The following is a transcription from several pages of a burnt personal diary that was found next to the remains of Angela S. Yorke. Police officers entered Ms. Yorke’s apartment at 113 Cherry lane on July 28th after she had been reported missing for several days. The interior of the apartment had apparently been completely destroyed in a fire, although none of the neighbors had reported seeing flames. In the corner of the bedroom the officers found a large pile of ash that was later identified, through dental records, to be the body of Ms. Yorke. From the charred hand of the corpse the officers recovered a badly damaged diary which she had apparently been writing in throughout the period of her disappearance. Experts have been unable to determine the cause of the fire, nor the reason why it damaged only the inside of one apartment, leaving the exterior and all surrounding rooms unharmed. In an effort to solve the mystery, the diary underwent an extensive restoration to repair and copy the charred pages.
Archive for the ‘ Stories ’ Category
Gregory A. Julian moved into the mansion on 481 Cayuga Dr. Soon, angry letters from the bank began to pour into his mail slot, threatening foreclosure unless he began to pay off his sizable loan. Three months later, the requisite amount of time had passed and an eviction notice was printed by my boss. And that’s the asshole that sent me, late Friday evening, just before I left for the weekend, to deliver the letter in person to the absent Mr. Julian. I ground my teeth as I wound my way through the suburbs looking for Cayuga Drive. Somehow, this man I had never knew or met had unwittingly conspired with my boss to ruin my evening plans.
481 stood at the end of the block, its windows dark, its flanks shaded by oaks twisting into the reddening sky. I parked the car next to a dusty BMW and walked up the short stone path to his (now the bank’s) front door. It seemed odd that the expensive car would be sitting unprotected outside of his spacious garage, an even layer of pollen coating the outside and a stack of moving boxes piled within. Also, it was bizarre that the heavy front door stood halfway open, a mountain of letters and bills spilling out the doorway and onto the walk. I rapped the brass knocker against the door, “Mr. Gregory Julian?” I called inside, “I’m from the bank; I have some important papers to give to you.” No reply.
I ventured a little further into the hallway and repeated myself louder. Still no reply. But squinting, I saw the soft glow of a light spilling down a staircase at the end of the hallway. A glance at the hour hand on my watch was all it took to send me inside the house in search of my quarry.
Murrey put down the camera and wiped the snowflakes off of his binoculars, holding them up to his blue eyes. He spun the focus and tried to shield the lenses from the driving wind as he gazed out across the icy plains. He lost feeling in his hands after only a minute of searching. It was hopeless anyways; the driving snow obscured anything over a few hundred yards away. Sighing, he lowered the binoculars and put his gloves back on, turning to face me. “No way we can get back to the Jeep in this stuff,” he said, “the blizzard’s gonna be on top of us within an hour and we better have some shelter by then.” I struggled to hear him over the shrieking wind, “What? No. No, we have to get back; we’re supposed to be shooting the next segment in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. If we don’t start driving tonight, we’ll never get back on schedule.” “You’re worried about the filming schedule?” Murrey gave me stern look, “You’ve never been in a Siberian blizzard have you? If we get caught on those open plains when the storm hits, we’ll freeze to death in ten minutes! Fuck the schedule, I’m worried about making it through the night.”
I knew Murrey well, he wasn’t the kind of guy who exaggerated. If he said we were in trouble, he truly meant that our lives were in danger. “Well, shit. Fuck the schedule then. What do we do now?” Even as I spoke I could feel the freezing wind gusting stronger, little jets of ice shooting through the seams in my parka and chilling me to the bone. Murrey had to yell to be heard over the gathering snowstorm, “Let’s head back to that forest we passed earlier. We can pile some branches and try to make a shelter before the worst of it reaches us.” “Alright Mur, you lead the way, I already feel half frozen.” Without further discussion we set off back across the snow laden fields; me struggling to follow Murrey as the driving gale buffeted me about, thick sheets of snow blocking out the golden evening sun and the dark shadow of my cameraman hurriedly trudging along before me.
Having spent my life in a buzzing metropolis, driving through the Midwest states was a hypnotic and sobering experience. Anyone who has seen the breadbasket of America will know what I’m talking about. Fields. Billions of acres of crops covering the land in waves of undulating leaves; the tamed wilderness organized into rows, blocks, and circles, continuing on for hours and hours and days and days. That’s one of the strangest things about driving through the Midwest. The endless ocean of cornfields, birthed by man’s labors seem to go on without end, but with no signs of those who created it. A car here, a small house there, a windmill, a rotting barn; it’s as if some great civilization built it eons ago and then died out, leaving the living remains of their creations for you to drive past and wonder at. That’s how I found myself on the evening of the last day in July, driving my red sedan along a veritable tunnel of a road cut across the cornfields. No broad highway for me; rather, I had chosen a graveled detour which I had been promised led back to the interstate. The last few exhausting days had seen me driving non-stop across the country, but today, as the sun peaked in the sky and began its free fall back into the earth, the end of my trip drew near. Rest, relaxation, and who the fuck knows maybe even fun lay at my feet; the only thing separating me from my goal was a mile more of gravel road and a few insignificant minutes on the freeway.
Unfortunately, my car was having a little trouble navigating the tiny country road. The assholes at the gas station had promised a worn but perfectly passable route, but a few miles in it became increasingly evident that neither description fit this sorry excuse for a road. Still, the anxiety didn’t really sink in until the gravel path degenerated into a dusty path and then into mere ruts on the ground. As the weeds growing between the tire tracks began to hit the underside of my car, I briefly grappled with the idea of turning around and taking the more traditional, albeit longer, paved route. But soon, that bitch, stubbornness, got her way and I plowed on forwards against the rising weeds and deepening dark…
Hello. I can see that my grin confuses you. Well, let me tell you the story about why I’m so happy. My name’s Jack. . At least, I call myself Jack. I can’t remember what my parents named me. I grew up in some large, grimy city. As a child I lived with my parents in a squalid apartment full of mold and cockroaches. I spent most of my time outside in the alley playing with boxes and stray cats. I recall very little about where I lived except for the gap behind my bed – that’s where I hid when mommy and daddy were screaming and hitting each other. I don’t remember it as a pleasant life, but it was okay. . Then one day mommy walked into the kitchen and pulled out a shotgun, shooting daddy in the face. Then, staring at me, she put the barrel under her chin and pulled the trigger…