The Serial Killer Named Time

Prologue

A year has passed, the office that was once filled with hope and dreams appeared as if the life was sucked out of it.  Everything my father owned was tucked away into boxes with the words Dr. Hoffmann inscribed with sharpie across the large and brown cardboard boxes.  By this time, I assumed my father would have returned but he hasn't and he might never return.  The old plastic white blinds were covered with a thick layer of dust, the University was giving this office up to another professor who was going to take the room, a geologist. If my father knew a geologist was taking his room he would be rolling in his grave.  Shut up!  The voice in my mind shouted to me, he's not dead!"

The clocked ticked in the lonely and grey room, I lifted a picture frame and tossed it into the filing box filled with scribblers, notepads, pens, pencils, picture frames and posters.  Deep down inside, I knew that the University will regret this because my father will return someday, he must.  No matter how many times peers, teachers and my mother will tell me that my father is dead, I will continue to believe that he is alive.  He has only been missing for a year, there is still a chance that somewhere in this enormous world that he could be alive.  

I sensed movement in the corner of my eye, I glanced to my right in the room across from my father's office in the hall, I received an intense glare from the boy who I used to talk to, he used to be my closest friend.  I knew him ever since the day him and his father moved here from Yekaterinburg when we were both young children, however he was three years older than me.  He was the boy who lingered in the shadows and once in my dreams.  He used to be my only friend.  "I'm sorry, it's been a year-."  It felt strange glimpsing in his starry grey eyes again, for I haven't in ages.

I cut him off, "I haven't talked to you for a year for a reason."

"Can you please hear me out?"  He asked sincerely.

I replied, "Sorry, that isn't an option."

I reached for a large cardboard box of my father's belongings and raced for elevator to take me downstairs.  I left him at the end of the hall with a million questions storming in his mind, I felt a little guilty but he had hurt me in such a way but then I realized I probably have had hurt him a trillion times more.  He was such a sweet boy, his father, Dr. Ivanov and my father were colleagues and close friends for many years but once my father went missing I ceased talking to the boy.  He later joined the mathletes and I joined the group filled with troublesome friends.  I befriended them once everything went downhill in my life, it was a group where you could smoke and drink your troubles away.  Using an addictive and poisonous vice lead me down a dark path for short amount of time until I reached my senses.

I exited the university and noticed my mother's truck parked in the front of the parking lot.  The gravel crunched beneath my shoes as I scuffed slowly towards the grey truck.  In the sky above a thick shroud of grey hidden the blue sky and the bright summer sun.  I turned and my focus began to concentrate on the gas station across from the university, that's where the students would flock around after school.  Even the high school students would caterwaul around there, it was built in the 1950's and appeared as if it hasn't aged and that it just remained frozen in time.  Dad would take me there, I would order a coke with fries as I would listen to the story of how my grandmother used to work here and how she met grandpa. 

My mother sat with her arms crossed in the truck, I grabbed the filing boxes and shoved them in the back and decided to leave the other boxes remaining in the office upstairs, it was no use going back and grabbing them when I could just return to the University soon, I procrastinated often but this time I can't.  I can't just leave my father's belongings up there.  

The scent of cigarette smoke met my nose, it caused my sinuses to burn and me to feel the urge to cough but somehow brought back memories of ninth grade to my mind.  The smoke lingered above my mother's head like a giant thunder cloud, her lips pursed around the cigarette as she sucked the smoke in and inhaled.  When my father was around, she never smoked but she gave up on him and she found somebody new.  Now we were going to Ted's giant fancy house on the outskirts of town where all of the rich people lived.  We used to be rich but we lived like we were in the lower middle class.  Having everything dirt-cheap but I was different I couldn't stand wearing Walmart, I used to pester dad into buying me name brand clothing.  What a waste of time, the people at school would still have the same attitude about me no matter how I was dressed.