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Chapter 21: Problem Solved
Dinner was done. On the sixteenth minute after Dad left to look for the janitor whom he expected to be somewhere on the upper floors without knowing he was actually more than an hour dead already, we settled ourselves on the carpet laid at the center of the music room and meditated. Everybody was cross-sitting beside one another, knee to knee, while forming a big circle composed of eighteen bundles of nerves praying for a positive plot twist in this unsalvageable breaking point.
The fluorescent lights above us weakened in brightness. We had our eyes closed, but it was utterly impossible to just ignore their flickering, especially not when we were surrounded by all sorts of horror similar to what people would imagine when they read an Edgar Allan Poe novel. We may have been thinking varying scenarios—either good and bad—in our head, but one thing common among us was certain; We all pray we could get away with this murder.Related chapters
The Photo Collector Chapter 22: A Knock On The Door
GEODIEThe cutting off of lights happened very abruptly.I was sitting on a stool facing the windows when Philip switched down the glow-lamps. A second was all it took to darken the surrounding, and to wrap everything inside the music room with massive blackness. The only glimmers present was the moonlight shining through the thick glasses of the windows, and the unsteady flickering of our phones. It might have seemed to be enough to allow us to see ourselves, but actually, it was not. We could only recognize each other’s faces if we would drag the torch of the phone below our chin, or light it directly to one another.But the goal was not it. The goal was to use only a little to nothing light, to support our claim that we were having a sleepover. What an alibi.“By this time, the officer must have reached the guard post already,” Jieve said, still by the window, looking outside while his reflectio
The Photo Collector Chapter 23: The Survival
“Who’s that?” Andrei hissed, taking a few steps away from the closed door.I answered, “Clueless.”I reached for the switch and turned it on. Brightness began reappearing again, flooding the spacious rectangular room with lights just as the moment the shadows vanished completely.A knock on the door called our attention one more time. It was backed up by a familiar voice saying, “Wake up, kids! We’re having a chitchat.”To me, the voice was unrecognizable. But to Philip who had heard that voice countless of times each day, it was already registered in his head. He tiptoed stealthily to the door, and as his thick brows wormed their way to meet at the center of his forehead, he verified, “Dad?” The unhealthy white color of his neck crimsoned after he stretched it to link his ear to the door. “Didn’t we told you we are sleeping?”
The Photo Collector Chapter 24: The What?
I placed my phone on top of one of the treadmills, and led to the window to check something. “All clear,” I talked low, gazing to the wide highway outside the Hamlet Creek where two patrol cars, three private vehicles, and a cab where hitting the empty roads together.It was around nine at night. After those people drove away from the University, Travis and I were the only ones left inside. With that being stated, we had an infinity of chances to dispose the janitor’s body without worrying of being caught by anyone or running short of time. In fact, time was on our side.“How do you feel?” he asked as he sprang up from sitting on the blue yoga mat situated between the two yellow ones. “Base on my calculations, we have at least ninety minutes to do our final job. Don’t rush your self, take as much rest as you want,” he said in his deep voice.I look behind and I saw Travis standin
The Photo Collector Chapter 25: Dispatch
My foot was sure of what it bludgeoned; it was something that was sharp and heavy. And if I were to give my shoe a quick diagnosis, I would surely find a cut or at least a scratch on its surface. But I couldn’t do it. Not when I was hugging three leather bags that made looking down to my feet entirely impossible.“Oh,” Travis said, “That must have hurt.”I retorted, “No. It didn’t. But could you check out what that thing was?”He put down the four luggages on the doormat on the other side of the double glass doors, and wordlessly commanded by wish. As he went to the direction of the registrar, he fished for my phone from the side pocket of one of the bags I was holding, and flashed its light to the raven floor. It took him a few navigations before finally noticing something strange yet surely familiar.Beside the potted crotons just few arms away from the
The Photo Collector Chapter 26: Misery
When I woke up in my bed the next morning after a long night of unexplainable things that happened, I couldn’t believe ten hours had already past and there were still no signs of trouble or anything bad that corresponded to the pitfall we had been stuck into last night. On our way home that very hour when we left the University, the lightest thought I could ever think of was being questioned if we had a little knowledge of the whereabouts of the janitor. I would have said no. I would have denied everything. Everyone would have done the same thing, and said the same lie over and over again until the police would believe we were saying nothing but facts. But it was not happening. Or at least not yet. I got off my bed, slit my yellow curtain into two, and tied them with white ribbons on each corner of the only window I had in my room. The sun was facing west, leaving some of its golden rays reflecting on the dust-ridden window pane, shining through the wide sheet of f
The Photo Collector Chapter 27: The Woman In Red
I arrived at the venue five minutes earlier than our agreed meeting. The University chapel was located across the building A, the one and only building built westward of the Hamlet Creek, where a hillock met a sloping road that stretched straight to the Gate Two where vehicles would usually make their way out.Since it was established on the late months of the year 1986, the chapel had earmarks of postcolonial infrastructures. It was jury-rigged out of mud bricks, wattles and daubs, and split logs and rubbles. Although it was known as a chapel because of its nature, it was still undeniable to say that it was way too big for its name. It had two towers standing on both of its sides, one of which had Brobdingnagian old bell that would only toll when someone from the University had died, while the other one was heavily decorated with gothic sculptures that seemed rather spooky than religious. It looked twice older than its age. It was covered with mosses on most of its parts, and
The Photo Collector Chapter 28: The Noble Woman
JANVICThe first row of the lumber church which was located at the center column were vacated by the family of the principal. There was her husband, their two children, her mother and her father, and the six other middle-aged people which I believed were either her siblings or her relatives. Behind them, on the second line of the same varnished benches seated the teachers of the Hamlet Creek University. Mrs. Nualda was on the leftest, followed by the three oldest mentors namely Mrs. Billiones, Mrs. Mitra, and Mrs. Beñez; all of them had been teaching here for more than four decades already, and they were said to be the only living Professors of the second generation of HCU Faculty who witnessed the conversion of the school from being public to private. Beside them were the younger and newer profs which I was not familiar of and didn’t know the names because we, students from star sections, never had encountered with them. Lastly, on the rightest of
The Photo Collector Chapter 29: Unexpected Eulogy
The least movement I made upon hearing his answer was covering my mouth with my hands before it could even spill out sizzling words that were strictly prohibited to say; like fuck, or shit—or in my worst mood, both. As what my best friends Andrei and Benedict described me, I was the King Of Bad Words. I knew all along that it was not the best title or moniker I dreamed of having, but I had no choice. It’s the only thing where I’m good at—Cursing.It was crazy because in my four years of staying here in HCU, I never heard of its original name before. Not from the Star Section’s Board, not from our own class adviser, and especially not from the principal herself. Sure enough, that went the same way with my classmates, too. We were fully aware that this was once a public high school, but it never occurred to us to hear it from a rival University’s Head Director. HCU had been through a lot in the past, but we were robbed the o
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