NaNoWriMo Day 14: 11,569 of 50,000
Soooo I kind of had to push the stakes higher in this chapter. Enjoy!
If you’re reading, please let me know what you think. Sometimes as a writer it feels like you’re talking to an empty room. So, the more voices I hear the more helpful!
To read the previous chapters head HERE!
Chapter Nine
It wasn’t Theo’s alarm that woke him up, but rather the smell of smoke that lingered in the air. At first, Theo was confused because his dream had been about burning toast for breakfast which seemed even more odd considering Theo hated toast. A siren went off in the distance and only got louder prompting Theo to force himself to wake up. Realizing that the smoke alarm was going off in his room he pushed the covers aside and rushed downstairs.
“Ah, help me Theo!” his roomate, the one whose name he couldn’t ever remember, was using a kitchen towel to put out a fire on the stove. What confused Theo further was that there wasn’t a single thing on the stove.
“What the-? How did this happen?” he asked jumping into action by grabbing the hose that detached off the kitchen sink. The fire went out, but the smoke lingered as the lights of the firetruck appeared outside their front door.
“I don’t know. I just went to turn on the burner and flames formed!” his roommate hysterically explained.
Fireman banged on the door and his roommate rushed to let them in. Theo stepped out of the way and was told to exit the building. A crowd had gathered on 61st street which was always a good time. Nothing really exciting had happened since he moved here so it was quite coincidental that the first exciting thing to take place involved him.
“Hey, everything okay?” It was Alice wrapped in a blanket standing amongst other neighbors that had gathered.
“Yeah, my roommate burnt something while attempting to cook.”
“Oh, good. That’s a lot of smoke,” Alice observed as the thick grey clouds of smoke swirled out the front door.
“Yeah, and now it’s-” Theo paused because as he was perusing the crowd of onlookers he noticed a familiar one nearby. The white shirt was unremarkable on its own, but the beard had grown since the last time Theo had seen Stanley. Theo looked at the man who was staring at the crowd surrounding his townhome. No knife in hand, but he was back in the neighborhood which meant that according to the timeline, if Theo was correct, the newspaper would announce another disappearance soon.
“Alright folks let’s clear out please,” a fireman announced as a police officer was nearby taking a statement from his roommate.
“I should probably help,” Theo said to Alice walking back toward his front door before allowing Alice a chance to say anything.
It took several hours for the fireman to clear out and when they left the smell of smoke encompassed every single part of the townhome. Theo opened as many windows as he could and decided to take his work for the day and head down to the coffee shop. He wasn’t due on a conference call for some time, but decided that the last place he wanted to spend relaxing was in the smoke-filled townhome he was currently leaving. Plus, Theo wanted to get to the coffee shop and write down his most recent sighting of Stanley.
As he walked in he noticed someone was missing from the staff bustling around up front. Ophelia was nowhere in sight which normally wouldn’t alarm Theo, but considering the two were still dealing with some tension. Theo decided to text her once he had written in his Stanley journal. The journal Theo pulled out was growing ever more worn and weary from it constantly being pulled out of Theo’s pocket or bent while it stayed hidden. Theo realized as he wrote in his new notes that it was maybe time to consider buying a new one, but that thought stopped him. How far would Theo go with this? Could he, logically speaking, continue obsessing over this and not alarm anyone in his life?
Theo couldn’t think anymore about it because the alert on his computer told him the conference he was due to lead was about to begin. So, Theo sat his journal aside and reminded himself of what he was supposed to be talking about in this conference. It wasn’t easy staying focused and once the conference call ended his boss emailed him with both a warning and an inquiry into his well-being. Theo tried to play it off as him maybe coming down with a cold, but he knew his boss was smarter than that.
Normally Theo would’ve tried to explain himself more, but an alert appeared on his phone for another missing person. After the homeless woman disappeared Theo decided his best way to keep an eye on things was to set a Google Alert for missing persons in the greater Seattle area. With the recent presence of Stanley Theo knew this could be important.
Woman, 29, goes missing in third bizarre disappearance in Ballard
Even The Seattle Times recognized that what was going on was bizarre. As Theo read the article he discovered this woman worked at the coffee shop across the street from Ballardite. As he read that chilling line he looked up from his window seat and watched patrons come in and out of the coffee shop. It was a curious thing to see the business still operating despite the news of one of its staff members disappearing.
Theo continued reading the article, but there wasn’t any more information in it than the previous two. It had now been three months since Tiffany disappeared and almost a month since the unnamed homeless woman. Theo sighed and put his phone away needing a break from working and thinking so he packed his stuff up and headed outside just needing to go for a walk. Theo was set on walking a few blocks north, but the green bikes that were dotting every street corner in Seattle these days caught his eye.
So, after a lot of standing around on his phone figuring out how to unlock the bike he was on it and heading north. As he rode, with no intended destination, he thought about all of the reasons that Stanley was currently proving to be a prime suspect. It was the mysteriousness of the van the man lived in nor the use of the knife in the sidewalks. What bothered Theo the most was his sporadic appearances in what he had considered to be Stanley’s home base of Ballard. The thought soon entered Theo’s mind that when Stanley was gone, and his van nowhere in sight, he would be stashing away all of these women that were disappearing.
Turning a corner onto Wallingford Avenue Theo almost fell off his bike. Right before him was a white van that looked exactly like the one Stanley inhabited except this time it wasn’t parked, it was moving. The van continued north until a red light brought it to a halt near a high school. Theo stopped on the sidewalk and inched closer and closer to the van wanting to get a glimpse of the driver to be sure of his suspicion. At that moment the sun decided to make an appearance producing a glare on the passenger side window of the van, but when a passing cloud moved in front of the sun the image through the window was clear: it was indeed Theo’s Stanley.
The light turned green and with it Theo followed alongside the van even veering on the road to keep up. As the van signaled a right turn on 92nd Street the last thing Theo remembered was reading a bumper sticker on the white van that read Save the Orcas. A loud bang rang in Theo’s ears as he realized his bike was tipping him over onto the busy street next to him.
Follow along with me this month at Jenna Pratt!
