Chapter 5

Medium: The Origins finds a young man setting out to avenge the death of a beloved family member and to recover forgotten memories, only to find himself with a new case and a unknown assailant on him.

Chapter 5

           

Well, I couldn’t say it was a great day for everyone, but what do I care. I passed, and I don’t have to worry about this crap anymore. What really pisses me off though is that I get a badge, a badge! What’s it going to do, shine my enemies to death? It’s nothing but a representation, but it’s just an award to show completion, so I guess I’ll bite it. The ceremony is done, as I don’t want to get into that again, probably because I don’t remember much of it anyways. Everyone was chatting about stuff (I don’t bother listening), I was just sitting at a table alone. It was pretty peaceful just enjoying my dinner. I look around and I notice not everyone is with someone. A girl with a grey sweater, black pants and long black hair, is looking around but at the same time covering her face from the crowd in here. She’s not really comfortable here is she, well I’ll keep an eye on her in case anyone else has an eye on her.

“AAAAHHHHH!” The sound of that is loud enough to shake the whole room. What the hell was that all about? Everyone in the room rush in to see what the problem was. This is new, the General is sitting with his back slouching against the wall, hugging his legs as if he is hiding from an unseen force. The wife is there, scared as if she saw a demon explode from her husband. A few candidates, or graduates, goes in to comfort the old soldier.

One of the soldiers bends down to him. “General, what happened?”

“What made you scream like that?” Another one ask.

“What happened here?” They ask his wife.

          She takes a moment to pause and catch her breath, and then she tries to let words out of her mouth. “I…I just came in to see how he’s doing, the moment he saw me he act like he saw a monster of some sort. I don’t know what got into him. I want to help, but I don’t know how.”

“What did you see, what did it look like?”

Everyone take a look at the general, but he isn’t back in reality yet. He talks as there was something strange in this room. “Get away from me! GET AWAY!!”

He gets up. Despite his hard and harsh demeanor, this was not him. As what’s happening now, he’s just lung in towards his own wife, eventually banging her head against the walls. After she is down, he turns his attention to us. Getting attention from Skinner wasn’t always good, it was really bad, but this time it’s worse than his usual ways. He’s brutally punching and kicking his own men and women down, and would lunge into his own members the same way he lunged at his wife, and he acts like he’s protecting himself, from what? I come in to stop him, but a few other cadet members step in to restrain him and put him down for good. Others look on in terror that despite the training they receive, their fear outweighed their bravery and call the police to take him in. Some time on that same day, the police arrive to take him in. No doubt after that he’s going to a mental institution. Generally, everyone, excluding me, was really afraid of him, and this stunt or event, whatever you call it, just makes it worse.

“What the hell was that, he attacked all of us for no reason, I mean, what sort of man would go around hurting his wife and students like that?”

“It’s odd that he lashed out like that; he haven’t acted that way until now. Who do you think he was trying to get?”

“More like who’s stupid enough to make Skinner go mad, everyone here knows what he’s capable of.”

“Yeah, but Skinner would deal with anyone in a crazy manner, whoever made him go mad must be some slick sicko.”

Yeah, this was confusing, I think I should go home and clear my head. This was unfortunate, but last thing I need to my mind on something that isn’t even about me.

 

It is dark outside, and nothing sounds good on a time like this than sleep. It’s when I think about my thoughts. Just hopefully I won’t get that same dream about the family again. I hear a small but firm sound knocking on one of the walls. I get up and look around. Where was that sound coming from? I keep myself awake a few minutes longer, but I hear nothing. I decide to go back to sleep. Bang! Okay, maybe I should’ve stayed up a little bit longer, that bang was loud enough to scare me. I quickly get up and run outside to see what it was. I look around, and nobody was at the front. I decide to check at the side of the club house, and my eyes saw something unexpected.

“General Skinner, what are you doing here?” Skinner have the look of a dead man. He then suddenly makes his way away from the scene. “Wait! Where are you going?” I knew I wasn’t going to leave this whole mess alone. I run past some walls, broken buildings, and climb past fences. As I was running, I felt a push against me. Nobody was there, and I fell to the ground. Was I getting too close to Skinner he pushed me? I look up and I can tell that wasn’t the case. Skinner is trying to get away from something, I bet the answer is right in front of me. What’s facing me right now is a silhouette, only with terrifying veined eyes being visible.

“Who are you?” I ask, but the partial shadow don’t respond. It instead lunge in towards me. I push him off. I throw my best punches, kicks, and grabs. I even throw items at it. Not only does it not seem to miss it, I seem to be throwing it everywhere. The veined eyes stranger show up in different directions, as though it was moving around without detection right in front of me like magic. I feel something sweep my leg off, and lands me right in the ground. I look up to find veined eyes standing above me. I can’t get up, as looking into its eyes keep me down. I fear as I can’t tell if the silhouette is getting bigger and bigger, or getting smaller and smaller, but I can’t tell if it was doing anything. I hear a scream coming through, and the creature disappears. It is following the direction of the sound, and then it hit me. “Skinner!” I immediately get up and run towards the sound of his voice.

I push with the last breath I have to run as fast as I can, only to find blood streaming as I get closer. No! I thought, and then what’s in my sight contradicts my thoughts exactly. Skinner lies helplessly on the floor, as blood streams from his cuts and flow on the ground. I bend down and put my ear against his heart to see if it’s still beating. It was pumping too much, and the rate of the pumps begins to increase by every minute. Skinner opend his mouth, let some uhhs out. What is he trying to say? Best I get close to him to figure it out.

“Office…desk…armada…1974…Marlene…files in 13…James…Vinepine…chair.”

I can’t tell if he was trying to tell me more. The second time I check his heart was the time I knew it stopped. He stop living, and let go of the world and into somewhere else. Office, desk, armada, 1974, Marlene, files in 13, James, Vinepine, and chair. These were his words, but how do they all connect? Was this connected to the veined eyes killer that killed him? He mention two names, Marlene and James, so I guess those two would have to be the killers. One was distracting me while the other goes after Skinner. I did hear his scream when I was facing one of them. There might be another, and it got away along with its partner. Are they an annihilating couple? He also mentioned 1974, could he have significant history with these guys, something that triggered a dramatic turning point? It might lead me to a motive these two supposedly have against Skinner, but where would I even begin? Why am I even thinking of this? This is Skinner I’m talking about, he’s not even my friend. Why am I getting worked up over this, I should be finding my brother’s killer. Then again, I don’t have any more leads to other suspects, only that the ones that I pinpointed have a high possibility of being the murderer, yet all of the results were a mismatch in the end. Even if Skinner wasn’t my friend, I was a part of this whole mess. The shadow saw me, so chances are it’ll come after me. Who knows, maybe it’ll help me uncover my own case, but I’ll be meeting death in the process. Two separate data that fits in one folder altogether.

 

After the events of yesterday, nothing happens. That’s not to say it was never touched on. In fact, it was mentioned in the news just today, but the police don’t even have the time to investigate the said murder as they claim they are working on others. If I’m really honest, the police here don’t really give a s**t about what’s happening here. It’s like they take part in this corruption, live in a fantasy world, or they just don’t care at all. Either way nobody is looking into it. That’s exactly what I need if I’m going to look into the matter myself.

I tip-toe my way into Skinner’s office. Looks like nobody has cleaned up after his break down. Skinner’s office covers up one of his words, now to find out what it has to tell me. I look through everything in his office. I check the ground, under each scrap on the ground. I check the shelves, the trays, suit cases, and folders. Nothing turn up. I check every bit of his room, and as far as I can tell, it’s just one giant space. Maybe it’s just one giant space when you only think outside it. I look around, and found that behind the papers hung on the wall, a door knob shows itself, and it turns out to be a door that leads into another room. There was nothing inside the room, only a desk. I opened the drawers, and I find a book of some sorts. “Armada High 1974-1975.” Wait a minute! Office, desk, Armada, and 1974. I don’t know why, but put those together, and it leads me to a yearbook. If it leads to a yearbook, then maybe I can find something on Marlene or James. Maybe they were enemies of Skinner and their history didn’t go really well and they held a grudge against him ever since. Or maybe they were friends, but something happened and they became bitter enemies. Either way, I want to know what it will tell me. I look inside, and I find a bunch of comments in different forms. I got no time for comments. I check through each page, and eventually got to the graduates page, where a picture of a young Skinner is shown. It’s shocking he would look like this considering how he looks like today. Well, yesterday. I look through the rest of the graduate’s page, and goes on to looking through grades eleven, ten, and nine. I should’ve known James and Marlene were common names, there were more than one result. Looks like the official pages don’t tell me about anything at all. But then again, it’s a yearbook, so comments can sometime speak of personal relationships. I look through the comments, and I find that Skinner had no personal relationships with people by the name of James or Marlene. I read through more, hoping to find something useful, and I got to the last comment, the one written in red marker.

Heey Roggerrr. I think it’s time we teach him a lesson. I can’t believe he would do this to me, and he thinks I’m just going to let him off the hook? No way that’s happening. I’ll make sure to give him something he’ll remember forever. I need your help with this though. Come to my house after our last day, I have a plan. I found something we can use with that black dressing creep Raxton. �"L.W.

When the hell did I get into this mess? Who the hell did I bother? Wait, this is 1974, and Skinner graduated high school from that year. There’s no way I could be directly responsible for any of this, I’m only sixteen after all. And who is this L.W person? What kind of issue does this person has with “Raxton”? I feel it’s talking about me, but it could be someone else entirely. I was about to put this book down, but then I look around and catch veined eyes standing on top of me. It lung in for me after one glance at it, but I struggle to get it away from me only to realise it’s not there anymore. What was that I just went through? It never went out the door, never crashed through any walls, and the room was left untouched. It just left like it was never here in the first place. It’s after me, I know it. Skinner was already dead, and it was there right above me just now. It’s going to come for me, it’ll claim me soon unless I stop it from doing so. I take a picture of the comment and I look through the pages again, and written down all the names that could’ve been associated with L.W. One of them would be associated with Skinner, and that said person might tell me more of what I need to know about Marlene and James. I folded the slip with the written names and put it in my jacket pocket, put the yearbook back and walked out of his office. If those are all the clues I need from this place, then hopefully I won’t need to come here again.

Author's Note

Medium: The Origins finds a young man setting out to avenge the death of a beloved family member and to recover forgotten memories. He shuns himself from having a normal social life for the sake of vengeance. Just when he thought he ran out of leads, he was involved in an incident which leads him to start a new case. This particular investigation changes him greatly while he is being hunted by an unknown assailant whose victims never got to see before they met their doom.

Note: This is my first book and I plan to write more. Criticism, praise, or any feedback of some sorts are welcome.
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