Hinterkaifeck

There is a time in a man's life where he should look upon his sins, and ask forgiveness of those he had sinned against.

Hryoan Dravstei could not.

After the waking memory of waking, and of getting dressed, taking a shower, sitting down for breakfast, and then dosing off from lack of sleep, he could not begin to think of a situation in which he could get from there to being leaned against the rough oak, a pocket knife in his hand, and the body of a young woman with her blood spilled on the snow in front of him, as he was now.

And so in his horrid panic he could not think of what case he would have of forgiving, as the blonde, lifeless head that stared into him he did not recognize, nor the pocket knife, nor the rough oak that he leaned against.

Hryoan, who henceforth shall be known as Hry for simplicity, got up from the seated position and in his shock dropped the knife from his hand. Upon hitting the white ground, the knife disrupted the blank slate by adding a splatter of red to the canvas. This did not help Hry in calming his nerves.

He looked about him. Trees, bushes, all of which he could not recognize. To his north east the ground began a steady increase of height, and so in decision he decided to run towards the elevation in the Earth.

But his running did not last long, as he once again stopped to realize that the knife was not the only painter. No, for now the very shoes which he ran with left dots of a harsher fate across his path. Seeing as normal holes were better than death holes, he took off his boots and left them behind, hoping no one who came would have the ingenuity to follow the path of a different color.

As it had turned out though, taking off shoes in at approximately negative twenty degrees did not help the human body. Poor Hry! By the time he got at the top of the hill, he was desperately hoping for there to be some sign of civilization. Whether due to a good fate, a good god, or just a writer's sake of convenience, there lay a diner near the long road that connected city and city. Besides that, there was nothing but the same forest he had been traveling to this point.

In the interest of time he made it to that diner, which in every step closer seemed more and more appetizing. Although it was only as he entered the door he recalled that state that he had been in only moments ago, and how during this, the count of inventory only tallied one bloody knife, one unfortunate soul, and a pair of soles that needed desperate cleaning. No where on this inventory at the time, or indeed now, included money.

However the owner, noticing his current state, weakened to him; much so that it only took a few minutes of pleading for her to finally allow the man a meal.

It seemed as though this would be the first break he would get in his journey to figure out what happened, he sat eagerly to a meal of steak and eggs. Unfortunately, there would be no journey – as only minutes after he had begun to indulge the door rang, followed by the footsteps of two police officers.


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