**Hey folks this is a reprint of part 7 of The Man With the Hazy Suit that originally ran on July 17, 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.**

hey Folks here is the promised Hazy Suit for this week!  It is rather long because I have been lazy and busy and missed a couple.  Please let me know what you think of the story and how it is going, the comments are open and waiting for your sage wisdom!

Without further adeiu:

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. Nothing had happened on the call. Later, the man writing the story described a house going up in flames, and with it another murder.

When we left our story last time:

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.

Now we join our story already in progress:

The next few days were as hazy as the suit that the man was wearing.  I didn’t have vivid or specific dreams of the man, but there were dreams.  I felt like I was flying along with him while he preformed his despicable deeds.  I was being dragged in his wake and I couldn’t get out of it.

Every day I would call the police , every day they would laugh at me and hang up.  Every day someone would die the same way.  Beaten and then burned.  I couldn’t sleep well.  I didn’t eat well.  I lost my job at the Bagel Hut and then at the Taco Barn.  My landlord was freaking out about the rent.  My whole life was going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

I still had school though, at least for the rest of the semester.  I went to my classes in a daze and somehow found just enough brainpower to not flunk out.  I even managed to talk to Faith Harper a couple of times.  That brought its own weirdness.

She told me that the phone I had given her started to make funny sounds, like someone was listening in on her conversations.  She had taken the phone to the repair shop and they had found a strange piece of equipment inside, something that looked like a bug from the CIA.  I told her how strange that was and blew it off as we parted.

After she left, I couldn’t help but remember the radio in the hallway at my apartment and the way it was not quite right.  I went home and pulled it off of the shelf and onto the floor.  As I did, the back fell off and there was a small silver box pushed inside the case.  I knew then what hadn’t been right about the radio.  There was light coming from not only the front where it should have, but the back as well.  Just a small halo where the cover was not quite secured.

I reached in for the silver box and pulled it out.  It was attached to the inside board of the radio by 2 alligator clips.  The box itself was not remarkable.  About the size of a 3 by 5 index card and as thick as a deck of cards with one black on/off switch on the side.  I had never seen this box before but it tickled another memory in my head.

I turned the radio on and got the same static I did the other morning.  I then took a deep breath and flipped the switch on the silver box.  A conversation immediately came in over the radio.  I turned the tuner a few times and heard several conversations.  One of those sounded like a repair shop.  Had I found the shop that Faith had taken her phone to?

I didn’t know but decided to keep it to myself.  This was possibly a piece of evidence against the Man in the Hazy Suit, but my fingerprints were all over it now.  I didn’t want to be attached to him any more than I already was.  The cops were somewhat suspicious with my knowledge even if they did laugh at me most of the time.

I left the radio on the floor and fell into my bed, exhausted.   I dreamed again of the Man.  He was wandering around a neighborhood that I knew well.  It was Faith’s.  He walked confident as ever, his suit as Hazy as ever, but he was missing his gas can.  Maybe tonight no one would die.  I could only hope that was the case.

I tried to scream at the Man or stop him from walking up to Faith’s house.  I tried to tackle him or kick at him but I never seemed to be able to get close enough.  The lights were off in the house as he approached.  The street was quiet, no cars had passed since we arrived.  Very few lights were on up and down the street.

The Man in the Hazy Suit stood on Faith Harper’s doorstep with a set of lockpicks in his hand.  He made quick work of the door and was inside listening in the dark.  No alarm, no dog, no sound but the ticking of the grandfather clock and my pounding heart.

The Man slowly made his way up the stairs and to the right, where I knew that Faith’s bedroom was located.  I screamed and ranted to get him to stop, to leave Faith alone.  He finally turned and put his index finger to his lips telling me to be quiet.  I kept railing against him, trying to do…something.

He reached a door that I knew held a sleeping Faith Harper behind it.  Callous and arrogantly he opened the door.  I could see the sleeping Faith on her bed by the window, but it wasn’t to her that the Man went.  He stopped at the small table just inside the door and picked up the phone I had given her.

He produced a small screwdriver and proceeded to take the bottom off of the phone.  He then took a small plastic bag from his pocket and removed the contents.  It held a small electronic chip which he placed in the phone and screwed the bottom back on.  He had rebugged Faith’s phone.  He then left the house as sneakily as he had entered.

I sat up shaking yet again.  I tried to assimilate what I had just seen.  I got up and went to the radio on the floor in the hall.  It had been placed back on the shelf and on top of it were a set of lockpicks.  I screamed and ran for the front door.  I almost made it, but a miscalculation caused me to slip and hit my head rather solidly on the counter, leaving a nasty gash for my trouble.

I woke up in a small pool of blood on the kitchen floor sometime later.  The angle of the sun said late afternoon.  I scooted to a corner in the kitchen and huddled in on myself, scared to look further into this strange Man in an even stranger Hazy Suit.

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

-Justin