Finding 'x'

•Meeting at night•

Stripped down to nothing but my unmentionables, I paced to and fro the length of the room in apprehension. My chemise clung to my body as it was drenched with sweat, the words on the paper in my hands were almost unreadable as it'd been soiled by several droplets of sweat and tears.

The dainty clock seated on the bedside table read 6pm. It'd been over four hours since I discovered the note and I hadn't been able to decipher whatever message it was trying to send. 

Desperation was too little a word to describe my current emotion. A new message always came after a new death. Did that mean a new body was waiting to be discovered? Did that mean that another murder had been committed? Another innocent soul snatched away?

I didn't know, and the fact that there was no way to find out in this prison I'd landed myself in, added to my feeling of being useless. I reached for the corpse of my phone once again and hopefully pressed my thumb down the power button but its blank screen told me to move along.

I flung the device across the bed in a new level of all the mix of emotions I was feeling. Then I did something I thought I'd done enough of to last me for a lifetime;

I broke down and cried.

I sobbed in anguish, in helplessness, in guilt, in fear.

Someone else had probably lost her life because of me and there was absolutely nothing I was able to do about it. I wasn't even able to solve whatever equation that gave a clue to finding whoever was behind it all. 

I didn't know what was currently happening at the school. I didn't know what the killer wanted from me. I didn't know who he was going to kill next;

And I wasn't able to do anything about it.

The fear of my not knowing what would happen the very next minute began to grow.

By the time I was done pouring out my eyes' content, it was already growing fairly dark. From the position at which I'd curled up as a ball, I could see the clear blue sky being sprinkled by a constellation of tiny lights, the faint halo of the moon filtering into the room.

I couldn't help the whimper that made my lips quiver as I got to my feet and made my way to the window to close the curtains and shield my eyes away from such beauty. 

But when I made it to my destination, I couldn't help but stare on in wonder. It seemed like I was being mocked by mother moon herself. The way she hid half of her fullness behind the clouds reminded me of the popular slang 'moya look away'; like her way of announcing that she was very well aware of my predicament but had decided to look away.

A line of the poem suddenly came back to me;

And the yellow half-moon large and low…

Apart from the yellow, that seemed like a perfect description of this moon.

My heart picked up its pace.

Did that, perhaps, point to a time frame for something important? 

With newly found gusto and the aid of the poor light in the room, I tentatively tapped my way back to the couch where the note lay, feeling the need to check it one more time. There must be something I was missing. Something I felt that I would find out with just another glance at the writing.

Alas! The illumination in the room, the one the moon provided, wasn't enough to see the wordings on the sheet of paper.

I cursed loudly in exasperation and sunk into the ground in defeat.

I could feel the emotions seeping in again and I might just do a little more than sob if I broke down this time around. So I directed my brain to focus on remembering more lines of the poem.