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Chapter 18: Just Lie
YURI
I was spraying a lavender-scented air freshener in random directions when a phone call held superior and brought all of us on a time-freeze. It happened in an instant. One moment, we were busy, and one moment, we were dead. Not dead as in dead six feet below the ground, but dead as in checkmate.
Yes. Checkmate. I knew nothing about chess, but I thought it was the closest thing that would best represent our situation. A King that’s trapped. A king that’s nowhere to go. Travis walked away from the lockers, and with rubbing hands, he stepped closer to the window. He took a peak outside. On his eyes, on the brown lenses of his mysteriously captivating eyes, reflected the blue and red lights of the police patrol car. He laid his fingertips on the window frames and whispered, “Come to me, Philip.” The son of the police then walked towards him, barefooted, while between the vastness of his palms stRelated chapters
The Photo Collector Chapter 19: Project: Sleepover
PHILIP“Hello, Dad? Sorry I hung up. Could you please come here for a sec?” I said, as per Yuri’s advice.After whispering my request through the speaker, a slamming of the car door was then followed by the sound of lifted paper bags as I placed the phone back to my ear.“I’m on my way.”“Okay.” I sighed. I looked at Yuri, and then at Ashley, and then at the rest of the guys lining across the lockers—divided themselves into six with three on each side—leaving an opening between them to allow Geodie, Samantha, Cylvia, and Vhynz to pass through.I reopened the text message I received from Rabiya’s number and tried to look at it once more.“WE WILL BE SAFE. JUST LIE.”A part of me said I understand it, but a part of me was confused. What could this text message really mean?
The Photo Collector Chapter 20: The Get Away
Dad’s wrinkled forehead crumpled. His head tilted to the right as his hug to the brown paper bags tightened even more. “Oh, okay?” He shrugged. “Now how am I suppose to give these to you?” He pointed his mouth to the foods he was cuddling. The grey stubbles that covered his cheeks and his chin spread wide when his face stretched like rubber after he spoke.I swallowed. “I —right. The barrier’s lock.” I shook the bars between us, but it had only shown how stupid I was for even trying it knowing I was fully aware that it was padlocked. “Didn’t we say to the janitor that we’re having an overtime practice?” I asked without looking back at any of my classmates. From the bars, I averted my fingers to the silver padlock and jerked it many times hoping it would loosen up a bit. But it didn’t. It was the same padlock Janvic used in his locker, only that this one was three times larger in size com
The Photo Collector 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.
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
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