The Pursuit of Siren Head

Chapter 1 - The Disappearance of Joseph

Joseph sat in his chair, a crooked mess with scratches on the side and brown filthy marks appearing almost everywhere. Looking at the clock above his cheap television he saw the time: 9:00 pm. He slowly got up, poured himself a bottle of cheap scotch he bought from the gas station (about fifteen minutes from where he lived) and began to drink what little remained. 

Joseph was slightly unnerved by the fact that he managed to finish the bottle in less than two weeks' time and he made a brief promise to himself that things would change. He walked to the painting near the doorway and lifted it from its frame (you couldn't trust anybody here even if you were away from civilization) and began to look at the small bundles of cash which he had slowly collected over the years. Perhaps a few more months and he could leave this shit hole. 

Grabbing his umbrella off the muddy floor he opened the door and left to go to work.

Joseph lived in a very remote area where the weeds had, over years of neglect began to grow and protrude from the ground. He walked over them not flinching at the spider which had briefly jumped on his leg and just as quickly jumped off. 

When Joseph first moved here, in this shabby, grotesque cottage with mossy stonewalls and dusty windows he wasn't just scared of the woods, he was completely and utterly terrified of them. Upon first walking through them he had run through the woods without looking back as branches and other leaves rushed at his face. 

When he reached his home Joseph's hand began shaking as it tried to steady itself, the key finally reaching the door after what seemed like a minute of struggling. He went inside, closed the door and went to bed without turning on the light because whatever was out there he, she or it would most certainly notice the light protruding out of his house. 

After a while, however, it didn't seem so bad he had begun to almost welcome the darkness but still learned to respect it. He finally reached the end of a 15-minute trail and walked through the cobblestone streets containing a small group of houses and a few lamps by the road here and there.

 After a while, he saw the factory in which he worked and unlocked the gate which surrounded the corrugated and rusty building. 

Joseph's boss trusted him completely with always finishing the night's job, just a few routine checks here and there. His boss' factory created cereal which sounds nice enough but is quite a hazardous job. Hot, glistening goop is always stirring inside the factory and before the smell of cereal comes the smell of wheat, grease and steam. Joseph was responsible for doing repairs, checking the machinery and every now and then cleaning the floors with a mop. 

He opened the door to a small room past the conveyor belts near the bottom of the factory and unlocked it. He got out his toolbox, notepad and pen before walking around the factory making sure the machines were working properly as they were supposed to. It was quiet in here and that was what Joseph wanted: quietness. 

After about 3 hours (just after midnight) a shadow fell across the factory. Joseph would have thought it was a cloud but the movement was too brief and too quick. The only windows in the factory were the windows way up high above the ground. Maybe it was a bird or a tree or- there it was again a sudden movement, a shadow on the ground quickly appearing and disappearing. 

Joseph had a better look at the shadow this time and realized it was too big to be a bird and too fast to be a tree. Could it perhaps have been a... no certainly not, it couldn't have been. Joseph looked up at the big large windows near the top of the factory and reassured himself. "Couldn't have been." Yet despite this small comment he began to sweat. For a brief moment, he could feel his pores opening for a brief 5 seconds before closing again, preventing any sweat from coming out. His father had always told him: "There are no such things as the supernatural, everything can be explained through science." He nodded slightly at this fact, reassuring himself only slightly more than he had done before.