Arrival

Jackson couldn’t take his eyes off the stranger. He was a tall man, with fair skin, dark hair and bright blue eyes that right now stared directly at him. In ordinary circumstances, this man wouldn’t have seemed threatening. However, in the short space of 30 seconds, he knew this was the most dangerous man he’d every met. If he was a man. Jackson felt a growing fear well up inside him, a fear that this man knew what he was thinking. He’d made a terrible mistake. Fear took a hold of him. He couldn’t breath. The stranger smiled.

“Look, not now ok! We’ll talk about this later”. John hung up his Cell and threw it on the passenger seat. Banging his hands on the steering wheel in frustration, he got out of his car and walked towards home. It had been a rough day. He was finalizing a big deal for his firm. Big was an understatement. He worked for a large architecture firm and he was confident that they would be the company to build the next massive skyscraper in the heart of the city. If this deal came through, it meant millions for the company and a big fat bonus for him and his team. It also meant twelve-hour days, weekend work and a shit load of stress. Today it seemed the stress was taking its toll, which is why going to his girlfriends sisters house for dinner was not a priority, and why tomorrow he’d be forking out a lot of money on flowers for hanging up on her.

John approached his apartment complex from the car park. It was the oldest building on the block, all other buildings on the street had been redeveloped in the last ten years. He guessed it was only a matter of time before offers came to his door to sell his place. He was looking forward to it; he was certain he’d make a profit. As he rounded the corner, he bumped into a cop. He wasn’t the only one, there were at least a dozen of them walking around. The front of the building was sectioned off by yellow tape, and the crowd that had gathered to glean any information possible, were being told to go home. “What’s going on here officer?” John asked as he approached the cop at the front door.
“Please sir, this is police business, please help us by returning to your home.”
John smiled. “This is my home”
“Go on through then” the officer replied. “But there’s been an incident in number eight, so please go straight to your home and let us finish our work”.

John walked into the building. He lived in number nine, meaning he would be able to walk straight past number eight and maybe peek in and see what sort of “incident” had happened in there. A strange sort of excitement built up in him. A dozen cops, what could have happened to bring a dozen cops here? It must be a murder, or a drug bust he thought. He slowed down as he approached number eight. Peering around the corner of the door, he looked upon a scene that made his skin crawl. There was blood everywhere. It covered the furniture, the walls, and the carpet. Could one person carry that much blood in their body? He didn’t think so. On the wall opposite him there was a large burn mark roughly in the shape of a man. Smoke still rose from it in steady streams. The stench took him back to high school chemistry class; sulfur. He couldn’t see a dead body anywhere. “Oi!” shouted a cop who had just noticed him. “Get out of here!” John didn’t need any more of a push. He hurried to his door, and fumbled with his keys. Finally, he found the right one, got into his apartment and slammed the door behind him. He sat on the ground, with his back against the door, willing himself not to throw up.

John sat at his desk at work. It had been a week since the incident at the apartment. While the experience had shaken him to the core, he hadn’t taken any days off work. He couldn’t afford to, and if anything, it was a welcome distraction from the whole event. The police had interviewed him the day after the incident. They asked a load of questions, and wouldn’t answer his. He of course knew nothing, just like everyone else in the building. Jackson Mewer, the man that had lived in apartment eight had only been there for a month. He couldn’t remember speaking to him, just seeing him from afar. John had hardly talked to anyone in the building up until this week. They may have shared the same space, but they lived separate lives and people generally kept to themselves. Nothing like a bloody massacre to bring everyone together, he thought sourly.

Not that it had been called a “massacre” in the local paper. In fact, Jackson Mewer was officially deemed “missing”. There was no body found, just a shit load of human blood. Hell, he thought, Jackson might not be the victim, but a homicidal maniac, who’s still out there, painting other apartments in a thick coat of red. “Jesus” he muttered under his breath. He tried to put it out of his mind, but the question that kept popping into his mind came back; What caused that smoking charred imprint on the wall? What the hell would you have to do to someone to cause that? His eyes caught the stack of mail shoved into a corner of his desk. He usually brought his mail to work, to peruse when he got the chance. The size of the stack indicated that hadn’t been for a good two weeks. He looked at the time on his computer. He was due to meet Jennifer for lunch in an hour. She’d forgiven him for hanging up on her, with the help of twelve long stem roses and a grisly description of what he saw in that apartment. The gruesome scene had seemed to excite her, and she had asked more questions than the cops had, making him relive it more vividly than he cared for. Picking up the top ten or so envelopes, he sifted through them. All of them were the usual bills, bank statements and junk mail he usually got. Ignoring them all, he picked up another bunch of letters. One was a bigger envelope than the others, and brown. Not the usual size or make the banks and billers send their mail out in. The other difference was that this one wasn’t addressed to him, but his missing neighbor, one Jackson Mewer.

The man walked through the busy lunch hour streets of the city. Amusement danced around his eyes as he looked at people rushing to their destination. He wondered what tasks they were rushing to, what gave their lives meaning. He sensed fear in all of them. Fear of failure, fear for their loved ones. He knew he could make them forget their worries. He could make their fear seem trivial. They worried over such insignificant things. He could teach them so much about fear. That thought fascinated him. He was going to have a lot of fun.