House of Cards

My hands shake, my teeth dig into my bottom lip, and my arms strain as I try and open the (very) heavy lid on the chest. The dark wooden top is massive, my thin gangly body struggling to raise it. I finally lift it so that it’s leaning up against the wall, and then peer into the deep cavernous box.

The chest is full to the brim with photographs. I swear there must be thousands of them. On top of that, the chest is huge. It seems as though a huge crevice stands before me, full with a rainbow of colors. I reach forward, carefully removing the first picture that I come in contact with. It’s a Polaroid (in fact, all of them are) much like the ones in my shoebox at home. I bring the photograph closer to my face, to get a better look at it.

And I drop it immediately as if it were on fire.

Printed on the shiny paper is the most disturbing image I’ve ever seen. It was taken in this very room, the workbench pulled into the middle of the floor. Upon the table is a woman, her long blond hair caked in red. She’s completely naked, her skin paler than I thought possible. Her eyes are open, but cloudy and lifeless and her mouth falls open in a silent scream, her lips white and almost completely colorless. But the horrible part is that where her arms should connect to her torso, her head should connect to her shoulders, and her thighs should connect to her hips there isn’t any tissue. Her limbs and head are completely severed from her body, blood gushing from the fleshy red wounds and spilling off the wooden table and onto the floor. Her pale skin is painted in it, almost like a work of art, as if someone had dipped their hands in the blood and rubbed it across her snowy white stomach.

I squeak in horror, letting the photograph fall from my fingers and land in the sea of its companions. And they really are companions. I lean in to gaze upon the rest of the photos and every single one depicts an image of gore. All of them. There isn’t a single picture that doesn’t contain blood, guts, or severed limbs.

I guess it’s a possibility that they could be faked, but they look pretty damn real to me.

Besides who would leave me a trunk full of faked photographs? Then again, why would someone leave me a trunk full of real dead people photographs?

I stare at the trunk, realizing that these pictures were most likely proof of murder. Someone had given me a key to a trunk full of murder evidence. I had two options. Either call my dad and turn the photographs in (and risk a loose serial killer murdering the guy who turned him in for revenge) or continue with my search for clues (and still risk being killed by a serial killer just for knowing about the photographs). I suddenly wish a sticky note hadn’t appeared on my window, I hadn’t found this basement, I hadn’t gotten that key, and I hadn’t opened the chest. Now would be a good time for someone to invent the time machine.

Unlucky for me, my life isn’t a science fiction novel and I don’t happen to know any Doc Browns either. So I take a deep breath and decide to continue to look at the pictures. I pick up a few, looking at them closely. They look like something straight out of a crappy horror movie and I’m surprised I can stomach looking at them. Sure, I can handle watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Night of Living Dead, and all of the Saw movies, but real murder, even if it’s just photographs, is a different story.

As I dig through the photos I find a red square shaped box with the word Skittles written across the front in big white letters. I frown, wondering how a box of candy ended up in a trunk filled with a serial killer’s Polaroids. Going to open the box, I find that the originally sealed end has been taped shut with a sliver of duct tape.

Y’know how, on Halloween, your parents tell you not to eat already opened candy? Well I decide to blatantly ignore that rule and open the candy box anyway. But instead of finding Skittles laced with coral snake venom, I find, surprise, surprise, a blue sticky note.

I almost don’t want to read the note. Last time I read a sticky note I got sent to a basement where people got murdered. That’s right, I’m standing in a room where people died because I decided that it would be a good idea to follow the directions on a sticky note. Who knows what could happen this time. I could find an actual dead body. I could run into a serial killer. I could end up getting abducted by aliens! Well, that was a long shot but when a person who shot himself in the head starts to get his memory back, finds out he was kidnapped by a miniature smartass, and then opens a chest full of photographs that should be on L&O all in one day, he’s gonna believe in the impossible.

My curiosity eventually gets the best of me, and I decide to read the sticky note.

22 Carolyn Rd Belleville New Jersey
Follow the rainbow.
Directions in the mailbox up front.

I don’t know what I wanted to read off of the note, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t another goddamn address.

I huff to myself, wanting to rip the note to shreds and walk out. But the allure of finding out what happens next in my story keeps me from doing exactly that. I have no idea if and when I’m ever going to get another chance to figure out what happened to me. Sure I might be able to persuade and/or bribe Mikey into telling me, but what about all the stuff that Mikey didn’t know? What about the stuff that I did on my own?

Doesn’t matter how much this riddle stuff is pissing me off. I have to keep going.

I shut the chest, lock it (just in case), and make my way out of the basement, happy to leave as fast as possible. It’s too much. Too many people died in there, too much blood. The images in the box were one thing, but actually being in the very room where it all went down… no. Just no.

I practically run out of the basement, my feet pounding the steps as I dash up them. I take a deep breath when I get outside, relishing in the fresh air. It’s chilly, but I’d rather be cold than in the basement.

I make my way around the house to the front, crossing through the overgrown yard and walking up to the mailbox. The metal is rusted and crooked on the wooden pole it stands upon. I pull it open, the hinges squealing. Peering inside I find an ominous white envelope. I pull it out, the wind ruffling the paper in my hands as I open it. Inside is another lined piece of paper with simple directions on it.

I follow them down the street.

The houses begin to get crummier and crummier the closer I get. I find Carolyn Rd in down town, the middle of the projects. All of the houses are old and deteriorating, and sort of disgusting actually. Trash litters the sidewalk, fences are rusted, cars sit on the street without gas, simply skeletons deteriorating on the curbside. The polluted Jersey air seems to get thicker here and shady things are going on at the street corners, prostitutes waiting for their next job, and men dressed in jackets with deep hoods that shadow their faces and make me think of criminals. I feel almost unwelcomed, walking down the street in my Calvin Klein leather jacket and my 80 dollar American Eagle skinnies. Someone’s going to jump me, and I know it. So I slouch down into my jacket, using it sort of as a shield of invisibility. Maybe if I walk real low and unnoticeable, I could sneak my way past the drug dealers and the mafia members.

Luckily I narrowly escape being pulverized by some hood who thinks I’m on the wrong side of the street or getting caught in a gang shooting. The house labeled 22 isn’t much different than its neighbors. It’s a duplex; two stories high, with sickly mint green siding. Several of the windows are broken and the lawn looks as if it hasn’t been mowed in ages. I step forward on the broken, cracking walkway, and head up to the house, climbing the rickety stairs and coming up to the door. I ring the doorbell, and slouch, nervously looking around for any loose serial killers or drunk guys with guns.

The door stays shut for about half a minute and I ring again.

Another minute. No one answers.

I sigh, figuring the doorbell’s broken, and slam my fist a couple of times against the white painted door.

“Hey Mister.”

I spin.

I spot a little girl poking her head out through the crack in the door of the left side of the Duplex. Her hair is long and dark, put into braids, and she stares at me with big wide eyes. “Mister, there ain’t no one livin’ there no more.”

I stare at her funny. “Huh?”

“Why ya knockin’ on a door with no one behind it?” <i>She</i> stares at <i>me</i> funny.

“No one lives here?” I ask, looking up at the gold plated numbers. 22. And I was pretty sure this was Carolyn Rd, but I guess I could be wrong.

“Nope. Moved out a while back.” She opens the door wider, leaning on the frame. I can sort of see into her house, a living room with an old looking couch and a small T.V. sitting on a table, but the room is pretty dark so I don’t get much else.

“This is Carolyn Road, right? I guess I might be in the wrong place.” I look around again, trying to find a street sign somewhere.

“Yup, it’s Carolyn Road alright. Ain’t it a fine place to live?” She snorts. “What’s a fancy lookin’ fella like you doin’ in a trash neighborhood like this?”

I stare at her pulling a blank. What was I supposed to tell her? That I was looking for a serial killer who left me a trunk full of murder evidence and some ice cream? “I uh… I’m looking for somebody.”

“Well whoever it is, you ain’t gonna find ‘em here.” She shrugs.

I stare at the unopened door, huffing. Who leads someone to a house that’s abandoned? Then again I was just at an abandoned house. I really could break in if I wanted to. But this little girl. She’s starting to get sort of annoying. I turn toward her. “Look kid, don’t you have some dolls or something to go play with?”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend to screw?” She purses her lips, placing her hands on her hips.

Touché.

I roll my eyes. “Just go away.”

“Mister, this is my house. You can’t tell me to go away.”

“Could you please just leave me alone then?”

“Look,” She sighs, stepping out of the doorway and closing the white wood behind her. “If you’re gonna break in to a murderers house, you’ve got to do it right-”

My heart pretty much stops in my chest and I barely hear the next part of her speech about her not wanting the cops to come to her house or something. When she finishes talking she pulls a bobby pin from her dark hair and jams it into the lock of the unopened door.

“Murderer’s house?” I manage to say. My words are barley a whisper and I end up having to repeat myself.

“Oh yeah,” She says, her fingers twisting and turning as she fiddles with the hair pin. “You didn’t hear about that? The kid who lived here- I didn’t know him good or nothing but I’d seen him leave the house before. Real quiet and angry lookin’. He turned out to be some big serial killer. It was all over the news… Aha!” The doorknob clicks and then turns. The girl steps back from the door and smiles, as if she hadn’t just been talking about a serial killer.

So I was about to walk into a murderers house, most likely the one who had kidnapped me. Most likely the one who took all those photographs, killed all of those people. Does the person who’s sending me these notes want me to get killed?

I’m starting to think following these directions was another bad idea.

I pretty much just stare at her dumbfounded for a moment. “Uhhhh… Thank you… what was your name-“

“Rebecca.”

“Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca.”

“No problem. But hey mister, before you go, I wanted to know. Have we met before?”

“I… I don’t think so, no.” This would be a really good time to have my memory. Maybe I had met her before. Maybe she was someone important.

“Huh. I dunno, I feel like I’ve seen you before. Y’know… you look an awful lot like that guy, what was his name… Gerarld? Bernard?”

What.

“Gerard?” I bite my lip.

“Yeah something like that. Y’know, the kid who got held hostage.”

What?!

“Hostage?”

“Yeah. The murder kid who lived here held a guy hostage, looked a lot like yo-“

A loud and fairly inconvenient voice coming from inside Rebecca’s house cuts her off. “Becca! Rebecca Jane, get your little butt back inside here and clean this up!”

“Oh, bye Mister. It was nice meetin’ ya!” She smiles sheepishly, and moves toward the door.

“Wait, Rebecca! One more question!”

“Hm?”

“What was this Gerard kid’s last name, do you remember?” Gerard isn’t a very common name, but you never know. There may have been a second Gerard who looked just like me and got held hostage by a murderer too.

“Uhhhh… It was short, I remember that. W something. West? Wuh… wuh wuh wuh. I dunno, I can’t remember.”

“Was it… was it Way, by any chance?” I swallow.

She snaps her fingers. “That’s it! Yeah, Gerard Way. Poor kid, I heard he went into some sort of depression and shot himself.” She shrugs, waves, and goes back inside shouting a short “Bye mister!” as she shuts the door.