Fanon:The Sunset Valley Murders
Notes:[edit | edit source]
- The entire family is in the Family Bin, available for the base game.
- Irene and Spencer are actually meant to be twins, but I decided to make him older than she is.
Charaters[edit | edit source]
Irene Funke: Middle sister and protagonist
Carol Funke: Youngest sister and antagonist
Spencer Funke: Oldest brother
Sabrina Funke and Rhett Funke: The children's parents
The Goth family: Background characters
Claire Ursine (and her son): Background characters
Prologue[edit | edit source]
My name is Irene Funke. I’m here to tell you how my entire family died. I’m not here to blame anyone. I’m here merely to state the facts, how I remember them.
My family moved to Sunset Valley in its heyday, when the only major nuisance was the occasional burglar, or maybe some ghosts. Otherwise, children played in the park after school, teens hung out at the beach, and everyone was living the suburban dream. We were all bunched into the car; me, my brother Spencer, my toddler sister Carol, and my mom and dad, Sabrina and Rhett. We had just moved from Riverview, because a house fire burned down our old home. My dad wanted a fresh start.
We pulled up to the small, cozy, 1-story house. It was built with grey stones, and had a grey roof. There was space for a garden out front, at which my mother immediately gravitated to.
“Well, the soil will be ok, I guess.” She said, feeling the soil. Carol gurgled and slapped the dirt. I watched them for a moment, and then looked at the house.
I could have sworn I saw a face looking through the living room window.
I ran inside, and into the living room, but the only thing I saw was some furniture, an old T.V., and an ancient-looking teddy bear.
My brother walked in and pulled my hair. He screamed, “BOO!” and ran away.
“I’M GONNA TELL MOM!” I shouted, running outside. The face behind the window was completely forgotten.
Chapter 1
After living in Sunset Valley for a few weeks, we were quite settled in. This little girl named Bella Bachelor and I became best friends, and my mom and dad were doing great in their new careers. We were all settled and happy.
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and it was both Carol and Spencer’s birthdays, a fact which Spencer hated, but Carol didn’t care about. All she cared about was cake, and getting gifts. I was a little jealous of the stack of gifts I saw, but I was pretty happy just to be getting some cake.
We were all standing around the birthday cake. It had two candles: one pink, one blue, for Carol and Spencer respectively. My dad was just beginning to light the blue candle, when I felt something cold. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. As my parents began to sing 'Happy Birthday', I turned around.
In the corner of the room stood a little ghost girl. She was blue, her hair was in long pigtails, and her dress looked like it was from hundreds of years ago. I screamed and reeled back, bumping into the table, and knocking over the cake. The cake fell to the floor, with the candles lit. My mother screamed, “PUT OUT THE CANDLES, RHETT!” Carol began crying. My father quickly stomped out the candles before they could set fire to the carpet. Spencer began yelling at me.
“You stupid little klutz! You ruined my cake! You’re just jealous I’m going to be older than you!” he shouted at me. I began to cry.
“But, I saw a girl! A ghost girl! Over there!” I said, pointing to the corner of the room where I saw the ghost, but there was nothing there.
“You just want all the attention on my birthday! You ruined my cake! And you’re crazy! Ghosts are only at the graveyard! You’re stupid and crazy!” He kept yelling at me, until my mom came over and told him to stop.
“Hey, Spence? Look!” My dad said, opening the freezer. “We still have ice cream!”
“Good, I guess Irene didn’t mess everything up!” Spencer said, stomping to the kitchen. My mom came up and hugged me.
“Sweetheart, do try to be more careful.” She told me. I dried my tears and nodded. “Good,” she said smiling. “Do you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream? She asked me.
Everyone forgot that incident and we just enjoyed the rest of the birthday.
But, for the rest of the time I lived in that house, I never went near that corner.
Chapter 2
A few months after the incident, and a few weeks before my birthday, the true tragedy struck my family. Once Spencer became a teen, he fell in with the wrong crowd, sneaking out at midnight, drag racing, doing drugs, and getting into my parent’s nectar cellar with his new “cooler” friends. Mom and Dad were worried for him, yet to me, it seemed like normal, teenage behavior. Honestly, I was much more preoccupied with my impending birthday party.
One night, as I was finishing my homework, I looked over to Carol. She was sitting in the corner, facing the wall, and whispering into the air. I slowly walked towards her, hardly breathing, to hear what she was saying.
“…You don’t have to follow him!” Carol said with desperation evident in her voice. “He’s my brother, you don’t have to kill him! Kill someone else!” She said. A chill went up my spine. Carol gasped. “Behind me?” she said, and quickly turned around, eyes glaring. “What are you doing?!” she yelled at me as she stood up.
“Uh, who were you talking to?” I asked, afraid.
“Uh, Nobody! Duh! What are you even talking about, you creeper. I was doing my homework, before you interrupted me!” Carol said, holding up a work sheet that she obviously never even started. She brushed past me and walked to her room. As she entered she looked back at me.
Her normally dark blue eyes were now a dark, malevolent black. “Leave me alone, Irene.” she said, sneering. “Leave me alone, if you know what’s good for you. I mean it.” She said, and closed the door. It locked with a quiet click.
I gasped, taking a step back. I tripped over one of Carol’s toys, and I fell backwards, and I screamed as my head struck the edge of the coffee table. As my vision faded, I saw my mother and father run over to me, and Carol’s bedroom door opening slowly.
Chapter 3
I woke up to bright, industrial, sterile white light boring through my eyelids. There was an incessant beeping noise close by. I opened my eyes, squinting into the bright light. I looked around me. I was in a hospital room. On the chairs next to the bed, my mother sat, sobbing quietly into a handkerchief and my father sat, stone-faced. Confused, I said, “Mommy? Daddy? It’s OK, I’m OK now.” I whispered. They looked at me, and Dad stood up. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed, the starchy blanket crinkling underneath him. He reached out, and I leaned forward, so that I was wrapped in his arms.
“Sweetheart, it’s not you. You're fine. You'll be OK. Spencer…” Dad stopped and took a deep, shuddering breath. “He’s… He’s dead sweetheart.”
Car accident. That’s what killed my teenage brother. He and his friends were drag racing around the back roads of Sunset Valley, swerving into people’s yards and hitting mailboxes, when they lost control. They swerved into the Goth Manor, and crashed into the living room, where the Goth family was sitting. The car exploded, killing both Cornelia and Gunther Goth instantly, and mortally wounding Mortimer Goth. Cornelia and Gunther used their bodies to shield Mortimer, which was how he survived. Spencer and his friends, VJ Alvi and Lisa Bunch, all died instantly, too.
Spencer was the driver.
For two weeks, I refused to eat. I refused to sleep. I was failing in school. I couldn’t stop the constant flow of tears. I didn’t speak to anyone, and preferred to spend every moment curled up underneath my brother’s bed, going through every memory of him: some good, some bad, in my head. Even though he was a rebellious hot-head, he was still nice to me.
At the funeral, I broke my silence. As they lowered the casket into the ground at Pleasant Rest Graveyard, I panicked.
“Spencer! Come back!” I screamed, as my dad pulled me away from his gravestone. “Come back, so I can save you!” I sobbed, and my dad picked me up.
After his death, none of us ever recovered from the incident, except Carol, who seemed completely unaffected and even amused at the sight of our parent’s tears.
I came to hate Carol.
Chapter 4:
Years passed. My parents began to show their advanced age. I was close to graduating High School, with honors. Carol was only a freshman, and she was failing. My father still worked at the Landgraab Science Facility, and my mom stayed at home. She usually tended to her garden. I’d seen my sister converse with herself three times over the years since Spencer’s death. Each time, a major tragedy struck Sunset Valley. First, while I was in the 8th grade, Claire Ursine’s young son, William, fell off of a cliff, near Agnes Crumplebottom’s house. People began to blame Agnes herself. She was then found hanging in an unfinished baby’s room in her home, with a suicide note, laying out her guilt over seeing the boy play near the cliffs, and not stopping him. I saw my sister smiling to herself throughout his funeral.
Next, when I was a sophomore, the boiler in the school exploded which killed sixteen people, ten of whom were teens. I knew my sister was the last one who was tasked to fix it, but when I tried to tell my guidance counselor, she told me it was an accident, and that the machinery in the boiler room was outdated by thirty years. Nobody would listen to me. So, I resigned myself from ever being able to get my sister to suffer the consequences of what she’s doing.
Later, The Goth Manor, after being renovated from the car accident, was burned completely to the ground, killing Mortimer and his pregnant wife, Bella Bachelor, and her older brother. Carol came home during the wee hours of the morning, smelling of smoke and gasoline. Later the same week, the library burned down, and although I have no proof, I feel Carol caused that one too.
Sunset Valley became known as “cursed” over the years. People moved, businesses closed, and the skies turned permanently grey. There was no end in sight, and Carol relished in the sorrow.
Chapter 5 - Carol
I’d been warring with myself for as long as I could remember, ever since my Visitor came along and made my life not my own. That’s what I call her- The Visitor. She who stole my body, my mind, and my life. I’d been warring with her for years, ever since I was a toddler.
The Visitor was a little girl named Victoria. She had lived in a city called London, hundreds of years ago, with her wealthy parents. She was an only child, and so she was spoiled and lonely. After she turned 8 years old, her parents decided to move to a small city, now called Riverview. As they traversed the ocean in a boat, the little girl strayed too close to the edge of the ship. Little Victoria fell overboard, but she did not immediately die. She was alive to watch the large boat get farther and farther away. By the time her parents had noted her absence, it was far too late. Her parents tried desperately to find her, to no avail.
As a ghost, the girl followed her parents, always out of sight. Weeks later, they arrived in Riverview, heartbroken. They mourned, and had a memorial service for her. Eventually they healed as best as they could. Though they still missed their little girl, they believed she was in a better place.
About a year later, Victoria’s mother found out that she was pregnant, and later gave birth to triplets: two boys and a girl, who she named Henry, Simon, and Emily. Victoria was outraged. She had been replaced! She vowed to get her revenge. And she did.
When Emily and her brothers became children, Victoria cast Emily’s soul from her body and took it over. She then excitedly told her parents that she, Victoria, was alive again! Her parents were horrified. They begged her to leave Emily’s body, to bring Emily back, but Emily was gone. In a fit of anger and jealousy, as her parents wanted the other girl back, she grabbed Simon, her slightly younger brother, and jumped out the window.
She fooled her parents into believing that she had died with Emily’s body, but Victoria had escaped at the last moment. Ever since that day, she has been haunting her descendants for hundreds of years, trying her hardest to kill off every single family member by possessing the youngest sister. She usually nearly succeeds, but there is always one person left to continue the lineage either by stroke of luck or Victoria's boredom.
As it turns out, the little dead girl is my great aunt. And I am her tool. She is determined to end our family this time around.
And there's very little I can do to stop her. When she takes over, all I can do is look out from eyes that are no longer mine, as hands I no longer control to cause suffering on unsuspecting Sims.
Chapter 6 - A few Years later...
I was more than excited to leave Sunset Valley. The part-time job at the book store gave me plenty of time to pursue my writing, and gave me enough money to save up for university. Two years before, months after I graduated from high school, my father died of old age. My mother still lived in the house we first moved into, all those years and tragedies ago. I lived in a small house near the town center, close enough that I could walk to work every day. Carol lived in a small house behind the City Hall. We never spoke, until one day, when things truly changed.
I was restocking the shelves when I heard the door slam open, along with heavy panting. I stood up quickly, overturning a nearby box of cookbooks.
"Ah, Watcher." I grumbled, as I tried my best to clear the isle, before I heard the scream.
"Irene! Please, help me!" I looked up, and saw Carol, dripping wet from the rain.
"What in the Netherworld are you doing here?" I asked her, with barely contained anger in my voice. "You ruin my life for years and expect me to HELP you?" I take a deep breath when I realized that I was yelling. My boss came out from the back room.
"Irene, take the day off. I can see you have something you need to resolve." he said, nodding to my sister. I nodded my head and went out. All the while Carol followed me, whimpering.
When we got outside, I looked at Carol closely for the first time. Her light eyes were bruised, her pants were torn, and her blonde hair was stringy. She looked sad and pathetic. Her eyes darted around the parking lot. "Irene, please. I-I did something..." And then she did something I hadn't seen her do since she was a toddler. She began crying. Great, heaving sobs wracked her small frame. I awkwardly hugged her, unsure if this was some kind of trick.
"Ok, what did you do?" I asked, afraid of what I would hear. She looked up at me, her dark-rimmed eyes wide and young looking.
"I-I think Mom's dead. There was fire... I couldn't put it out!" She cried.
"Get in the car." I breathed, stunned.
Chapter 7
As I sped down the road to my mother's house, I glanced at Carol. She seemed genuinely upset, still crying and sobbing. But still I was weary, not forgetting the accidents I knew she'd caused. Spencer, the school, the Goth manor... and now my mother. I knew she was the cause.
Maybe I should take her somewhere... like the beach... and hold her underwater until she dies. I shuddered at my own dark thoughts. Then I'd be just as bad as her, I reasoned.
When we reached my mom's house, it was completely devastated. As I opened the door, the sickening smell of smoke smothered my nose. Both Carol and I coughed, holding our shirts to our noses.
In what remained of the kitchen, an ornate urn sat, surrounded by ash. I walked to it and picked it up, planning to put it in the graveyard. I held in my tears and turned around, fury propelling me towards Carol.
"You monster. You horrid little beast!" I yelled, knocking her to the ground. She gasped.
Then she laughed.
"Monster, eh? Not the first time I've heard that one. 'You witch! You devil! You monster!' Pshh." A cruel voice, almost like Carol's, but more cruel, said, "You mortal Sims are so uncreative." Carol slowly turned. Her once light-coloured eyes were now dark, nearly black. I gasped, stumbling backwards into what remained of the kitchen table. "But those of our family were never that creative when they knew they were about to die." Carol the demon said, coming closer.
"Our family? Carol, please, snap out of it!" I said, trying to buy myself some time to run.
"Carol? Oh, yes. You mean this girl." said the demon, gesturing to Carol's body. "No. This is not me. I am Victoria. And you are the last of your, or rather, our family to die." Victoria said, smiling grotesquely. I panicked and ran past Victoria. She grabbed onto my hair and pulled. "Ha! Nice try, you silly Sim!" Victoria said.
She came closer and closer, her grotesque smile getting bigger and bigger, and I fell backwards, hitting my head on what remained of the kitchen counter, knocking myself out.
Chapter 8- Final[edit | edit source]
A minute or so afterwards, I came to in an empty kitchen. Hesitantly, I stood up, searching for Victoria, the early evening light shining through the window. The lights didn't turn on when I tried. I walked through the front door, and tried to open it.
It was locked. Behind me, a laugh echoed.
"Nice try sister, but you're not getting out of here..." Victoria said in Carol's voice.
I gasped and turned around. Victoria stood there with her smugly, dark eyes glowing malevolently.
"You evil little..." I said, and lunged at her. She screamed as she fell.
"Irene!" Carol gasped, and I looked at her. Her eyes were pure blue and scared. "I can do something! I know what to-" she screamed and I jumped back, afraid. She grimaced and closed her eyes, and when she opened them, they were flashing from blue to black. "I-C-CAN-STOP-YOU!" Carol screamed, and ran to the door. As her hand reached for the door handle, she hesitated.
"You stupid little rat! You never listen!" Victoria muttered, yanking her hand back from the door.
Then Carol replied, pained, "I know how to stop you- forever!" She lunged, opening the door. I followed her out before the door could close.
Carol lurched down the stairs, as Victoria attempted to regain control of Carol. Carol began to run, and I followed her to the backyard.
I saw her head to the pool. "Carol! Watch out!" I cried. She turned around to look at me, her blue eyes watering.
"It's what I need to do. I love ya, sis." Carol said.
She turned around and dived into the pool. "Carol!" I screamed, and ran to the edge. She seemed to have some sort of battle with herself, crossing her arms and writhing. I realized Carol was trying to keep Victoria inside. I watched as the struggle became weaker and weaker, until Carol looked up, and smiled at me, and was still.
One of her eyes was clear, sky blue, and the other was blacker than midnight.
"Carol... I love you too..." I sobbed.
Chapter 9- Epilogue[edit | edit source]
Carol's funeral took place on a sunny winter day, cold and bright. I walked across the cemetery, under the watchful gaze of the Grim Reaper stature, and made my way to the family burial plot. I stood in front of my mother's, father's, and brother's gravestones. My mom's and dad's large statues, my brother's simple stone, grey and dark against the white snow. I placed Carol's grave next to my brother's. It had a small plaque that the snow immediately covered. I sighed and stepped back. I was the only one left in my family, thanks to a jealous little girl. With this dark thought, I made my way to the older graves in the back, searching for two in particular. Eventually, I found them close together. In between them, I set another small plaque, which fit perfectly between the two larger stones. I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.
Victoria was laid to rest.