Brahms Police Station
Feburary 11th, 2010. 3:21 PM
Paperwork.
Paperwork is all that she did. No matter how much paperwork she had gotten through in a single day, there always seemed to be more and more piling in. Just as another officer placed a stack of manila folders onto her already crowded desk, she sneered at the fresh pile before scowling at the poor officer who took it as a hint to get lost.
Ever since she had gotten promoted to being a detective, all she ever did was swim in endless amounts of case files, reports, and other random bullshit in her life that took the form of bills and rent to pay. Blowing some hot steam through the nostrils, emerald hues tore their hateful gaze away from the fresh stack and eyed at the report she had been procrastinating on for the past few days. The pen scribbled furiously over the slots she needed to fill until…
The pen decided to bleed a few excessive blotches onto the last section she needed to fill, obscuring most of what she already had written down. "Fuck…" she grumbled and quickly tossed the pen away, snatching up a tissue from the box beside her and feverously rubbed her fingers of the sticky black ink. Carefully, she dabbed away the excessive ink droplets and reached over for the whiteout she constantly kept at her side.
In doing so however, knocked a stack of old manila folders right over her report, some toppling over the edge of her already cramped desk.
"…" she felt her eye twitch, her heart pound and…
"ARGH! FUCK!" she suddenly screamed out and swiped away a good portion of both folders and some of the decorations upon her desk she had actually forgotten was there—even knocking the desk lamp over that fell into the trash can. "I HATE this shit!" she growled and ground her teeth before that furious gaze lifted towards other fellow co-workers who stopped in their tracks from her sudden outburst. Hell, some of them probably witnessed some steam shooting out from flared nostrils before she suddenly slammed her hands down upon her desk and rose from her seat. "WHAT'RE YOU LOOKING AT!?" she roared at the others, causing some to flinch and others to hurry the hell away from her opened office door.
-calm down…you're the one making the scene here..-
With a heavy sigh, she sank back into her chair and snatched up the rabbit stress ball she managed to discover after knocking the files away, squeezing it harder than she normally would on a regular day. Fingers combed through the fiery red locks she considered as a "mop" of hair since she hardly found time to actually style it. Just when she thought she could calm her nerves, a sudden knock upon her office door had that fiery emerald gaze settle upon someone else who decided to bother her.
…Someone who had two cups of delicious black coffee and a bag of goodies from "Heaven's donuts" located across the street. The man had a big grin upon his Puerto Rican face that made his moustache stretch farther than it should. "So…I take it you're having an 'off' day?" he said with much amusement at the comical sight of the giant stacks upon her desk and the mess of folders scattered all over the floor. He was only met with a growl as he took up the only other seat not cluttered with paperwork and watched as the woman immediately leaned over her desk and snatched up a coffee from the cardboard holder and plunk back down into her seat. This only made him laugh while setting down his own coffee and the package of good ol' donuts to take down some of the stacks just so he could at least see her scowling face. "I'll take that as a yes…" he chuckled and watched as she only grunted in response and squeezed the pink rabbit stress ball in her hand.
"Thanks for the coffee…" she muttered and squeezed the rabbit a final time before giving the poor thing a break and tossing it back onto the desk.
"Don't mention…" he trailed off as chocolate hues instantly focused upon the little 'Robbie the Rabbit stress ball'. Now this had him impressed as he retrieved the bag and handed it over to his partner. "Well now! I didn't think you'd keep that thing around! God, it was years ago! Remember we had to get down to the amusement park in Silent Hill? And you wanted to punch the hell out of that asswipe who thought the park staff kidnapped his kid?"
Ah, she did recall that "intimate" moment between herself and the man. Apparently while he and his wife decided to take a ride in the 'Tunnel of Love', the child managed to disappear and the man had insisted that the staff had kidnapped his child. He was in a blind rage, screaming obscenities at the staff members and even herself in the process. As she argued with the man, her partner Andrew Martinez, had the ride permanently shut down just so he and two other park staff could venture inside for the child. Sure enough, they did find him huddled in a corner and crying his little eyes out. Even if she won the verbal argument, the man still insisted that policemen in general should "do their jobs" as he nastily put it.
To hear Martinez bring up such an old memory had her finally crack that stern gaze and give in to a good chuckle. "Yeah, yeah, I remember that…You got it for me afterward 'cause you said my face was turning as red as my hair," she nodded and busied herself with rummaging in the bag of sweets, pulling out a white-frosted sprinkled cake donut she instantly took a big bite out of. "Anywhey, why would I throe eet awai?" she spoke with a full mouth, "damn fing dosh itsh job."
Martinez only laughed at the sight of her eagerly wolfing down her donut and coffee. No matter what, he was always there to either break up a fight between her and another, or there to finally crack a smile on that youthful face that always seemed so scrunched up in anger all the time. Really, he constantly told her to at least laugh more than thirty minutes every day or else those wrinkles that formed from her constant furrowing brows would actually become permanent. Now as he watched her scarf down the donut and move on to the next, he tsked her before reaching into the bag to help himself to a long john. "You know, you keep eating like that, and you're gonna get fat…And I don't want a fat partner," he commented before taking a bite of that cream-filled morsel, "Just think…Detective Jezza Bishop!...fat and unhappy. Then again, that might just suit you…"
That only got a scowl from her before she picked up a random manila folder to whap him on the head. Too bad he rose a forearm in defense, but that only spilled some coffee in his lap. Just hearing the string of curses and the sight of crumbs spewing from his mouth and dropping onto his lap had her satisfied enough. "Shut up. See? That's what you get…Now, what's all this for anyway? I know you want something," she commented before finishing the rest of her second donut and leaned back, taking a generous gulp of her straight-black coffee. Martinez always had to make a stupid comment about her and her guilty pleasures of eating junk food…So what if she did? She worked out at least four times a week just to stay fit! She sulked in those thoughts before Martinez gave up trying to rub out the coffee stain upon the crotch of his beige slacks and picked up something else to add onto her collection piled upon her desk; another manila folder. Her gaze almost instantly hardened upon it. "Andy, I got my hands full as it is…and it's not helping that you're not helping me with the paperwork…"
But 'Andy' cut her off, tsking once again as he dropped it on the desk before her. "No, no, no, no! Just open it," he said before he got a look from her that only made his eyes roll, "C'mon, just do it. I think you'll like this case and besides, no one wants to take it."
She snorted and opened up the file, "And why's that?"
"Because…It has something to do with Silent Hill," he grinned mischievously and wiggled his fingers that held his long john before his grip became loose and nearly dropped his pastry.
"…Stupid," she grunted and began to roam through pages. Inside, there were pictures of an apartment complex—presumably where the victim's place of residence was. There were other pictures of Brahm's hospital, and an even larger picture of a young woman around her early twenties with long, beautiful black hair to accentuate the soft hazel hues she possessed. No doubt, this woman was beautiful…and she was strikingly familiar. Jezza eyed at the picture of the smiling woman until it finally hit her.
-The nurse on the news…Missing for five days now…-
She looked up to Martinez who finally finished his long john and had a grin on his face that unfortunately had some leftover cream in the corner of his lip. With a sigh, she swiped up her napkin and reached over to get rid of the cream. "For once, can you eat properly?"
"Hey, I was saving that…"
She only smirked and sat back in her chair, leafing through the report. "So, that's the only reason why? I don't get it…It's just another missing person…What's it got to do with Silent Hill?"
"Well…" Martinez grunted while getting comfortable in his chair, "Police came down to the hospital shortly after she was reported missing from one of hospital staff members—presumably her friend."
"What about her relatives? Shouldn't they be the ones doing the filing?"
Martinez only shook his head, "She doesn't have any close relatives. Mother passed away four months…Father packed up and left when she was born. She's an only child."
"Damn that sucks…"
"Yeah. Anyway, the staff members that knew her, said that her fiancée was going to surprise her on valentine's day. Something along the lines of taking her to silent hill for a valentine's day scare."
Now, Jezza became a little more interested than before, "Go on…"
"So she ends her shift at exactly 9PM. She was picked up by a male fifteen minutes later in a white Toyota Tacoma and then? That's the last that anyone's seen her."
"Well, don't you think she might've taken a vacation she didn't tell her friends about? Or maybe called in sick?"
Martinez only grinned, "I went down there earlier this morning to ask for her records. The woman does her job! Comes in at noon and leaves at nine every day, six days a week. Hardly calls in sick…and when I checked with the person in charge, they said that she never requested for vacation before she disappeared. They say she's the hard working-type, not the type to suddenly pack their bags and scurry away."
Jezza hummed in thought as she quickly skimmed through the written reports and statements neatly organized in the folder. "Did they know who it was that picked her up?"
"No. They all said she left in a hurry."
"Strange…"
"No," Martinez spoke up once again, his face brightening up the moment Jezza looked him in the eye, "What's strange, is that around four in the morning the very next day, her fiancée got into a bad car accident. Guess where he was headed from?"
"Silent Hill…"
"Bingo…and you know what people around here say about that town…Whomever goes there, goes there for no good…"
Martinez did have a point. Nothing ever good happened when people were involved with Silent Hill. It first began in the nineteen-nineties where a man got into a car accident while driving through the fog. His daughter ended up in Silent Hill.
"Yeah, that's true…Hey, isn't Silent Hill where that cop…"
"Yup. Cybil Bennet. I don't know the real reasons why she drove into that town, but no one's heard of her since."
"and…that other guy a few years later? Some guy…"
"James? Yeah…His wife died three years before that day he disappeared. Heard he was a good man with a great head on his shoulders…"
Jezza nodded and sipped her coffee in silence before something dawned on her that made her want to kick herself in the face for not realizing this earlier. She leapt up from her chair and immediately marched over to her office door to slam and lock it shut. Her partner stared with a quizzical look as she immediately marched back to her desk and reached down, picking up a selective amount of folders before she began to explore the other stacks. "What're you doing?"
"These people…They all have a connection! WHY haven't I seen this before?..."
"Seen what?"
Finally finding the right folders, she opened one that was slightly stained from age. "Harry Mason, that guy you mentioned in the nineteen-nineties who's daughter got lost in Silent Hill. Then…" she pulled out another file just as aged as the first, opening it to reveal a young blonde woman in the standard issued police uniform, smiling happily into the camera with a salute. "Cybil Bennet, she disappears in…Silent Hill. Years later…" She went back to the first folder, showing the picture of Harry Mason dead in his own chair where the obvious cause of death was the hole in his chest. "Harry Mason is murdered…By who? It still remains a mystery…Heather Mason was the one to discover his body."
Martinez loomed over, pushing the stacks away just so he could snake himself between them and observe the sudden findings that Jezza began to piece together. "Then there's James Sunderland who's wife died three years before he went to Silent Hill and never returned. Why did he go in the first place? Again, no one knows this…In 2000, Walter Sullivan went on a murder spree, killing ten people before he killed himself. He was an orphan of guess where?"
Martinez wrinkled his nose in thought, "Silent Hill Wish House?"
"Exactly."
"I remember that! He killed ten people, then killed himself in prison by jamming a spoon in his neck. Then all the sudden, there's some god-damn copycat continuing his murderous spree."
"Yeah, they discovered nineteen bodies and the twentieth victim, Eileen Galvin, died in the hospital from her injuries. People think that Henry Townshend was the copycat since he disappeared shortly after Eileen's death. No one's ever found him though…"
"Jesus…"
Jezza pulled out the last folder, opening it to reveal a picture of a man in his mid twenties who looked exhausted with those excess baggage under his eyes. He wore a hospital gown and his gaze towards the camera looked as if he were nothing but an empty shell. "In 2008, Alex Shepherd was discharged from the hospital to return back to his home in Shepherd's Glen…that's only across the lake from Silent Hill. The reason why he was put in the mental institution was because he had a severe mental breakdown after his brother died in an accident upon their boat. Ended up drowning in Toluca lake."
"He went missing too?"
"Well…No. Some teenagers that wanted to go camping around Silent Hill forest found him. He just kept screaming…and eventually, they had to put him back in the institution."
Martinez whistled and soon sighed as he leaned back in his chair. "So all the cases you have piled on your desk…What all these victims have in common is…Silent Hill?"
Jezza nodded. "It looks like it…Anyway, did Anna Brooks' boyfriend survive the accident?"
"Yeah, he was admitted to brahm's hospital in critical condition. Don't know how—"
"We need to talk to him."
Jezza's partner slowly sat up in his chair and eyed at her determination. "Well…Yeah, but this guy just got out of a car accident, Jezza. You really think he's gonna be able to ask any questions after being all doped up?"
True. Again, Martinez had a point, but Jezza only sighed and rose from her desk, gingerly stepping over the scattered folders to snatch up her coat from it's rack, "I know…But he's our only lead, Andy. It doesn't hurt to try, right?"
"But—" Martinez stopped short of his protest as she unlocked and opened the door, looking back at him with a rather triumphant, smug grin. Uh-oh…
"Fine. Stay here…and when the chief gets in? You can explain why none of this paperwork's done yet since you won't help me do it," she quipped and shut the door behind her, leaving Martinez to grumble a few insults about his partner's parentage until he got up and rushed for the door.
Brahms Hospital, Room 237
Feburary 11th, 5:30 PM
The day had crawled along much slower than he could endure. Like Stalin promised, tests began almost immediately. Scans, physicals, everything just to make sure that Cameron was in piece both on the inside and outside. As he finally got to his room, he was sick of seeing doctors, nurses, and their needles. That was way too much for a single day…And not to mention, Stalin wanted Cameron to stay at least one more night just so they could get the results of the test and figure out which medications were necessary along the road to his recovery. The only problem Stalin diagnosed was that Cameron was suffering from a bout of Amnesia that could continue to affect him for hours, days, or even years. It all would come together sometime soon and Cameron was forced to accept that fact.
For now, he rested within the comforts of his room, sprawled upon his bed while watching the last few minutes of yet another low-budget movie that he couldn't put his finger on. He hoped to god that he wouldn't have to endure much of this crap anymore. Hospitals sucked, no matter how much doctors want people to stay healthy.
"He's in Room 237, this way….What did you two need to speak to him about?"
Almost instantly, Cameron's ears picked up the saying of his room number that echoed so easily throughout the hall and reverberated into his room. It was Stalin, of course…But the other voice? It sounded feminine…and quite determined to see him for some odd reason.
"We need to ask him a few questions…We promise we won't take up much of his or your time."
"I don't think he'll be much help for you…He's suffering from amnesia. He can't remember the past few days prior to his accident."
"It doesn't hurt to try, now does it? We promise it'll only be a few questions…"
"…Alright."
Rather than finding out the title for the next low-budget movie featuring, he fixed his gaze upon the door and held his breath. The distinct footfalls…they grew louder and louder until two people entered his room; a man and a woman. The man looked to be in his late thirties of Hispanic origin. His dark hair was a messy, spiked style, but that seemed to match him in an odd way. Maybe it was the moustache and the goatee…Or maybe it was the dark brown trench coat he kept on him (which looked extremely comfortable in Cameron's opinion). Either way, he looked professional and even tried to adjust his black tie in a professional-like manner.
The woman looked much younger, and judging from the stern stare, she meant business. –A fiery red head- he thought to himself as his gaze locked onto those intimidating emeralds. She too wore a coat, only black instead and ending at the knees. White undershirt, black tie, and a black skirt that ended at the knees as well. He couldn't tell what she wore on her feet since…He didn't want to look like he was "surveying" her. Well, maybe it was a bit too late for that since she suddenly tsked. Oops.
Just as he was about to open his mouth and speak, the man pulled out a badge and flipped it to show his I.D. "I'm detective Martinez and this is my partner, Detective Bishop. We're here just to ask you a few questions if you don't mind?"
"Uhm…" Cameron swallowed a hard lump in his throat, "I can try…But I'm telling you now…I don't remember much…of Anything."
Martinez only returned a smile to Cameron, stretching that moustache farther than it looked like it should. "Good…Now, we're investigating the case of a missing woman…" he started off while pulling a chair close to Cameron's bedside to have a seat. The woman however, chose to remain by the door, crossing her arms and keeping her focus upon the two men. "Ana Brooks, twenty-four years old. Worked at Brahms Hospital and was last seen in Feburary 7th…"
Cameron instantly stiffened. Why was it that this girl's name popped up all over the fucking place? Just hearing the name alone had chills travel down his spine, the hair on his arms and neck stand, and his heart race. That name instantly reminded him of his dreams—no, those nightmares that plagued him for two nights in a row…The very nightmares he had of that woman. From the time where she was ravaged by that bizarre beast, down to where she had hid in the hospital closet and burst from it the moment he tried to reach out to her.
Despite that sweet, loving picture of the woman that Detective Martinez pulled out, it held a…far more sinister meaning to Cameron. Almost instantly, he shrank back into the comforts of his pillows, staring into the warm, gentle gaze she would forever more return in that little picture. The nightmares began to return to him, sending another onslaught of shivers that riveted down his spine.
"I-I don't know her…I don't remember much…Of anything. I'm sorry, I can't help..you…" Cameron stumbled over his words in a poor attempt to help the Detective out. As much as he struggled to hide his fears from the man, Cameron knew right away that he pleased the detective with his slight, but sudden reactions. He just wished that they would go away…That he could go back to the dull T.V. and it's crap-tastical low-budget movies that only cheap directors could afford. No, instead, the detective pushed further.
-Please just go away…-
"Nothing at all? C'mon Cameron…You have to remember. You know her…You should know her very well…"
Funny, the little voice in the back of Cameron's head kept saying the same thing. He felt a lump—no, a rock slide uncomfortably down his throat. Why was he being bothered with a woman that never existed to him?...
"I-I don't! Why're you bothering me with this!? Why is everyone asking me about her!?" Cameron's voice began to rise without knowing it. His chest tightened again for the second time. Perspiration began to bead upon his forehead and the urge to purge his lunch grew stronger with every sickening second that slowly ticked by. "Just—"
Martinez interrupted him this time, hovering the picture closer to Cameron's face while his words cut clean through Cameron's unfinished plea. "Ana Brooks is your fiancée."
A/N: shorter than the last chap, I know..Hmpf! Anyway, here's another chapter to keep my readers (if there are any) busy. I'll keep getting to it…
And for the people who read my other story, Regrets..I'm having difficulty trying to start off the next chap so gimmie some time for that, okay?
