Game of Sinners

Chapter Eight - One Punch

"We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding."
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

Taylors P.O.V:

Five days.

It's been five long days since Alex and Frank disappeared.

I had long since grown bored of the itchy blue chairs of the waiting area, all of which provided their occupants with a mind numbing back ache if you sat in them for more than a few hours.

The pain, however, didn't bother me anymore. It was the only thing keeping me awake at this point.

All the mulling voices and crackling radio bulletins merged into one entangled mess of white noise the longer I was subjected to the drone of station. I didn't even raise my head if there was an angry shout from a suspect being led through the ever revolving doors.

There was no point.

The only sound that preoccupied my mind was the annoying tick of the cheap plastic clock hanging on the wall next to my head.

Tick, Tick, Tick.

My leg bounced rapidly to try and relieve the mounting energy building up inside me but it was no use.

Too many people went by, each shuffling nervously in their chairs before being called to the reception desk to be given news about their loved ones behind bars. At first I pitied them, but now I longed to be in their position.

Tick, Tick, Tick.

I hated everything about this. The robotic motions. The heavy foreboding feeling. The rehearsed sympathy.

All of this combined with the fact that no one was doing anything about Alex's disappearance was enough to turn my knuckles white with emotion.

Tick, Tick, Tick.

I remember calling her for the first time, for the first time after we kissed. My hangover was terrible. I had a headache that was racking up a storm in my head like there was no tomorrow. But the phone rang and rang like a booming foghorn in my ears so I quit after the first try, unable to withstand the noise for any longer.

I thought she was just busy, I thought she was okay. But then the day went by and another day went by and still I heard nothing from her.

Tick, Tick, Tick.

At first, I assumed she have just gotten cold feet at what was happening between us - that Alex didn't want to explain how the kiss was all a mistake; that she was just caught in the moment and now her own embarrassment led her to avoid me at all costs.

That night my mind whirled 100mph, making any hope of sleep impossible. This was just the start of the many long nights that denied me a break from this never ending nightmare.

On the third day, I drove to her house.

I could see the charred remains of it in my mind even now. Nothing was left. The horses that were normally left in the barn were now strewn across the fields; each corpse covered with a blanket of black flies with the sun baking their exposed organs in its own rotting oven.

Something had savaged them so gruesomely that I was nearly sick just by the smell. I found Melody's reigns on a pile of bones and skin some distance from the yard.

But still I looked for Alex and Frank.

My voice had grown hoarse from shouting their names by the time the police arrived. They roped off the area, took a statement from my shaking form and looked for any obvious clues for where Alex and Frank had gone.