THE ACCIDENTAL MURDERS

I am tired of watching silly movies about college students being depicted as less than intelligent.

They made it to college for Pete's sake.( Who is Pete anyway?) Give them the credit that is due to them.

Ever see how slowly they run when the gargantuan genetically modified crocodile is chasing them, or when they have to cross over a huge river filled with sharks, using an extremely fragile rope bridge made of twine that is fraying with every passing second. There is that one particular shark sailing through the air and within a hair's breath of biting your foot off.

Of course there is always one person who gives everyone a hard time and allows time to pass to the 'minutest' of seconds to escape danger.

Well, no more.

This is the story of how the Coeds got their groove back.

Meet Jada, John, Maya, Zeke, David, Jessica and Franz. All top of their classes in college. Final year students working on their thesis.

This particular group of students had been chosen to be a part of one of those horror movies. They did play roles in the movie but were totally disgruntled after viewing the finished product. They felt that their portrayal of the average student was frivolous, superficial and shallow.

They tried to get a redo or re-edit or whatever a change was called in the movie world. But to no avail. The movie was going forward as it was.

They were going to do something about it. The directors would pay for all the inept decisions they made about other people's lives.

The students formed a 'coven' as they named it. They were all science majors, surely they could come up with a non-lethal way to get their revenge.

Time to concoct a witching brew. Eye of newt, toe of frog and the rusted nail from a coffin.

They all worked on different aspects of the project according to their thesis and decided to meet to define the final process of a non-lethal poison which could make anyone sick but not dead. It had to actually make you think you were going to dying.

Having various combinations of their thesis on poisons was very opportunistic for what they had in mind.

They all lived on campus, so it was not hard to sneak into the science lab late at nights. There were provided with mice to test their theories on. Somehow, they had a never ending supply, so a few would not be missed.

Their Plan.

At their first meeting:

"The floor is now open to ideas." Maya who was the expert on the poisons had been elected as group leader.

"Hmmm, lets just do what they planned and genetically modify some sharks. You know we can do it, throw them in and see how they feel." Jada said sounding a little cross.

"We don't really want to mortally harm them, do we?" Franz said with a quizzical expression. As if the idea sounded really great.

"Not that they don't deserve it, but no, let's aim for something less lethal." Maya said, amused.

"Let's invite them to afternoon tea with chocolate cake. Poisoned slices of chocolate cake." Jessica was quite serious.

"Only a girl would think of that." said John laughing. Jessica gave him a scorching look. "Ok, ok, not trying to be sexist, just conversational."

"Wait, that is not a bad idea. We could poison all but one slice, not enough to kill anybody, just make them so sick they would think they were all gonna die." David chimed in.

"Tell them that one slice of chocolate cake is perfectly fine. Whoever finds and eats it gets a free pass to leave, everyone else was going to die a horrible death." Jada was pleased with the thought.

"We just put them in a situation where they have to eat a slice or something worse would happen." Zeke offered.

"Sharks, we need some giant sized sharks." This from David.

"Where are we going to get giant sharks. Wait, they don't have to be real. I have some connections in the movie world, maybe we could borrow some props. Tell them it's for a school play or something." John said.

"We will need a place to stage it, make it all formal. Make them dress up fancy, bring expensive wine and expect the best entertainment that money can buy. It will be a tribute to their greatness, but it will be private, open to only writers and directors, strictly exclusively by invitation only. Admit one only." Maya's brain was firing on all cylinders, she could see the plan in detail.

"Franz, your family is away for the holidays. We could plan it in your underground pool house. It has a raised platform. We could do the hologram of giant sharks in the pool. Set large tables above the sliding glass tops and rig it to open so they fall into the pool on cue and get eaten by fake sharks if they refused to eat the cake."

Franz was dubious, "You cannot let them know it's my house, my parents would literally kill me if they found out."

"Let's blindfold them. I bet they would find it all very intriguing." Chimed in Jessica.

"Lets hire a limousine to pick them up at an assigned location where they can safely park their cars, they are so cocky they won't notice the driver anyway."

"Where will we get the funding."

"Easy, we will let them fund it themselves, leave that to me." Maya was good at disguising herself and playing different roles. She was a virtual chameleon.

"We will also disguise the outside of the house, it will be dark, they will not see us and we will have acoustics directing them about what to do and where to go. They will be so glad to leave at the end, they won't even notice where they are, we have to make sure of that." Zeke said.

"They have to be made to feel so ridiculous that they would not want anyone knowing what actually happened anyway," said John.

They spent two nights getting the formula right. Some mice died, unfortunately. Finally on the third night the mouse was awfully ill, but revived in less than an hour.

They were ready.

They made three bottles. One real and one fake, the other contained the antidote, they were labeled and locked away.

The evening was executed flawlessly as planned. Guests arrived and were seated in an elaborate setting and the evening began with drinks and dinner served by waiters and waitresses in tasteful masks.

Guests were told via intercom that the main event would follow dinner.

The slices of chocolate cake were presented for desert.

"ATTENTION." The sound reverberated in the cavernous space.

"Before you start eating your cake, please take a look at the floor beneath your feet."

A huge floodlight was turned on below.

Everyone gasped. There were huge sharks swimming around under the glass bottomed floor. The students had done a great job by themselves, they had not wanted to involve any outsider in their plan. Nobody else needed to know about their escapades that evening.

Alas.....

Unknown to the others, Jada had gone back into the lab after everyone went to bed. She switched the labels on the bottles. Nobody knew what had happened to her on the film set. She had been too ashamed to talk about it. She had made sure the culprit's name was on the invitation list. She would have her revenge.........

"Your cake has been poisoned. All except one slice. We know who has it. Anyone who refuses to eat it will be fed to the sharks circling below. You all have to take your chances. One person is safe, but you all must eat the cake to find out who it will be. So, cake or shark. Your choice."

"By the way, we may or may not have the antidote. This is for all the bad movie scripts or movies that you all have made, and all the people that you have hurt along the way."

"Bon appetit to you or maybe to the sharks."

An uproar broke out. Everyone thinking that they had the safe slice of chocolate cake one second, and then that they had the poisoned piece the next second.

No one would touch the cake. Ten minutes passed.

"We warned you." The voice shouted.

Suddenly, the floor beneath one guest opened up and he disappeared. There was a splash and such a horrendous sound of screaming and crunching, some of the women at the table started crying.

"Cake or shark."

They all started eating, even if a little tentatively.

A few minutes later they started clutching their throats.

FIVE MINUTES LATER THEY WERE ALL DEAD.

Jada knew that she had to sacrifice them all for there could be no witnesses. Most of them knew what had happened to her, but had not cared. It was a regular occurrence. A rite of passage.

She quietly exited the control room, locked and barred the door. Her friends would get out, but not for a while. They would not call for help. Too much was at stake.

Her accomplice, the person who was dropped into the pool was waiting for her. They blacked out all visual from the control room.

They went to work.

The cars were driven back to the respective homes of all the guests and parked quite normally, they had gloves on, making sure no fingerprints were left.

Two hours later, the others had freed themselves. The bodies were gone, all signs of the cake was gone, the vials of poison et al were gone. Jada was nowhere to be found.

What had happened to eight dead bodies, Were they really dead?.

The mystery was never solved. Some believe the people were kidnapped by aliens. How else would all the cars be exactly where the owners had parked them. How is it no evidence was found anywhere to offer a clue into what had happened.

The students had been smart and thorough.

Someone wrote a book of 'fiction', under the pseudonym J.J. Smart, fully describing the events of that night. It was a runaway best seller.

There will be repercussions. But that is for a lot later and another story.