It started on March 6th. The day started like any other, with me in the workshop working away on my magnum opus.

“Careful, careful,” I told myself as I carved into the large piece of wood, making sure that my cuts were perfect. “You don’t want to have to start over again, all because you made some stupid mistake.” I muttered bitterly to myself, glancing towards the corner of the room where the previous attempts lay. Each one unable to stand up to the standard I had set. One, I applied too much pressure and gouged the wood, another I cut the wood an inch too small, and one just didn’t feel right. None of them were even close.

As much as I tried, I couldn’t get any of those chunks of wood to resemble even a pale imitation of what I had created originally. Instead, they were nothing more than a cheap parody, only ever able to contain a minute fraction of the brilliance that the original held! But it’s gone now, dead and gone, no amount of glue or groaning can bring it back. We didn’t plan to just throw away or destroy the failed attempts, no nothing like that. For the price we paid for the lumber, we couldn't afford to be that wasteful. Mom and I were just going to do what we always did. Re-use the wood to make whatever furniture someone orders from us, probably a chair. Everyone wants a chair.

I live in a carpentry shop with my mom, in the more commercial section of town over on Wood Chip Drive. It’s tough work but one that I’m happy to do. My name is Ink Yang and my Mom’s is Li Yang. You might have guessed we are Chinese. We immigrated to Canada six years ago and moved into this building two years later. Before that we used to live in a small one-bedroom apartment building and the only job my mom was able to get was one at the local wood mill a couple hours away from town. It was an awful job, long hours, grueling work and never enough pay to afford to pay for both food and rent, unless she worked every holiday and weekend. Looking back, I think that was the real magic of this story, but then again what mother isn’t magical in one way or another. She always came through, even with the horrendous work conditions and mountain of stress from moving to a different country, she somehow managed to make time for me. Every day in between the desperate need for sleep and heart wrenching home sickness, we would spend a couple of hours woodworking. It’s a pretty cheap activity since all it required was a knife and any scrap wood mom was able to take as her five-finger bonus from work.

She taught me everything I know about woodworking. We would usually just carve whatever objects were around us like a small table or a chair. Sometimes when she wanted me to practice making more complex shapes, she would turn on the TV and flip through channels until she found a person’s pose on there that she liked. She would pause the TV and teach me how to carve the person. Believe it or not, this actually made me somewhat popular at school. My classmates thought that what I was doing was cool, they would often rattle off requests of characters to carve. Unfortunately, due to me only knowing Chinese at the time I did not have any real idea of English and every time one of them gave me one of these requests I couldn’t do anything other than just stare blankly at them.

But due to the combination of being able to carve accurate sculptures of people and the blank stare I gave to anyone who spoke to me, I gained the reputation of the weird kid at school. Thankfully that reputation has mostly dissipated after I finally managed to get a decent grasp on the English language, the nightmare of a concept that it is. The hard work that my mom was doing was not lost on me even for young I was at the time. I worked hard at school forcing myself to learn English, the idiotic language that it is. It helped that I had patient friends that helped teach me when my teachers got too frustrated and gave up. Well, I say “had” because much like a bad piece of wood they can appear fine and dandy on the outside but when you cut them open and look at them for what they truly are it reveals a selfish evil rotting core.

“Ink the bus is here you’re going to be late!” Mom yelled out from the storeroom. Hearing her warning, I dropped my tools, took off my apron and quickly ran out of the workshop. I grabbed my backpack and said bye to my mom. Ran out the door hopping on the bus taking my normal spot at the very back.

As we started to drive off, I stared at my house. It's a three-story townhouse with a bright red door. Red being a symbol of luck and good fortune in China. Above the entrance was an overhanging sign that read in golden lettering “Quality Family Carpentry”. The first level was converted into two distinct areas, the storefront where we put our furniture out on display along with the various wood and finish options available.

The biggest room, taking up the other half of the floor, is the workshop where all the magic happens. It is equipped with various tools and machines that we used to cut and shape the wood into something people would actually want to buy. The room was always very clean since mom always taught me a messy workspace could lead to accidents like my hand getting chopped off by the miter saw. In the back of the room, was a large steel roller door which we use to bring lumber into the workshop. In one corner is a couple steel of pillars welded to the wall with a removable chain connecting them together. We use the space to store all the wood we get brought in. 

We have this one slab of wood in the workshop that my mom is extremely bitter about. It is a big, big plank of rosewood, three meters long by two meters wide to be precise. We bought the thing when we first moved into our home four years ago. For some reason, no one wants to buy furniture made of rosewood, I swear its cursed. Unfortunately for mom, it was very expensive. At this point, she just wants to get rid of it more than anything. She doesn't even care about selling it anymore, it just takes up so much room. It's been with us for so long its practically part of the family at this point, we’ve even given it a name “Rosy.”

On the second floor is our modest kitchen and living area, equipped with a couch, armchairs and a TV. There are three bedrooms found on the third floor. When we moved into our home four years ago, it was just me and my mom, so we turned one of the bedrooms into a storage room, since we had no need for three bedrooms. 

We moved into the house around four years ago it wasn’t my mom's first choice by any means, but it was by far the cheapest option due to the small almost minor fact that the previous occupants were kind of murdered. Despite that alarming fact my mom swallowed her pride and using two years savings and a little bit of luck on my end she put a roof over our heads. A roof that’s walls were filled with asbestos and water didn’t reek of rat waste.

We had to remodel; the entire house since it was always my mom's dreams to be able to open her own carpentry shop. And having the exact same design as the infamous murder house would not drum up good business, or at least not the kind we wanted. We had to re model the storeroom a couple times because it turns out red has a very different here than it does in China.

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The murders were mysterious, police investigations never lead anywhere, no one knew how or why they happened. All they knew was that a couple months after the Duran's moved in, they were brutally murdered. In an infamous event that would forever be known as the “Wood Chip Drive Massacre”. Despite what you might think living in a notorious murder house isn't all that exciting. It's still just a house after all, once the cleanup crew arrived the only way, you could have known that four people were slaughtered, was if you read any of the newspaper that month.

The stuff that was printed later, when we first moved in did not paint us in the best light. They claimed absurd things, like my mom was the real murderer or me who was twelve years old was her accomplice. My mom just chalked it up to a mix of racism and paranoia, and to her credit never let it discourage her from doing what she loved, woodworking. She had this saying she would always use whenever someone asked why she sold more furniture comparted to anything else. “Regardless of who you are or where you come from, you always need a table to eat at or a chair to sit in after a long day of work.” 

I never really thought that much or too deeply about the quote still don’t to this day, if there is some hidden meaning behind it, it was lost on me. Growing up in that place gave me some decent customer service skills. Especially when October rolled around and all the film students from the local university came down to the shop trying to get our interviews for their documentary on the incident. Each one hoping that their video would be the lucky break they needed to make a name for themselves.

Every October I have to stand behind the counter, forcing my best fake smile out for literal hours. As idiot after idiot film student comes into the shop trying to convince me to do an interview or tries to trick me to give them audio, they can edit to make it sound like I admitting to the murders. They never did though all they got was silence and a calm complacent look. Even when we had one guy who stormed in shoved a camera in my face and demanded that I admit to the murders. I almost lost it and was a few seconds away from throwing the heaviest piece of furniture we had before mom came from the back and tagged me out. It wasn't even the questioning that comes with the any job that has you speaking with the public, it was mostly the lack of respect of my privacy and personal space.

The only documentary that ever went anywhere was from this guy called Pablo, never learnt his last name. He was respectful in his research and left after we explained that we didn’t want to answer any questions. His documentary even managed to get onto Netflix. It takes a more somber tone, actually acknowledging the tragic loss of life that happened that day instead of creating a wild conspiracy that every other documentary dose. To this day I’ve gained a sort of sixth sense for when someone's coming to interrogate me.

I just wished dad was here to look at this, I think he be proud of what we've managed to do, turn a building for ever immortalized after infamous murders and turned it into a barely profitable busin--- my thoughts were interrupted by the impact of a football against my face. It made me thankful I didn’t have glasses because if I did, they would most certainly be broken.

“Oh my god Ink I'm so sorry I was trying to throw it to Nate but when the bus turned it hit you.” A tall muscular student quickly apologized standing up and coming over to the back of the bus check on me. “Are you okay? I threw it kind of hard” the star athlete of the football team asked.

“It's fine Brad. Just take your stupid ball back and sit down!” I bitterly spat out, the mere presence of his face reminding me of what he did to me, what he took from me.

“Well okay then.” He responded somewhat saddened before returning to his cheerful self as he continued his conversation with the other jocks, as I gave him a passing glance filled with rage. He had short blonde hair, green eyes, is pale as a ghost and tall like really tall. Even for a seventeen year old he towered over most adults easily. It was always nice to have him around on a windy day since you could always stand behind him basically as a human shield, he never minded of course in fact he took a strange sort of pride in his role in our friend group. He was a gentle giant to put it simply but even though he's gentle he's still a giant, a monster, something that can only achieve destruction nothing else.

In a way he's the complete opposite of me, his blonde hair and green eyes contrasted with my black and blue. Where he was built like a mountain, I was more along the lines of a bag of sticks. He was always quick to forgive while I had a habit of holding on to grudges even when they were my fault in the first place, to the point where I would hold on to them for so long that it became impossible to say sorry.

As we continued to pick up more and more passengers something odd caught my attention. It was three people all laughing hysterically as if one of them had just told the others the greatest joke. I found this odd however because it was my understanding that they had stopped talking to each other after they ruined my life. I didn’t even need to look at them to know who was laughing, I've known them for six years after all. I glanced at them anyways, I didn’t know what I wanted to see. Maybe I was hoping that behind their laughter I would see them miserable and suffering that the only reason they were laughing was it was a pathetic way for them to cope with what they did to me a brief meaningless bit of relief but instead what I saw was three people I thought I could trust with my life sitting and chatting as if nothing happened.

The white kid with the brown crew cut was Antonio. He’s pretty skinny especially compared to Brad but what he lacked in muscles he more than made up for in his intelligence. We took him to an Escape Room last year for his birthday last year and he got out in record time beating every other group that tried that room by a solid twenty minutes. Antonio was rabidly explaining something to the man on his right a person identifiable by his dark skin and curly black hair.

His name was Guams an odd one to be sure, but I guess I shouldn't judge. He had a sort of skinny muscular build to him. He was always extremely flexible which everyone always found odd since even according to people who had known him much longer than I have he never went to any gymnastic classes or anything like that but even than he was still weirdly flexible. Like one time a couple years ago during summer the five of us were tossing around a frisbee when Brad accidently threw it to high and it landed on the roof of a nearby building, as we were discussing how to get it back. We heard Guams calling from the top of the house where he had managed to parkour his way onto the roof. We never got an explanation on where he learned how to do that but at the very least, we got the frisbee back.

Sitting backwards on his seat face clearly in view was Tyrone, the worst of them all. He had messy black hair with olive skin not to mention hairy all over. He always joked that he was a werewolf confused on what time it was. He did that a lot make jokes that is, always trying to lighten the mood or make people laugh when things were getting serious. To his credit he knew when it was inappropriate, and he never tried to make a joke out of what he did to me. He was my best and first friend when I moved to Canada, he helped me learn English and was the one to introduce me to the others and was in a way responsible for our success as a business.

As I continued to stare viscously at the three there faces and laughter bringing the memories of what they did to me to light. The bus ran over a speed bump causing Tyrone to bang his head on the roof, the sight of which causing me to chuckle slightly. As he readjusted from the impact, our eyes met for the briefest of moments before he quickly turned away causing his and the others uproar to dampen slightly before returning to their unnerving chipper selves. After a few more minutes the buss came to its final stop, Birchville High where I would have to spend another grueling six hours before being able to go home and work on my sculpture. I got off begrudgingly and headed in to endure another painfully boring day of high school.