Story: Criminal District Court Proceedings

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"Your Honor, the State is ready to proceeds with motions."

Direct Examination

Ms. Smith: Could you please state your name for the Record?

Alan King: Mayor Alan King.

Ms. Smith: Do you see McKenzie King in court today?

Alan King: Yes.

Ms. Smith: Mr. Mayor, could you tell the Court what happened the night of February 2, 2015?

Alan King: Me and my wife were sleeping in the upstairs guest room at my mother's home. My sister and two brothers were also visiting and were staying in the downstairs guest room. It was 11 PM, and both of us have work early. I was woken by a noise in the living room, so I went to investigate.

Ms. Smith: What did the noise sound like?

Alan King: It was the sound of the door opening. It is old so it always creaked, every since we were little kids.

Ms. Smith: What did you do next?

Alan King: I went to the front door to see who had left. The porch light was on, so I could see who was leaving the yard.

Ms. Smith: And who was the person you saw?

Alan King: It was my sister, McKenzie King.

Ms. Smith: And when you saw it was your sister, what was your next action?

Alan King: I followed her but brought no attention to myself. You have to understand that I've always been a little...scared of my sister. When she was born, she acted like a normal child, but then sometimes in the middle of the night, she would sneak out of the window and go places and then come back before everyone had woken up. I saw it happen several times.

Ms. Smith: Is there any other reason you suspected your sister was different?

Alan King: People kept dying. They would find remains every morning of a child, a mother, a shopkeeper, random people from town. Always found in the morning. You must remember what it was like twenty years ago. They never caught the person responsible, but I always wondered if it was McKenzie.

Ms. Smith: So, on the night of February second, you followed your sister. Where did she go?

Alan King: She walked over to the home of our family friend, Tom Pultz.  I stayed outside, too scared to enter. I thought maybe she was having an affair with Tom. I was wrong.

Ms. Smith: And did she emerge from the house?

Alan King: Yes. I don't know why, but I waited outside. I thought of confronting her after about her affair. When she finally emerged, her nightgown was covered in blood. She quickly took it off and buried it in Tom's front yard. When she had gone back home, I dug it up.

Ms. Smith: I want to show you this document that's marked Exhibit Number 1. Is this the gown she wore that night?

Alan King: Yes, that is the exact one I saw her burying and later I dug up.

Ms. Smith: Your Honor, I would like to offer Exhibit 1 into evidence.

The Court: Exhibit 1 is received in evidence.

Ms. Smith: Mr. Mayor, what did you do after digging up the gown?

Alan King: I returned home and put it in one of my empty bedside drawers until I could go to the police department the next morning.

Ms. Smith: And what happened the next morning?

Alan King: Before I went to work in the next town over where I'm mayor, I passed by Tom's house just to see him and talk. There was police tape around his front door and a swarm of officers. I found out he was killed.

Ms. Smith: And who did they suspect?

Alan King: They thought it was perhaps an animal, since the scene was so gruesome. I knew it was my sister who had done it. McKenzie, you can sit over there and smile all you'd like, but I know you're guilty. You've always had an emptiness in your eyes that makes me shiver, and if the Jury were to look into your eyes they would see it too.

Ms. Smith: Thank you Mr. Mayor. I have no further questions.


A/N

I based this story on one I read in The Flowering Tree called "Demon sister." It is about a baby who, when born, looks very unusual but acts like a regular child. Until nighttime, that is. At bedtime, the child sneaks out and one by one eats the people in the town. One night, her brother sees her transform from a baby into a demon, but says nothing. Scared for his life, he leaves the town and marries a girl in a neighboring town. All this time, he is preparing to kill his sister so that she can no longer hurt anyone in the town. He finally goes back to visit, and his hometown has become a ghost town. He ends up killing his sister with a trained lion.

I changed the plot of the story so that it could be in a court transcript style. I wanted to offer a snippet of the court hearing that would go on if the demon sister was accused of murder. I know that the story isn't that exciting, but I wanted to explore a new writing style this week.

 Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.

Reading Notes: A Flowering Tree Part 2

For Tuesday's reading, I again chose to read more stories from A Flowering Tree.

I left off with a story called "The Dead Prince and the Talking Doll." It made me mad that the princess was trapped in this tiny room with a dead man and no company. She nursed the man back to health for 12 years and just when he was about to wake up, this acrobat girl swooped in and took the prince as her husband, claiming to have taken care of him the whole time. Luckily, the princess was telling her story to a doll one night in the room and the prince overheard what happened. He got rid of the acrobat girl and the prince and princess got married instead. The creepy part of the story was the fact that for several years, the princess gave food to a beggar who predicted that she would become the bride of a dead husband.

It's really strange because in all of the stories I read from this collection, the dolls always can talk and act like real people. For example, in another story literally called "Dolls," a husband is angry because his wife always eats what I'm guessing is the good part of their fish. He always has to eat the leftover tail and head. He asked his sister for advice, and she told him to leave three dolls around the house. The poor wife was scared by the talking dolls and left the house before she could eat anything. I guess they did their job.

There was another really interesting story called "Double Double" about a man who asked for a favor from God to double his supply. Unfortunately, God wasn't specific about what was doubled, so every time the man ate, his food doubled itself within his stomach, so he burst. But then at his funeral, his body kept doubling, and the townspeople had to keep burying bodies.

Photo By Roberto Tetsuo Okamura, Shutterstock.  

Since the collection is named after it, I decided to also read "The Flowering Tree." I was expecting a light tale about somebody falling in love underneath a beautiful tree. Nope. So it starts off nice with two sisters. The younger one can turn herself into a flowering tree so that they can sell the beautiful flowers for their poor mother. Soon the Prince learns about the flowers and finds the daughter and wants to marry her. His mean sister disregards the special instructions for turning the daughter into the tree, and leaves the poor girl with half a body. After a while, the Prince realizes that it's his wife and heals her.

 Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.

Reading Notes: A Flowering Tree

This week I chose a new source to work with, and I was not disappointed. The stories are a bit weird, but very entertaining.

The first story I read, called "A Story and a Song", was about a woman who had a story and song she wanted to tell, but she kept them in too long, so they took revenge. In the middle of the night, the story and song became a man's coat and boots. The woman's husband got jealous and they fought. The strange part of the story is that the woman's husband got the explanation from a group of gossiping lamp flames. It's interesting how inanimate objects were able to talk. The husband heard them talking about the true reason for the boots and coat being at their house and so he went home and asked about the song. The most disappointing part of the story is that she had forgotten the story and song. They could have sounded beautiful and it was all wasted because she didn't let them free. The commentary is really interesting because it talks about how nothing is destroyed; it is transformed.

The next story("A Brother, Sister, and a Snake") that was interesting was this one about a King, his new wife, and 2 children. The step-mother did not like the children, so she tried to kill the girl by putting a baby snake in her water. The snake stayed in her stomach, and the two children were banished for some weird reason. The brother and sister stayed in a forest with a nice Ogre for many years until one day her brother for some reason turns into a snake and long story short she almost marries her dad until she tells her story to him and then everyone lives happily ever after.

I liked this story called "Cannibal Sister." The title basically contains the story. There is a family and a baby is born and it looks weird and terrifying but the mother doesn't think anything of it. One night, a brother wakes up in the middle of the night and sees when the demon baby goes out and eats villagers and comes back to sleep in the crib like a human baby. He leaves town and comes back with trained lions to kill his "sister." He ends up killing his sister, but only after his demon sister had eaten his horse's legs off.

A Ghost Town, Wikipedia

Bibliography: A.K. Ramanujan. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. Link to reading.