Visitor

Middle of the night, I wake up to hear something moving around in my living room. The fact that they were able to wake up such a heavy sleeper meant that they wanted me to find them, but what happened afterwards...well, let me just start from the beginning.

I took my medicine and went to bed, the hopelessness of this situation putting me to sleep. About forty minutes later I found myself waking up to a loud tapping outside my door, in my kitchen. At first I thought I was just imagining it, but then it kept tapping and I heard a chair creak backwards and that was all it took to convince me.

Heart pounding in my chest, I carefully snuck out of bed and reached for my gun. Making sure it was loaded, I crept towards the door, weapon trained. One hand steadied it towards the door while the other hand reached for the door and pulled it slowly open.

I usually keep one light on in the kitchen, just to ward off anybody that might want to look in, but tonight the house was pitch black saved for a lit candle on my table. When I came in, there was someone sitting at the table, his identity hidden underneath a dark cloak. The tapping was his boot beating against the wooden floor in a fast rhythm. He was rocking back and forth, the chair creaking whenever he leaned back.

I cocked the gun and he stopped moving. He raised a hand- one with bandages covering the fingers- in indication that he was not here to fight. I didn't lower.

“Turn around nice and slow,” I whispered, my throat already starting to burn.

“No need for violence, Mr. Strahm,”the voice replied.

“Turn around now,” I raised my voice a little higher, trying not to strain myself

He finally did, and even though I could barely see his face under the hood he wore, I suddenly had an idea of who he was.

“Oh...it's you, is it?” I hardly lowered my gun. “What do you want?”

He didn't answer. Instead, he lowered his hand and used it to push a bundle to the side so that I could see it. I inched closer, not taking my gun off him, to see what it was.

It looked like a file.

“What's this?”

“One of two roads I offer for you,” he said, standing up and walking around to the other side of the table. “This road leads to answers. The answers you seek. By opening this folder's contents, you go down this road, and once you go down it, you can't so easily turn back.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said, having heard this plenty of times. Not all of them from the movies. “So what's the other one?”

“The other path is to walk away. Forget this girl. Forget him. Forget all of this and leave it. Try to live out the rest of your life never having to worry about any of this mess ever again.”

I managed a rough laugh which turned into a cough, which turned into me spitting out phlegm that was stuck in my throat into the sink.

“Live out my life without this...” I shook my head. “Last I checked I was wanted for murder. They're not just going to turn a blind eye to that. How do you suggest I do that?”

He shrugged. “My offer still stands.”

“Ah, yeah,” I glared right at him. “Because that worked real well for Nessa, right?”

He didn't have an answer for that, which I took to be all the answer I needed. I sat back down and placed my hand on the file. Whatever was in it, there was a lot of it. I had my reading time cut out for me.

“Take my offer, Mr. Strahm.” He wasn't done. “Take it into consideration, at least.”

“Fuck off.”

He shook his head. “Why must you be so persistent? What do you get from this? What is your goal in trying to find the answers.”

I just smirked at him.

“If you're not out that door and far away from me in under a minute, you're never going to find out.”

He just looked at me, but I didn't even bother looking back at him. Finally, I heard the shuffling of the feet towards the door, and I reached for the file to open it when I heard his voice again.

“Option will stay open-”

“Thirty seconds.”

Five seconds after that, the door opened, the footsteps went out, and the door closed again, leaving me to my lonesome once again.

I'm going through the file now, and while I don't have anything definite for you...I think this is exactly what I needed to find.

Robert, glad to see you're back.

Celeste, be safe.

I'll update again when I've processed everything.