3 #2
Hang on, Adina. Let me pull the car up so I can turn off the engine.
Give me two seconds, she said as I scanned the scene in front of me.
My father, a stoic, impressive man, was lying limp on the floor, with a neat and sparse desk as usual, and windows and door intact.
Nothing seemed out of place. Right, she said after a few moments. Now, tell me what the problem is.
“I…” My brain was screaming at me that something was seriously wrong with this picture, but I couldn’t find a clue to prove my hunch. “Dad,” I swallowed, “he’s done something….died.” I quickly added before I cracked completely, “I’ve called the police and emergency services.”
“Adina? What? He’s dead?” her voice broken a little, and I rolled my eyes in disbelief. This was what she wanted. For my father to die, so she can inherit his money. Did she drive him to kill himself?
“Yes, um, I can’t…I have to go,” I said as hot tears ran down my cheeks, as the realization of what this meant struck me hard.
“Wait,” Leslie asserted, “I’m coming home.”
“Okay. Whatever,” I swiped off and exhaled, began pacing as I waited for the ambulance and police to arrive, picking at the skin around my nails and biting my lip, tugging my hair.
I was the only person in the house when he hung himself, yet I didn’t hear or see anything. If he was that distraught, why didn’t he speak to me? My throat started to clog up at the thought that perhaps he was so embarrassed by his daughter’s actions that he couldn’t face another day.
Wiping the tears from my cheeks, I ran down to the living room and grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the couch to drape over my father’s body. The living room had glass sliding doors that opened out to the barbecue area overlooking the pool.
On the other side of the pool stood a man wearing a silver Friday 13th Jason mask staring in my direction. I rushed to the sliding door to open it, so I could threaten to shoot him with my gun, but by the time I got the door open, he had jumped the fence and was gone.
With a trembling hand wrapped around the gun, I ran back to my father’s office, draped the blanket over his still body, then stepped over him to access the laptop on his desk to peer at the security footage to see if the masked man broke into the house.
I ran my finger over the mouse, and when the screen saver vanished, I was staring at the view of the pool on the screen. My heart slammed against my ribcage, and as I paused to digest the scene. My father was checking the camera footage of the pool, then he hung himself. What did he see?
Aware that Leslie and the police were on their way, I started going through the footage from the pool camera to find the masked man.
But he wasn’t there. I then checked another camera that looked over the front yard and found nothing, then went back to the pool camera footage and examined it closely.
There was a bird at the very edge of the view that flew down onto the fence for two seconds, then flew off.
If I hadn’t looked carefully, I would’ve missed it.
But the bird flew back down again, then again, and I realized that the footage I was watching was stuck on one scene. I wasn’t looking at live images.
The gate buzzer went off, and I checked the security footage to see who was there, but it was empty.
Again, someone had locked footage on repeat, so I wasn’t looking at live images.
The buzzer rang out again, and I jumped in fright, closed down the security page, then glanced up to find someone blocking the doorway.
He was masked, but it was a different mask from the one I saw earlier by the pool. I raised my gun and pointed it at his head, “The police are outside.”
Silence. The masked man had nothing to say because I had one over on him.
“Did you do this to my father?” I asked him, pointing to the floor, and he stretched his neck to look at the limp body on the floor, hidden behind the desk as if that was the first time he’d seen it.
“Good acting. You should buy a one-way ticket to Hollywood. You’re so convincing. My hunch knew it wasn’t a suicide.”
The gate buzzed again, and the masked man turned to the right and signaled to someone who was out of sight, and my heart sank. There were two of them, maybe more, but the thing that bothered me the most was that he didn’t seem concerned by the gun in my hand.
When he turned back to me, his hand held what looked like a dart gun, and as he raised his arm to fire the gun, I shot a bullet at him, then dived behind the desk.
Footsteps walked to the side of the desk, and his scary Halloween mask appeared before me. He ducked out of the way just as I fired another shot, only for him to come back and fire a dart from his gun that pierced my shoulder.
I pulled the needle from my skin and fired another shot as a numbing sensation claimed my muscles and crawled along my skin.
Very quickly, I couldn’t clench the muscle in my hand to hold the gun, and it slipped from my fingers.
I rolled over in an attempt to climb onto my feet so I could run, but I didn’t have the strength; my body collapsed onto the floor.
Useless. Like a boneless jellyfish with no hope of escaping the masked men.