Deadly Prank: April Fool’s Office Killing

On April Fool's Day, the entire office decided to target Helen, the new hire, for a prank.

We'll pretend she won the Employee of the Month award, the manager said, pointing to a metal bucket hanging from the ceiling. The moment she steps onto the stage, someone pulls the cord, and she gets drenched.

But the joke took a dark turn. The rope snapped, and the heavy iron bucket tore free, hurtling down along with the water.

Before everyones eyes, the bucket struck Helen hard on the head. She collapsed in a heap, a pool of crimson blooming around her on the floor.

Nora, the receptionist, knelt down and tentatively checked Helens pulse. A second later, she let out a piercing scream.

Helen was dead.

Suddenly, every single person in the room was an accomplice.

"We have to call the police! Right now!" My hands shook so violently I could barely hold my phone. "Someone is dead!"

"Call the cops?" Andrew, the manager, grabbed my wrist in a vice grip. "Are you out of your mind? You want to spend the rest of your life behind bars?"

His roaring voice left me stunned, staring at him blankly.

Around us, the room descended into panic.

"What do we do? I'm too young for prison!"

"My kid starts college next year! Who's going to pay his tuition if I'm locked up?"

The sudden tragedy broke everyone's composure.

"Damn it!" Andrew cursed, kicking a desk hard. "How is she already dead? It was just a stupid bucket!"

"It was a heavy iron bucket filled with water, and it was hung way too high," Nora sobbed, her voice trembling. "It was a horrible accident."

Refusing to accept reality, Andrew suddenly ran onto the stage like a madman.

He pinned Helen down, slapping her cheeks repeatedly. "Get up! Quit playing dead! Get the hell up!"

Drops of blood splattered onto the back of his hand.

Nora covered her mouth, screaming, while the others shrank back in horror.

"Stop it!" I couldn't watch any longer. I rushed forward and shoved Andrew away. "Stop touching her! She's gone!"

Swallowing the rising bile and terror in my throat, I slipped off my cardigan and gently covered Helen's face.

Andrew sat on the floor, panting heavily, a dangerous glint in his eyes.

"I used to be a nurse," Nora wept. "I checked. She really isn't breathing. She's dead."

Brenda, one of the senior employees, suddenly stood up and pointed an accusing finger at Andrew. "This was your sick idea. You killed her! You're the one who should take the blame!"

The room went quiet for a beat, and then everyone quickly turned on Andrew.

"She's right! Andrew set up the stage. I had nothing to do with it."

"I never liked these pranks anyway. He forced us to participate."

"Andrew always had a grudge against Helen. What if he did this on purpose?"

"Shut your mouths!" Andrew snarled, his cold gaze sweeping across the room. "You think you can just pin this on me?"

He pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and slammed it onto a desk. "You were all brainstorming in the group chat. Now you want to play innocent?"

I peered at the screen. There was indeed a private chat group.

Everyone had been eagerly discussing how to humiliate Helen for April Fool's.

The worst part was, I had never even been added to that group.

Brenda braced herself and kept arguing. "So what? We were just talking! Nobody expected you to actually go through with it."

"Exactly. It's on him."

"The security cameras must have caught everything. He did it."

I looked at Helens lifeless body, a heavy weight pressing down on my chest.

"Let's just call the police," I said, reaching for my phone again. "Whatever the consequences are, we should face them together."

"Face them?" Andrew kicked my hand. The phone flew across the room, smashing against the wall, its screen shattering into pieces.

I gasped, falling back onto the floor.

He pulled a pocket knife from his trousers and drove it deep into the wooden table. The hilt vibrated with a low hum.

"My son is applying for the police academy. I cannot have a record! I am not going to prison!"

Andrew stared at the crowd, his eyes wild. Everyone cowered like frightened rabbits.

No one dared to speak.

"If this gets out, none of you are walking away clean," Andrew hissed. "You're all accomplices. Even if you don't do time, the public backlash will destroy your lives. What will the headlines say? 'Office bullies coworker to death on April Fool's.' Good luck ever finding another job."

Nora curled up on the floor, weeping hysterically.

Brenda's voice trembled. "Then... what do we do?"

Andrew stared at the dark stain on the stage, silent for a long moment.

"Unless..."

"Helen tripped and fell."

The room fell into a stunned silence.

Andrew lowered his voice. "The security cameras broke a week ago, and we never got around to fixing them. What happened in this room is only known to us."

Brendas eyes lit up. "You mean... we stage the scene?"

"There was water on the floor. Helen slipped, lost her footing, and fell off the stage. The platform is high enough that she struck her head on the edge of the steps, causing instant death."

As if grasping a lifeline, the others began nodding eagerly.

"Yes, exactly. That's how it happened."

"Just a tragic accident."

"We didn't touch her. She fell on her own."

My head throbbed.

"No!" I cried out.

Everyone turned to stare at me.

My voice shook, but I forced the words out. "Are you all insane? We made a mistake. We pay the penalty. A human being is dead because of us!"

Andrew stared at me for a couple of seconds, then walked over.

The slap was loud and stinging. My cheek burned.

"I am so sick of your self-righteous attitude," he spat. "If your family didn't have money, you'd be the one lying on that stage today."

Holding my bruised cheek, I couldn't speak.

A painful realization washed over me. Helen had always been the office scapegoat.

She did all the grunt work while others took the credit. She was excluded from every social outing, yet always expected to chip in for the bill. At lunch, she always sat alone in the furthest corner.

She had done nothing wrong.

She was just a quiet, unassuming girl with nobody to protect her, making her the perfect target for their cruelty.

My eyes welled with tears. "You can't do this to her. She has a family. People who love her."

"I think she only has an elderly grandmother," Nora murmured softly.

Brenda slapped her thigh. "An old woman is easy to handle. We tell her it was a slip-and-fall, and she'll believe us."

"The company will offer a small settlement," Andrew added. "She'll probably be grateful for the cash."

"Yes, let's do that!"

I couldn't listen to another word. Watching for a moment when they were distracted, I bolted toward the reception desk where the landline was.

"Stop her!" Andrew yelled. "She's trying to make a call!"

Before I could lift the receiver, someone grabbed my hair from behind and threw me to the floor.

Several hands pinned me down, crushing the breath out of me.

Brenda knelt beside me and slapped my face twice.

"Stop being difficult! We are trying to save you as much as ourselves!" she hissed, her saliva spraying onto my face. "Do you want to destroy all of our lives?"

Wiping the blood from the corner of my mouth, I looked up.

The familiar faces of my colleagues now stared down at me with cold, warning eyes. Their message was clear: Don't ruin this for us.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips.

"You've all lost your minds. Helen was a real person, and you killed her. Don't you feel any guilt at all?"

Brenda stood up, brushing off her skirt. "Guilt is one thing, but our future is another. If this gets out, we're finished. How will our families look at us?"

Andrew walked over, holding a severed electrical cord. "Stop wasting time on her. Tie her up."

They dragged me to the corner, pulling my arms behind my back and binding my wrists tightly. The thick cord cut deep into my skin.

"Get to work," Andrew ordered.

The office became a flurry of activity.

Some grabbed rags to scrub the bloodstains, some rearranged the chairs, and others hung the bucket back up on the ceiling.

Helen's body was lifted and placed carefully at the base of the stage.

They positioned her head right against the sharp edge of the step, spilling water next to her so it pooled realistically beneath her torso.

I lay in the corner, watching them piece together the lie.

Within minutes, the room looked perfectly normal. Helen lay on the floor, her posture arranged so naturally that she truly looked like she had just slipped.

Andrew nodded in approval. "Good."

Brenda let out a sigh of relief, sinking into a chair.

Just then, Nora let out a sharp gasp.

Beneath Helen's desk sat a large box filled with neatly arranged cupcakes.

There were exactly thirty of them, matching the number of employees in our office.

A card lay beside them, written in neat handwriting: Thank you all for taking care of me. I am so glad to have been your colleague.

A heavy silence fell over the room.

Nora covered her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. "Helen was actually really sweet. When I sprained my ankle last month, she fetched water for me every day and helped me to the restroom."

Another colleagues eyes went red. "She was from my hometown. She brought me some of her grandmother's homemade beef jerky just last week because I mentioned I missed the taste of home."

Brendas expression softened slightly, her voice tight. "She was a good girl. We... we really were too hard on her."

I let out a cold laugh.

"Now that she's dead, you all suddenly have a conscience?" I mocked. "If you really feel sorry, tell the truth! Call the police!"

Brendas face flushed with anger. "Stop acting so superior! You might not have joined in on the pranks, but you never did anything to help her either!"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. She was right. My silence had made me a coward.

Andrew banged on the desk. "Enough! Save your tears. We need to align our stories right now so we don't mess up when the police arrive."

The group nodded in grim agreement.

Nora picked up a pink cupcake, took a small bite through her tears, and whispered, "I'm so sorry, Helen."

Andrew rolled his eyes. "Pathetic."

Nora took another bite, but suddenly began to cough violently.

She clutched her stomach, her knees buckling as she sank to the floor.

Brenda frowned. "What's wrong?"

Noras face twisted in agony. She tried to speak, but a thick stream of dark blood spilled from her mouth instead.

Brenda screamed.

Nora collapsed entirely, thrashing on the carpet as blood covered her chin. "Help me... my stomach... it hurts so bad..."

Everyone stood frozen in terror. No one dared to step close to her.

Looking at the dropped cupcake on the floor, the truth hit me.

"The cupcakes! They're poisoned! Don't touch the cupcakes!"

The staff scrambled away from the box, their faces pale with horror.

Nora lay on her side, gasping for air, her eyes wide and glassy.

"Call an ambulance!" I screamed, pulling against my bonds. "Are you going to let another person die?"

One colleague reached for their phone with trembling fingers.

Andrew lunged forward, snatched the device, and threw it against the wall, shattering it.

His face was flushed, veins bulging on his forehead. "Are you idiots blind? Helen brought these! She wanted us dead! She hated every single one of us and wanted to take us all down with her!"

"If she hadn't died first, we would all be corpses right now!"

"If you call the police now, what are you going to say? That we bullied her, so she tried to poison us, but we accidentally killed her first?"

His furious words silenced the room.

Brenda collapsed onto the floor, weeping. "Then what do we do? We might have covered up Helen's fall, but how do we explain Nora?"

Andrew looked around the room, his eyes cold and calculated. "I have a plan."

He paused, letting the silence stretch.

"If they never find the body, they can't prove a crime."

A shiver ran down my spine.

"No! You can't do this!" I thrashed wildly on the floor. "She's still breathing! Please, don't make this worse! Save her!"

"I'm begging you!" Tears poured down my face. "Please, just stop this!"

Brenda seemed to crack under the pressure. She grabbed Andrew's arm, her voice shaking. "Let's just confess. I'll take the blame. We did a terrible thing to Helen, just like we did to Jenna..."

"Shut up, you fool!" Andrew slapped her hard, knocking her to the ground. "Confess? Who's confessing? And don't you dare mention that girl's name!"

Jenna...

The name echoed in my mind.

Some of my colleagues looked deeply uncomfortable, while others looked entirely blank. It was a familiar name, but I couldn't place where I had heard it.

But there was no time to think about that now. Nora was fading fast.

She lay on the carpet, tears streaming into her hair, her lips moving silently.

A wave of self-loathing washed over me.

I hated myself for not standing up for Helen sooner, and for not fighting harder when they planned the prank this morning.

Andrews face was dark, devoid of any humanity. "I'll take care of Nora's body. None of you need to get involved. I will take full responsibility."

"But," he warned, pointing a finger at them, "you must all stick to one story. Nora never came to work today."

"I have a way to make sure the police never find her," Andrew added quietly.

The colleagues who had been wavering fell silent once more. Those who had reached for their phones put them back into their pockets.

I closed my eyes in utter despair.

An entire room of people stood by and watched as Nora's chest stopped moving.

The second body.

My mind shattered under the weight of the horror. Let out a ragged scream, I felt the rush of blood to my head, and the world went completely black.

When I finally regained consciousness, I was surrounded by pitch darkness.

The space was tight and cramped, bouncing slightly. I could hear the faint, muffled sound of car horns in the distance.

I was in the trunk of a car.

Reaching out in the dark, my hand brushed against something soft and warm. A human body.

A gasp caught in my throat, and I was about to scream when a hand firmly clamped over my mouth.

"Shh, don't make a sound. It's me."

I froze.

The voice belonged to Nora.