culprits next target.

Setting

The story is set in early 1996, in a small rural farming village known as Glosro. There’s a church — St Evengeline’s, a pub — Rose & Thistle, a lake — Mulberry Lake, and a few noteable residences — Williamson’s Dairy Farm, Milton House, Carradine House.

Williamson’s Dairy Farm is the residence of Zachary, his parents Martha and Jeremy, his brothers Tobias, Josiah and Elijah and sisters Harriet and Francesca. As well as his grandparents, Daisy and Johnny, who are the owners of the farm. The farm has a rope swing outside of it and a forested area which leads to a creek.

Zachary & Josiah

Zachary (aged 14, born 1982) is quite sociable and headstrong, and tends to jump into situations without thinking about the consequences. He’s very courageous, but is really close with his family. Despite this he doesn’t have many friends and finds it difficult not to get into trouble. His favourite activities are playing the bass guitar, biking, exploring and singing. He hates being cooped up inside and will escape the farmhouse to go and run about the fields. Zach has messy black hair, dark blue eyes, and normally wears a red flannel with some sort of variation of t-shirt and ripped jeans.

Josiah (aged 11, born 1985) is the complete opposite of his brother, quiet, timid, but also thoughtful and insightful. He’s extremely loyal to those he’s close with and is a fast learner. He likes making lego models, reading and sometimes likes playing the keyboard. Josiah has blonde wavy hair, light blue eyes and normal wears sky blues, greys or dark greens.

Context

Well done if you’ve made it to this point and I hope this is actually interesting instead of dragging on 😅

In February of 1996, Zachary’s uncle, Joseph Fleming goes missing. He suddenly doesn’t appear at the farm one day for work, but Zach definitely remembers seeing him in the barn that morning.

Life moves on, into March 1996. Zachary’s cousins, Nancy and Georgina are planning a trip out for two weeks during the holidays. Nothing is suspected, until a barn catches fire with Martha and Jeremy inside of it. Zachary and Josiah see who sets the barn on fire, and become suspicious of this person, as they were also particularly close with Joseph Fleming.

Eventually, Nancy and Georgina never return home. No phone calls, nada. Zachary and Josiah are playing by Mulberry Lake when they head into property beside Milton House, when they come across a new barbed wire fence which hadn’t been there previously.

The suspect also lives at Milton House, which makes Zachary even more suspicious. As both boys explore the area, they find a burnt out white truck, which belongs to Nancy Fleming, and a small hunting knife which had belonged to Joseph Fleming. Both creeped out at a potential crime scene, Zachary and Josiah leave in a hurry, but Zach’s red flannel snags on the barbed wire fence.

The suspect finds Zachary’s flannel and recognises it, and goes up to the farmhouse where Josiah is babysitting a younger cousin, Ivy. The suspect asks for where Zach is, but Josiah refuses to answer, and then the suspect figures that Josiah is in the loop too, otherwise he wouldn’t be protesting against the suspect seeing Zach. The suspect threatens Josiah to stay quiet, and this is where both brothers eventually find themselves in over their heads.

Both brothers have differing views, Josiah wants to stay quiet about the whole situation and hope that it’ll go away, and Zachary wants to face the situation head on and reveal the truth to everyone, which will be much harder to do than he first anticipated.

So, that’s really the whole outline of it so far. There’s a lot more context, but this is only one post and I don’t want to cram so much information into it. I hope it’s interesting, I’ve never had to summarise the whole mess of a plot line into a single tumblr post. Some bits have been left out, like the suspect/murderer for now. They probably will end up getting revealed as it’s not really a murder mystery for us to discover, but more a murder mystery for the characters to discover. I have some drawings below (mostly Zach) bc why not