The Omniscrolls

My father was a strange and secretive man who would disappear on us for days or weeks without a word and return as if nothing had happened. My younger brother, Alex, and I were still in primary school at the time; we never understood why he disappeared like that, and Mom wouldn’t give us a straight answer either. I don’t think even she knew all the details. As a few years passed, however, Dad’s disappearances became increasingly frequent, and he and Mom often argued when he was back. This led to our parents divorcing, and Mom getting full custody of us because Dad was never around. He was barely even present for his own divorce. After the divorce, we rarely heard from Dad. He would call us once in a few months, but it was always brief. After a few years, we stopped hearing from him altogether. We received no word about his whereabouts, and Mom was worried, but she never told us anything. She knew more than she told us; I was certain of that. When I was fifteen, we received a package th...

Collecting antiques was my passion. From a young age, I was enthralled by the furniture and trinkets my grandparents showed me. These priceless items were much older than them, passed down from their grandparents and so on. My grandparents were the ones who took care of me after my parents were murdered one night when I was six. The suspect was never found, but it was believed that they were witnesses to a murder that occurred that same night, not far from where they were found—which was later revealed to be the work of a serial killer who had claimed the lives of seven others in five months. That case ran cold, and none of the victims received the justice they deserved in death. And their families, we all suffered an emptiness that would never truly heal. An even deeper void lingered within me when the last two members of my family passed away within the same week, but I was at least glad to find out that I’d have their antiques with me to remember them by. A year later, I quit my job...

I had solved countless cases as a homicide detective, but my first serial killer case was leading me to multiple dead ends. The case stumped everyone working on it, for it seemed that the killer was always ten steps ahead. The victim count rose to double digits within two months, and we still had zero evidence. No leads, no witnesses, it was as if they were a ghost. Based on the swiftness of the execution of each kill and the subsequent cover-up of evidence, some of us speculated that it was most likely two or more people carrying out the crimes—and we especially agreed on the idea that they most likely had a background, or at least extensive knowledge, in Law Enforcement and Forensics. I asked my mother, the Chief Medical Examiner, about her thoughts on this case, and even she had no direct response. Another month passed, and the case was still leading us nowhere. At this point, our team was sidelined and the case was taken over by the higher-ups. They surprisingly showed faster resul...

Being one of the few people amongst my colleagues who’d finish all their projects with days to spare, there were plenty of people who looked forward to watching me fall. A handful of us were targeted by these displeased parties on many occasions as they sought to tarnish our reputations with lies and deceit. There were many rumours about me selling company secrets, and one time, my email was even hacked to leave a fake paper trail. The culprits were eventually caught, and they swore to get back at me and the others. They especially held a grudge against me, because I was the one who took the matter to the police, whereas my other colleagues hesitated. I didn’t take their treats seriously, but things took an unexpected turn just a week later when my house was broken into while I was out with friends. When I arrived, a note was left on my dressing table. “You can’t escape us,” it said. An investigation was launched, but weeks passed without any results. I learned later through an office ...

It had been a long day attending the trial of a drug trafficking case as the lead detective. Things weren’t going our way: two of our witnesses were suddenly unwilling to testify. That evening, Trudy, my childhood friend and the prosecutor of the case, said we should have some drinks at our usual place. The bar was in my sights when I suddenly got a call from Trudy’s emergency phone. I rushed to my car and raced to Trudy’s house in two minutes. When I arrived near her house, parked at a safe distance across the street, I found three men escorting her to a van. One of them was holding her arm and pointing a gun at her under his coat. Pulling out my gun was not an option; she’d be dead before I could do anything. The neighbourhood was quiet and barren at that hour, but I couldn’t risk a full transformation either. I tapped into my dragon core and dashed across the street, knocking the assailants unconscious in a split second and taking Trudy to my car. I then called for backup and rushed...

I was feeling under the weather from the night before, but I went to the office anyway because I had to give an important presentation. But things weren’t as smooth as I would’ve liked them to be, so much that even my boss told me she’d cover for me halfway through. I still had more work to do even after the presentation, but she told me to take some time off until I felt better. I was disheartened that I couldn’t push through the presentation, but I was glad I could go home. I just wanted to be in the comfort of my bed. When I arrived at my house, however, I noticed my boyfriend Cliff’s car in the driveway. It was strange. His work usually ran later than mine; he didn’t tell me he was coming home early. I then remembered what my best friend Roman said just two days ago: he said he had seen Cliff at a hotel with another woman. I brushed it off as a mere business meeting and told Roman he was being paranoid, but now I wasn’t so sure. When I stepped inside, I heard a woman’s giggles comi...

  The weekend rolled around and I was finally free of court cases, at least for two days. I spent the entire day cleaning the house and buying necessities. On my way home from the supermarket, I decided to visit my parents’ graves. However, when I arrived at their plot, their tombstones weren’t there. There was no chance that I was at the wrong plot, so I figured it had to be some kind of vandalism. I went to the police station to file a complaint about the issue and they agreed to look into it. That night, I could barely close my eyes in bed. I couldn’t fathom what had happened, or who could’ve committed such an odd crime. Who robbed just tombstones? My parents passed away only six months ago; they were both soldiers who got caught in a bomb blast. I wondered whether there was a connection to the military. The next day, the police asked my permission to exhume their remains; it turned out that the bodies I believed to be my parents’ were actually two others’. As the cops investiga...

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading: all the times that he was supposed to be working, he was actually in a hotel room with her! I found all the receipts tucked away in the journal cover—they were from the Williamson Hotel. Even the two-day business trip was a romantic rendezvous with her. How had I missed it? We were supposed to start a family. I realised why he kept putting it off: he was planning on running away with another woman. I felt my chest tighten; I couldn’t breathe. I tried to call out to my new boyfriend, Craig, but the words wouldn’t come out. I woke up in a hospital bed and had no idea how I got there. Craig related to me what had happened: “I found you lying on the basement floor and called emergency services.” The doctor told me that I had a minor heart attack, and that it may have been brought on by stress. He asked me to take it easy. Little did I know that getting that heart attack would help me get to the bottom of my husband’s disappearance. I was in the ...

I had the perfect life: a great career at a prestigious law firm, a perfect husband, a mother-in-law who treated me like her own, and plans to start a family. However, that all changed with just one phone call. I had spent the entire morning in court and decided to meet my husband, Lyle, for lunch. I called him to confirm our lunch date only to have someone else answer his phone. The man on the other end said, “Sorry, but Mr. Raymond cannot come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?” “Who are you and why do you have my husband’s phone?” “I’m the man who decides your husband’s fate.” “Who are you?” I asked as my heart pounded in fear. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is what you are willing to do to save your husband.” “Okay, what do I have to do?” “First, listen without interrupting me. Second, if you inform the cops, I will kill him. And third, get me ten million dollars within a week.” “I don’t have that much money!” “What about your bank account?” “I don’t have that...

  I started digging into my mother’s case whenever I could. As I was a detective, I thought all the information I required would be easy to find, but what I found was a lot of red tape. My partner, Dave, was twenty years senior to me, so I turned to him for help. He was curious about what case I wanted to look into, so I opened up about it without letting him know about my most recent discovery. “I remember that case. As a matter of fact, I worked on it until the then captain asked us to drop it.” “I’m guessing politics played its part there.” “Yes, our prime suspect, the husband, had connections to a lot of powerful people; one of them was even a senator.” “And do you have an idea about what happened to the child?” “I’m not certain. At the time, my partner and I assumed that her mother had asked a friend of hers to skip town with her daughter, but since we were asked to stop looking into it, we never got to confirm it.” I could see the pain in my partner’s eyes as he spoke those w...