Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Tag: adventure (Page 3 of 3)

Fiction Saturday 3! The Man in the Hazy Suit Part 6!

**Hey folks this is a reprint of part 4 of The Man With the Hazy Suit that originally ran on June 26, 2010.  I have been few and far between regular posts this summer, and that is the same thing that has killed some of my favorite TV shows, like Alias.  So I am going to rerun the whole story and finish it strong!  Thanks for reading for the first time or rereading if you have been here before.  The Choose your own adventure aspect is not available anymore.**

Previously in the Man in the Hazy Suit:

Police detective Thompson was wrapping up a crime scene when he found a scrap of paper in the dead man’s posessions. The paper led him to the bus station and a locker that was filled with legal pads, all written by the deceased man.  Sergeant Thompson is currently reading the legal pads which are spelling out a strange narrative and a chronicle of a serial killers murders, that somehow the man writing the story knows before they happen, if only by moments.  So far our writer has witnessed 3 deaths with apparently more to come.  With another murder looming, The dead mans narrative comes back around to Detective Thompson.

When we left our story last time:

The Man in the Hazy Suit watched the two girls with the same detached indifference that he showed on this street before.  He stood stock still, his head slightly cocked to the right, showing me an almost profile of his face.  His old fashioned fedora sat on his head, pulled lower over his eyes, as if he were in a strong wind and didn’t want it to fall off.

He turned a bit more to the right and winked at me.  I had a bad feeling he had chosen someone else that I would see on the news.  He grinned and began to walk down the street, leaving the girls behind.  I woke up in a panic.  I knew these girls and maybe I could stop what was going to happen.

I ran to my kitchen, barely noting the open front door and found the business cards for the two cops that had visited me a few days earlier.  I dialed the number on the card and asked for Patrolman Thompson.  I was going to prevent these murders.

Now we join our story already in progress:

I dropped the notebook.  I remembered that call. A hysterical young man saying he knew a couple of girls that would be killed in the next few minutes. I thought he was crazy, but I still had to check it out.  He had given me the address of an auto parts store not too far from where a couple of college kids were killed a few days ago.  We checked but there were no girls there.

I called him back and he was very insistent.  He had told me their names and where one of them lived.  We checked and they were both fine.  I remember telling the kid later at his house that it was just a bad dream from watching the news.  He had nodded, not looking very convinced.  That was the end of it.  I drank some of my now cold coffee and picked up the notebook again.

The police were not much help.  I think they were just patronizing me.  I knew something was going to happen to January and Faith but I didn’t know a way to prevent it. I called Faith the next night.  She answered but blew me off.  I had told her that she was in danger and she should stay at home for a few days, and away from the auto parts store.

She scoffed at me and told me I was being paranoid, after all, why would she ever be at an auto parts store?  And without my even asking, she said she was not going to go out with me.  I felt really rejected.  She had hung up on me and I could imagine the disgusted look on her face.  I guessed that she would never go out with me now.

I stared at the phone for a good ten minutes before muttering an explicative and turning off the light, heading back to sleep.  The Bagel Hut called the next morning at 7:30.  I had overslept.  I told them I would be there shortly and stumbled out of bed towards the bathroom, thankful I had slept without another dream.

I flipped on the radio on the way to the bathroom to hear some morning banter between the local DJ’s.  All I got was some static and muffled voices.  I looked at the radio.  There was something not quite right about it but my still sleeping brain could not decipher what it was.  I turned the dial and finally got some music.  I then went and got ready for work.

All of that  day at work I had a hard time concentrating.  I would get orders for customers but always in the back of my mind, something…tickled about the radio.  I couldn’t remember playing with the knobs.  But I must have.  I just couldn’t place what was wrong.

I tried not to think about it but it wouldn’t go away.  I knew I was distracted and so did my boss.  He kept asking me if I was ok.  I kept telling him yes, that I wasn’t sleeping well but he just kept pestering me.  I was very annoyed by the end of the day.  I drove home with the remembered smell of gasoline in my nostrils.  That was really strange.

I made it back to my apartment just in time to change into my Taco Barn uniform and get to work over there.  I didn’t really want to go in that night, but my landlord didn’t care about my moods, just the rent on time.   I got changed and looked at the radio again on my way out.

Something still not right, but I couldn’t figure out what.  The Taco Barn was a zoo on that Friday night and I didn’t have time to wonder about the radio.  I was actually working rather well this shift.  I left after closing that night and my boss there told me I had been better today than in the past few weeks.  I thanked him and headed home to bed and, hopefully, another dreamless sleep.

I wasn’t that lucky.  I knew I was asleep but I was in the hazy world again.  This time I was walking fast, heading towards a small house on what must have been the other side of town.  I couldn’t see the Man in the Hazy Suit.  But I could feel him.  He was near, and plotting something lethal.

The scene changed then, in no more than a blink, the Man in the Hazy Suit was walking next to me.  Long coat flapping in our haste, gas can clutched firmly in his right hand.  I stopped.  He slowed but kept going, eventually looking over his shoulder at me and gesturing with his head that I was to follow.  I tried to call out but found that I couldn’t speak.  All I could do was chase after him.  Maybe I could tackle him and make him stop whatever terrible thing he was plotting.

I thought I was keeping him in sight until I turned the next corner and saw him knocking on the door of a house in the middle of the street.  The lights came on in the house and on the porch.  The Man in the Hazy Suit looked at me and grinned as Mr. Stevens, my boss from the Bagel Hut opened the door and got a length of pipe in the forehead for his trouble.

I tried to throw up but it did no good.  This was still a dream.  I took a few more steps forward, trying to wake myself up but I couldn’t.  I got closer and could smell gas.  A moment later the Man in the Hazy Suit stepped out of the door and closed it behind him.  He was missing his gas can and the pipe.

He walked casually off of the front porch and down towards the sidewalk, adjusting his fedora.  Then there was a, well, a fwump sound and Mr. Stevens house started on fire.  I tried to scream but it wouldn’t come out.  A few minutes later I woke up in my apartment screaming.

I sat up an flicked on the light.  I could smell gas again.  And there was a black fedora on the chair across the room.  I didn’t own a fedora.  I began to scream again knowing the Man in the Hazy Suit had to have been here.

Join us again next week for more of The Man in the Hazy Suit!

-Justin

Fiction Saturday 3: The Man in the Hazy Suit Part 10!

The police photograph of the murder scene.

*******I am so sorry folks.  I put this out last week and I noticed on Friday the 19th that it didn’t publish the story itself!  I am very sorry, this is now what should have gone last week!*******

Thanks for hanging in there folks, Today the story will not conclude!  There will be more to read next week.  I hope it was helpful to have the story laid out as is was meant to be, like a serial novel!

Previously in our story:

Police detective Thompson was wrapping up a crime scene when he found a scrap of paper in the dead man’s posessions. The paper led him to the bus station and a locker that was filled with legal pads, all written by the deceased man.  Sergeant Thompson is currently reading the legal pads which are spelling out a strange narrative and a chronicle of a serial killers murders, that somehow the man writing the story knows before they happen, if only by moments.  So far our writer has witnessed several deaths with apparently more to come.  Strange coincidences surround the narrator having to do with the Man in the Hazy Suit, leading to paranoia and a wonder as to the outcome of his sanity.  Currently, he thinks he may have the drop on the Man in the Hazy Suit.  He has figured out that the Man in the Hazy Suit is his inner personality!

When we left our story last time:

I looked at the gas can in my hand and twitched as I began to pour the pungent fluid on the floor.  Memories flooded in.  Realization hit me like a .45 slug in the forehead.  I was the man in the Hazy Suit.  I was the one responsible for all of that unpleasantness.

That was why I could not stop the man.  That is why he would not listen to me.  He is me.  I could feel him then, inside my head with me, crowding me into one of the dark recesses there.   He took great pleasure lighting a match that he produced from his suit and tossing it to the pool of gasoline on the floor of the library.

He turned us calmly and pushed the elevator button.  The car came and the door opened.  We stepped inside and began the descent to the ground floor as the 5th floor burned and those who had been in throes of ecstasy only moments before now screamed in horror and pain.

I tried to gain some sort of control over my body.  I tried to scream at the other entity in my head but this body was committed only to him.   Things made sense, but now, instead of the dream state, I was trapped.  Trapped and no one could do anything about it.

And Today, We join our story, already in progress!

I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  I remembered his calls, I remembered him asking only for me, Patrolman Thompson.  I had really thought most of those were…well crank calls. I always thought that it was weird that a kid kept calling on the boogeyman in his dreams.  He was never even a suspect in any of the killings because he had almost reasonable alibi’s and he didn’t give us any more information than he could have read in the paper.  I would have never pegged this kid as the Gas Can Killer.

I was tired now, I had been up reading all night, but I couldn’t quit yet.  Aaron Goodwin was the Gas Can Killer.  Aaron Goodwin was dead, but he still deserved a chance to be heard, no matter what his bizarre tale.  At the very least I could close the whole case with the name of the killer, at the most I could tell the families of the victims that we had got the guy.

I thought back to that night nearly 3 weeks ago when the library had burned.  The fire was horrific.  23 people died from smoke inhalation or the fire itself.  More than 100 were injured.  The elevators shut down and the stair doors had been chained.  The fire suppression sprinklers barely worked in half of the floor, not letting enough water do its job.  The firefighters had broken windows to get water on the blaze.

I had not been there.  I was home when the initial call came, and I was taking my time getting ready to go.  It didn’t sound like much until later when they were totaling up the butchers bill.  Jim Phillips, the arson expert from the fire department had called me on my cell phone to tell me that I was dealing with another arson from what looked like the same gas can killer.  This time the homicide total was 23.

I had asked him how he could know that it was the same kind of arson.  “Well we matched the chemical composition of the gas to a brand that had…” He didn’t even finish the sentence.  “Nah.”  He said with a grim tone.  “No jokes today.  The can was the same and the signature was the same.”  I sat in stunned silence.  We had never released anything about the signature before.  Of course the arson guys knew of it, but if it was there, it meant there was no copycat.

“Ok, “I said.  “Thanks Jim.  I guess I am off to work on my day off.” He snorted and muttered something derisive as he hung up.

I pulled up to the library after the fire trucks had finished and the men were cleaning up.  I entered the building and walked up the stairs to the site of the fire.  Jim was over in the corner looking at something on the ground.

He looked up as I walked over to him.  “Thompson.” He said.  “Take a look at this.”  He produced some glass shards and bits in a plastic evidence bag.  “These came from some glass bottles as you can see.  They are fairly typical iced tea or juice drink bottles.” he said.   “What is the string around the necks for?” I asked.

He pointed up.  “They were rigged to swing down and hit each other when the cords burned through.” he said.  “It looks to me like they hit each other and exploded, showering glass and more gasoline down on the crowd.  There were 10 such setups around here.”  I whistled softly thinking of the implications of adding more and more gas to the inferno already blazing below.

“How did he get all of that set up in here with no one noticing?” I asked.  “We don’t really know…” he trailed off.  “But they did the job and kept the fire burning for a long time.  Kind of simple genius in that.”

Now,  I think I had the answer.  I hoped I had an answer.  It had to be in the frantic final notes scrawled here by Aaron Goodwin.  I needed to read more, and put the rest of the pieces together.

I picked up the second to last notepad and began to read.

Join us next week for more fun and excitement!

-Justin

Enhanced by Zemanta
Newer posts »