Dark Alley

Chapter 36

     "Can you teach me how to play this?" I asked Mrs. Dekker, as I am holding a black cassette with my two fingers in my left hand, it was the one that was labelled 'wedding day'. She came back to see if I'm okay, she gasped when she saw me in her room, I smiled at her, she gave me back a wide grin as she takes the cassette out from my palm and crouched near a small television.

     "Sure," she says, she inserted the tape on a rectangular shaped object, "first, you'll just have to place it inside the player." The player seemed to suck in the tape, and then Mrs. Dekker took a smaller rectangular object with lots of colorful buttons on them. "Next is that you press this button," she says while pointing the button in the middle, "to play."

     "That's it?" I ask.

     "Yes that's it," she says. The video kept going on as an awkward silence followed. Mrs. Dekker either stares at the screen or at me who was looking at her, "you still want to see that?"

     "Yup," I lied, "I think I just want to be alone here again."

     "Are you sure?"

     "I am certain."

     Mrs. Dekker left, fully closing thr door close. After a minute, I exerted time to eject the cassette out of the play. When I finally did, and hopefully it wasn't destroyed, I returned the cassette on its case and carefully slid it back on the shelf. I quickly took the cassette with the red case in the corner. The one labelled with the name 'Tracy Harrison' caught my curiosity. I placed the tape inside the player and played the video.

     It was dark.

    Then I saw a tall, masculine, Baber cut haired man dragging a girl with a long black hair in her fitting outfit.

     They were getting closer to where the camera is. My stomach suddenly felt like it was punched when I realized the guy and the girl were Dean and Tracy.

     I can hear their giggles, Tracy's shadowy, real smile responding to Dean's fake smile. Dean starts to strip Tracy's blouse and quickly throws it on the ground. Tracy who seemed to feel electrified unbuttons Dean's pants.

     "I love you," Tracy says to Dean, she then kissed him in his cheeks.

Her lips slide into his neck curve.

     I gulped. What am I seeing? Why does Tracy look different?

That isn't Tracy.

That isn't Tracy.

That isn't ...It's her and I feel like I was stabbed. I knew what this video is. I suddenly realized it was the one she mostly regrets.

     I should not see it. I closed my eyes and covered my ears. My heart pumps like blood dripping as it shivers down my spine.

Turn it off.

     I am shaking.

     "Foster!" I hear someone calling my name, "what are you doing?" It was Mrs. Dekker; she reaches for the remote and pressed a button. I knew the video ended when I stopped hearing things.

     "It was you," I say. My eyes are wet as I stare at her furiously, "you did that."

    "I have no regrets Foster," she says, "ever since; I have already hated Calvin-"

     "Why do you hate him so much?" I ask her, inside of me don't want to ask her anymore, but she wasn't the one trapped in the alley for years, she wasn't the one who has to conquer unexpected fears. "Why do you have to involve Tracy here?"

     "Because he took you away from us and ruining his life is the most little way of revenge," she says, "dad came back for you, we came back for you. He knew my mom would leave if he does, and he did." Mrs. Dekker's eyes were in tears as she catches air when she paused, "ten years after he left you, dad came back to Calvin and begged him to bring you back. Instead of settling things, I saw with my two eyes Foster, Calvin's father, holding a gun and triggered the bullet on my father's head. While your precious Calvin stood next to his father, he didn't do anything."

     "Our father almost died Foster," she says, "father might be breathing but he's not alive anymore, and it was Calvin's fault."

     "I'm sorry," I say, "I could never imagine Calvin doing it."

     "Foster he has to die," She says. I froze, I look at her strewed eyes, her smudged eye liner spread unto her cheeks and her hair seemed to curl out everywhere. O realized that she wasn't the usual Mrs. Dekker I have known, it was the worse.

     "I have to go," I say, shaking, terrified. I quickly walked out of her room but I can still hear her murmuring things.

     "And what, you're going to tell. Calvin about what you saw today?" She says, it was in the tone of threatening, "Don’t you think you are being too trusty?"

     "You can't trust anybody Foster. I admit not even me, dad, or your Tracy, most especially Calvin!" She says, "it's an experiment, you are the experiment. Calvin can kill people in one snap of his hand, his father can do that, and he can do that. I see no difference in them. Don't you see? They've been playing you Foster."