My Collection of Horror

Part 1

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What do we consider the difference between destiny and fate? If you take a flight and the plane crashes, is it your fate that your flight crashed? Or was it destiny for that specific plane to crash? Only one word can separate the two, and that word is control.  I wasn't very optimistic, just wired to stay alive like anybody else. When I was still in high school I wanted to be a Chef, However with no class seats left and the over-demanding bullshit part-time job working for fast food joints I felt my ambitions peel up and float elsewhere. My leftover options were trying out for the football team, journalism class, or performing live slam poetry. As an unathletic scrawny, forgetful, stammering, nervous kid with about as much potential as snails trying to crawl over salt. Journalism won by default. And that's how all this started. I liked thinking. I always over-thought everything. What to eat, What to wear, What to say, What, Where, Why, When, and How? My brain always just makes up assumptions and fake scenarios and I fall for it every time. Journalism was an unexpected passion; it fed my thoughts and assumptions and gave me stories to track down. If I had to describe journalism, it's like being a detective. You get a tip, lead or some kind of breakdown. You shake every branch, follow every street, and investigate related people. And sometimes you gotta dance on both sides of the law. You gotta understand the best journalism doesn't come from the easy to grab headlines, or stories just being re-told or “Updated”. Those are for the reporters. My kind of journalism is boots on the ground. I think part of my stubborn path to capture truth made me weed out my teenager flaws one by one. And replace them with an obsession to feed my never satisfying curiosity.

 

I was just about to turn 26, living in dry old Waxahachie and its suffering 50,000 occupants  when I got the call. Pulling the phone from my pocket, a screen blinked alive with the caller id ‘Mr.Gali’. I felt a flash of anxiety and my thoughts launched from the starting blocks of my mental track. Mr.Gali and myself worked together in a mutual relationship. As a journalist I wanted to investigate what I wanted, Gali was my publication to the hot topic independent news article. Please note Gali claims to have thought of the name hot topic before the retail chain opened. It's plausible but also kinda pathetic and petty but hey, we all have pride. But Gali paid well, sometimes really well. It's surprising how many connections the guy has but I'll take a lead and a check from him anytime. I answer the phone and use my shoulder to pinch it to my ear. “Hey Mr.Gali” Gali spoke with his overconfident charm you could only smile back at, he always was good with people. “Carmichael, thanks for picking up. Even though we don't talk personally, I'm glad you always take my calls”. “Well id be bad business to say no” I spoke back, waking up my computer as I hear Gali’s beaming response “Well kid your stories do numbers, top 5 for sure but your recent one “Blew up the charts” literally!” Gali's hardy laugh almost interrupts my login to my email as I start to join his chuckle. And the story he mentioned was my latest story, ‘Gravebooming’ , a story about a local politician using commercial explosives to detonate graveyards around the city, as an insurance scam. I busted that one wide open. Shook way to many branches and definitely ran most of my favors out. That's when Gali spoke for the first and only time in a chilling serious matter as if a lightbulb broke while on. “Do you believe in the afterlife?”. 

I immediately stopped focusing on my computer screen. My forehead scrunched trying to stretch the bags out of my now awake eyes. “Sure I guess.” I sputtered, why the hell did I say that? It's the first time Mr.Gali ever felt concerned or dropped his joyful confidence. “What I'm saying kiddo is that life is short! And if my gut is right you're the right person for this”! I thought to myself, “Mr. Gali could at least not be cryptic about it.” I grab the handle of my office chair and reposition myself to ask back “Ok Gali this is weird even for you, What's the lead”? He chirped back “Even better I got the whole story in 2 trashbags”!

 

I leave my apartment locking the deadbolt and turn the key in the fragile but mind of comfort lock before making my way over to the Ellis County “Court House”. I asked way more questions than I should,ve. But this was what I knew at the time, a series of what could be murders caught Mr. Gali's eye. So he has been sending out Private eyes, Cops on his payroll, and even now me to investigate. The bags he mentioned were evidence collected from the most recent victim Marcus Greenburg. A familiar name but I couldn't place a face with it. But hey the trash bags are a nice care package to get me started, I asked Gail what he knew himself. He said not much other than the murders were messy and the leads were unbelievably cold. And no witnesses recorded or at least discovered. This does match how he operates, distributor of info not the finder. As more questions start to form I notice the vigilant bright red light at the crosswalk between Ferris Avenue and the courthouse. The courthouse was a shit place for dropoffs; it's now just a tourist spot due to its age. Half of the building can't be wired for cameras and nobody really cares about the place. It was built in the 1890’s at first with logs, almost shaped like giant bones. But it was updated with a foundation of romanesque brickwork with tall vigilant red brick towers lined together like cheek bones, with tan colored stones filling out the pores of architecture. The roofs, blue brickwork, constantly stack on top of each other as a mound of cones and angles for every pillar and structure they protect. Even the street wrapped around the building was like a moat guarding its perimeter from wanderers. If it didn't have modern signs, restaurants, and the street lights around it I would've thought I traveled back to the renaissance. I walk across and enter the castle of justice. 

 

Through the more warm renovated lobby I made my way down stairs to the holding cells, the space left to rot from elements of nature and distance of time. As I make my way down, I turn my phone's flashlight on. The walls were stone cracked and losing territory from moss and dried red viny vegetation. Each section of the holding cells were a maze of Rusted Bars and empty sconces. I make my way to the nearest cell and open the hinged door, I take a seat on the stone formed bench. With one hand fishing for my pack of nicotine gum and the other flicking up my lock screen to triple check the drop details. With a juvenile addict's grip I pulled out my gum and shook it for a rough count, “Shit” I muttered as I pulled back and started chewing my last 3 pieces. I hate that Mr.Gali makes me go here to get my leads. I wish I could sit in a diner and get a cool envelope, instead of sitting here where most souls suffered the same gruesome fate. I grabbed my phone and started to look at the contact number who gave me the address to see if I recognized it. It had our area code but I didn't know who the hell it was. I lean back against the wall and use one hand to rub my temples. I thought about how to approach this story, with Greenberg's murder still under investigation I can only find public information on him. A single Man born and raised in Dallas later moved to Waxahachie to start as a uniformed cop. After a few years on the force he was recently promoted to a detective position.That's right, he did my case for trespassing on the local graveyards and let me off with a warning. Just seem to me like the kind of guy who always had human empathy, unlike his asshole partner. I suddenly felt a strange chill from seeing photos of him. It felt like someone else was watching me. I frantically peek up hoping to catch whatever it was off guard. Looking left, then right all I could see was walls and vegetation until my light was swallowed by darkness. That's when I swear I saw in the distance a mirror? It was reflecting light but with curvature, as I was locked into tunnel vision I started to breathe heavily, almost like a pressure was building in my chest and head all at once. It was like it knew everything and anything, my mind, body and soul felt weighed in one moment. That's when it blinked. I look down collecting my bag and lean with my back to my wall, but as I look it is gone. I hear a tapping on my bars with a metal object. I stop chewing and look up like a highschooler caught skipping class. I flash my light on the source of the noise. I see Detective Leighton, a tall man wearing a grey detective's uniform, a worn but stoic stare; he has a middle part with a five o clock shadow. I stand to attempt to meet him eye to eye. I fell short half a foot. “Carmichael, right”? Leighton said. I step forward “Yeah you must be my drop”. I look past him to see if it was still around, then my eyes see two trash bags partially filled by his side. I gave a nervously teasing eyebrow as I said “you do know what you're doing is illegal right”? If the cops got a fucking camera in here to set me up then I can at least get Leighton to admit to entrapment. “Get out of the cell”. Leghton said with a natural dead like grim stare. Me and Leighton never formally met but he definitely has a file on me after my uninvited investigations. I'm starting to wish Marcus was here to hand me Leightons stuff. I get out of the cell and Leighton shoves both bags in my hands. I step back and eye the bags before asking “Hey any developments with the Greenberg case”? Leighton says “ Nothing other than we can confirm he went missing presumed dead”. “Mr. Gali asked me to gather anything that had recent finger prints of his and to get them here. To you”. I glanced down again and back at him I said “Are you on his payroll too”? “Why would I tell you?” he replied, with his back to me he stepped away to the steps and said “Marcus was my friend, take care of what's left of him”. As he vanishes up the steps I take a peek inside one of the bags and through an assortment of items the first thing I notice is an Ornate black and white wooden chessboard.