It was another musky day in South Carolina. I had just exited the coal mines. My hands were dry and battered from the dust and sweat. My lungs burned and my eyes were on fire. Nine hours. Nine whole hours in the mines barely making ends meet. I walked into the break room in the lobby of the reception building, the linoleum floor paired with the dull grey cinderblock walls was mind numbing. There was a small, worn television emitting a consistent hum of static and jumbled sound from what I could make out was the evening news.
“TSCHHHHH- Three Missing –TSCHHHH- No –TSCHHHHHH- Suspects.”
I always hated the news. People with the power of reporting information that people will believe constantly embellishing stories for personal gain and reporting garbage that people take as if it was advice given to them by their grandfather on his deathbed. The door creaked open and in walked a tall and well dressed man. He certainly didn’t work here; I could tell by the way he carried himself. He seemed as if he felt that he was better than everyone here, including me.
“Are you Chester Littlefield?” He asked me. His accent was different, maybe he was from the north.
“Yes”
“I need you to come with me” He seemed stern and certain.
“And why is that?”
“We need to ask you a few questions about a missing person’s case”
“Anything that gets me out of this place” I replied with a grin.
Together, we got up and left the break room and walked outside, the air was like hot soup it was so humid. The sun was setting in a bragging display of pinks and orange. The man walked towards the parking lot where sat an unmarked police car.
“Get in.” He demanded.

We were driving for what seemed like 10 minutes when I finally asked,
“Where are we going exactly?”
But the man didn’t respond. Instead he kept his gaze ahead and kept driving. He drove fast, I mean really fast. It seemed odd to me that a cop would do that, what a hypocrite. Cops were always like that, do what they tell you and they do as they please. Not giving a damn about justice but like everyone else in this world, personal gain. We arrived at a small red-brick building that was sandwiched between two warehouses which made me assume we were on the east side of town, near the ocean. On the face of the building there was the outline of a collection of letters that read Jim’s Supplies The man grabbed my arm and pulled me in the building. The inside of the building was dimly lit, only one light bulb in the middle of the dark room. On the walls there were stainless steel bookshelves with an array of cardboard boxes. On the far wall, there was a small television that was left on. I approached one of the shelves and it smelled horrible, like something died in here. I peeked inside one of the boxes and it was full of knives. Most of them were steel but one was crimson, it was covered in blood. The knife was still wet, whatever happened with this knife was recent. The television spat out.
                “Three missing this week in Folly beach, so far there are no suspects. Here to comment on the case is Officer Follman of the FBPD.”
The television then cut to a tall well dressed man. It was him. I turned around and he was right there with a baseball bat, Whap.

I awoke tied to a metal chair, the rugged rope burned when I moved my hands and legs and my head throbbed from where Follman had hit me. He was nowhere to be found, I could see through a crack in the wall that it was daytime. The heat from the sun seemed to cook the whole building and made the whole building smell terrible. The floor was an old concrete, strewn with cracks and dirt. How long was I out? I tried to move the chair by jerking around but it was bolted to the floor. I sighed and leaned my head back and opened my eyes. The ceiling was painted with blood. These wild markings almost glowing in a crimson red, there must have been half of a gallon of blood on that ceiling. Amongst the markings, there was on that seemed to be featured. It was two triangles on top of each other, offset so that the points were not touching. I could tell by the strokes that created this marking, that this was painted by hand. The door creaked open and I screamed.