Katie wore her daisy dress, afternoon sun bronzing her skin.
"Stop burning those damn ants," she scolded Tom with a grin.
She never could say no to her brother and his tangled mop of hair.
Three years younger, not a care. With a shrug, he hopped the stairs.
"I heard you got a date." Big grin. Katie blushed and cupped her eyes.
"It's not a date. It's a group thing. Kim, me, a couple guys.
We're just going to the movies." Chaste, she tugged her side
to make sure that daisy dress covered her thighs.
"Come back inside."
Katie had taken care of her brother ever since their mother died.
Dad drowned himself in work and liquor. Paid the bills and punched his time
and left his sixteen-year-old daughter to raise his son, a fraying home.
But at least Tom finally was old enough to stay alone.
"I'll take my phone."
They skipped the movies — Rob's call, since he had drove —
and ended up on a scenic route to a scenic lake with scenic hopes.
Rob and Kim took backseat, leaving Katie and Greg to stroll.
He had snagged a blanket. She mentioned her legs were cold.
They found a soft spot of grass to examine spacial depths,
as Greg connected constellations on Katie's naked chest.
"Don't stain my dress."
Greg felt a slap. Still groggy, a flashlight blinded at first,
but he quickly realized he was gagged and tied to a birch.
That's when he saw her: Katie was strung up in spread-eagle position,
with each limb tied to a different tree, each limb feebly twisting.
That mop of hair. He'd seen it before. That young teen at the door.
Katie's brother. Tim ... Todd ... Tom? Tom, who was now reaching for cord.
He tied up Kim and Rob on separate trees facing the center.
And while Katie flailed with a temper, Tom was silent, patient as ever.
He flicked a lantern. Shadows. Silhouettes across the night.
He ungagged his sister, releasing her caustic cries.
"But Tommy, why?"
Thomas Pickering raped Katherine that night at Centennial Lake.
Afterward, he killed Kimberly Jones, Robert French and Gregory Pace.
Thomas then slit his own throat, forcing his sister to watch,
while she cried for help that never came and helplessly bit at the knots.
No one ever found her body, only a daisy dress survived at the site,
but they say Katherine Pickering's screams still echo on the most quiet of nights.
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