Waking up causes a great deal pain and physical effort after an almost sleepless night. Gillean Cullen opened his eyes and turned around to take his phone to check the time. He somehow woke up 15 minutes before his alarm was supposed to actually go off. Working as a criminologist in a humongous and sometimes intimidating city Detroit does make him feel overwhelmed and outraged by people’s unjustifiable behavior. Looking out in the window, he spotted a still drowsy street. The sunrise had only began.
“Pull yourself together!”, said the man to himself.
Getting out of the car on the police station parking lot ,he saw someone running towards him. It was hard to distinguish who it was in the early morning semi-darkness. The criminologist zoomed out and squinted at the horizon, when this person tapped his shoulder. It was their Head Detective, Gwendoline Gull. She looked weirdly exalted.
Detective Gwendoline Gull, a whirlwind of cheerful energy and razor-sharp focus, her bobbed hair and tattoos hinting at a spirit that belied her youthful appearance. She’s achieved a lot for her quite young age and now runs their department.
“I thought you might have got lost somewhere already…”,she said panting from her run.
“You look a bit suspicious. What’s happened?”
“You’ve got a new colleague!”, Gwen said ,smiling at him.
“Well, that’s not as bad as I anticipated it to be”.
“He’s an intern. He will be a detective. Your task is to help him get used to the rhythm of our work and integrate in our community”.
“I’m sorry, but how old is he?”
“You’ll find out directly from him”. The girl started walking and gestured for the man to follow her.
And so they went. The two people had walked past five corridors until they got to their destination. And here he was, Brandon McCauley, a new member of their community and the victim of existential exhaustion and a weird powerlessness to impact the dystopia. He was a handsome young man, who looked too fragile to work with and handle the crime. The lad had the curtain bangs haircut ,his hair was ash-black, and his pure green eyes that resembled a spring forest made a great contrast with all his facial features. He is particularly slim, with no noticeable muscles. The new colleague also wears round glasses in a dainty black rim.
“Hello Brandon”, greeted Detective Gull.
“Hello!”, he said in an uneasy voice.
“It’s your new colleague. You’ll probably see him more frequently than other people from our squad because he is your supervisor”.
The two men greeted each other as all men typically do-shook their hands.
“Get acquainted with each other! Gotta go already! Duty’s calling!” and the young agile girl rushed into the corridor.
“You’re Brandon. Right?”
“Yes. Brandon McCauley .And what’s your name?”
“Ah, sorry for being incognito for so long. I’m Gillean Cullen. I’m your supervisor and as Gwendoline has probably told you, I occupy the position of the main criminologist here”.
“How long have you been working here?”,asked the newbie with a pure interest.
“For fifteen years”.
“Can you show me around the office?
“Sure. My desk is here” ,he pointed to a desk made from the maple wood. It was heaped under gigantic piles of different papers. “The empty one near the door will be yours”.
“Would you like a tour?” Gillean Cullen asked, seeing the newbie looking around anxiously.
The colleagues went down the hall and passed through the pastry-smelling canteen ,looked at the rooms of other workers. Gillean showed Brandon where the toilet is and showed a way to Gwen’s office if he needs her sometime. They went back to their room and Cullen started filling in some papers about the last case he had-a plain robbery followed by an instant murder of the victim.
The man sighed and put his hands on the temples. Gillean had a some kind of nap, he literally nodded off at his desk. He woke up because of the phone ringing right under his ear. It was the Detective Gwendoline Gull.
Gillean groaned, looked and the phone screen with his eyes halfway-closed and accepted the call .He saw that it had been four hours since they last saw each other.
“There’s a new case for you to solve. It’s so bloodcurdling, I start shaking every time my memory recaptures what I was told on the phone-call. It’s a murder. It happened three hours ago. One innocent middle-aged woman was assaulted”.
“What’s the address?”, said Gillean in a muffled and a bit confused voice.
“Riverside Avenue 36”.
“No wonder it happened there. Although Detroit is frightening as a whole sometimes because of it’s crime, this place is notorious for the worst things to ever occur”.
“Take Brandon with you and head to the crime scene. If something happens-I’m always there to help. Good luck to the new worker!”
“Keep your fingers crossed for us!” said the two men in unison and Cullen hung up.
“I didn’t expect my first case to solve in tandem with you will be today”, said Brandon and shrugged his shoulders showing a bit of perplexity.
“Let’s start then, kid. You ready?”. Gillean yawned and stretched his arms. They left the office and got into the car.
It’s dark even at noon. Storm clouds lingered ominously. Wind blowing violently, most people stayed inside, peering out just occasionally. The crows are flying in the sky and cawing-a bad omen in the superstitious American society. The two men were in a stony silence, when the older person suddenly swore.
“What the heck is happening?”, he yelled and pulled over . Mr. Cullen opened the car door and went to check the weird thing. He accidentally ran over a cat. It was black. Superstitions again, huh. But he wasn’t the kind of person to believe in such things. And all in all, it wasn’t Friday the 13th for such things to be paid attention to. He noticed them when this day was on the calendar. It sort of gave some extra amount of adrenaline to pump inside him.
“What’s going on?”, asked his tense colleague who was still waiting in the car.
“Nothing special, I just ran over a cat”. Gillean collected the tiny feeble body from the road and went to lay it under a magnificent old oak tree. It’s burgundy blood soaked his hands and partially sleeves. The man felt a deep pity for the inattentive furry creature.
“Really sorry, fluffy little dude. Hope someone will be able to give you a proper burial”. He gently laid it on the wet post-rain grass and went to the car. Gillean opened the trunk and took out a trash bag to put his blood-soaked jacket in it and also a bottle of water to wash his hands. After all of the procedures, the man got back into the car. It seemed as though McCauley was afraid of him.
“Cursed already. A great start of work”, Brandon muttered to himself.
They looked at each other and the criminologist got back to driving again as if he didn't see an animal corpse a minute ago. This is a direct and noticeable consequence of operating with crime more often than having casual social interactions with others while ,for instance, drinking coffee. The navigator showed that they needed to cross the bridge. They have been driving for more than an hour.
“How long is it left to get there?”. Brandon’s cheeks got red because of an unknown embarrassment.
“Forty minutes or so. Sorry, but how old are you?”
“Twenty-seven. People are always amazed because I look much younger than I actually am. And nobody believes that I work in police until I somehow prove it to them. I’m just not so muscular as all my fellow detectives, policemen and criminologists are”.
“Never mind. I have a similar situation-people are invariably afraid of the way I look at them. I bet you are ,or at least were, too. They think that I’m brute, nefarious or whatever. They lose this kind of opinion when they get to know me closer though!”
“We are very much alike”.
It was already getting dark when the co-workers reached their destination. It was a mammoth mansion. The terrifying dark ambience and the absence of light in the house made everything surrounding the men one hundred percent more eerie. They both had a foreboding of something destructive looming them with every single passing second. After breathing some fresh air, Gillean approached the porch .He pulled the doorknob, and the weirdest thing is that they needed no elbow grease to get in there. It was as though everything was pre-arranged long before their visit to this ominous place.
“Stop thinking this way, you idiot!” Gillean’s mind warned him.
“Come on in?”
“Of course. I just wanted to come up with a some kind of plan”, stammered his young colleague.
“No need to do so. We’ll play it by ear”.
Eventually, the two armed men went inside. There was such a stale smell in the building they could barely breathe. They saw cockroaches and rats racing on the halfway-rotten wooden floor. Brandon took out a flashlight from his backpack and clutched a BB gun in his hand. His companion didn’t seem so taken by surprise though. There were dozens of dusty shelves and cupboards, each of which contained even more whacky items than the previous one. There were things like different switch-blade knives ,some weird iridescent pills, fluids in flasks ,a fake skeleton and some human body schemes, of the human brain in particular. The compatriots also stumbled upon a lot of wires, electrodes and other gear to connect to the head. The lab’s owner even kept human organs and body parts immersed in formaldehyde.
“No wonder if this person had their own crematorium here”.
“It could possibly be”, agreed Gillean with his tense colleague.
Further as they went, the two men spotted more and more different things. They came across some surgical equipment, neurobiology books and a diary.
“Look at this! It’s the criminal’s diary! Or at least the title on it says so”’, hollered Cullen with a bizarre thrill that is not particularly typical of him.
“Let’s have a look”. Brandon seemed to be more ready and concentrated as the adrenaline kicked in.
Gillean started reading: “The last victim I am ready to take on is this woman from across the street. I didn’t like her as soon as she moved in. Despite of my dislike, she seems a good sample to conduct experiments on. The girl’s really easy to grab and kidnap as she’s single and moreover, possesses a diminutive stature. I want to alter her brain. You may wonder :Why? I have a burning desire to check how the human brain will try to retain memory and recollections while being in a trance and sort of … tranquilized? My memory-altering device will be connected to her head and I will follow all her vitals .She’s to also be put in my pilot project –a time machine. It’s going to be an absolutely game-changing experiment! I will definitely be discovered and revered as a neurobiology prodigy!”
Your sometimes delusional Marcus Bell
16.01.2024
“It doesn’t make sense. But after what we saw it is possible to be true” ,said Brandon and closed his eyes.
“Let’s just move on and try to find this so-called time machine”.
They got up from the moldy sofa and rushed in the hall. The two crime-fighters have already checked a multitude of rooms and have not find what they are looking for yet. Suddenly, when they entered an old pantry ,Cullen stepped on a creaking floorboard. It cracked, and he fell in a some kind of cellar. The mansion was so gigantic that they were still on the first floor.
“Ouch! Dude, I fell on my back and I’m in the cellar now. You’ll never guess what is there!”
“One second! Already going down to you!”
As MacCauley got to the place, he saw his compatriot lying on the floor. He helped him to get up and looked at him with perplexity because there was nothing in the room. “Maybe he’s hallucinating already, there’s such an unpleasant odour ”. Perhaps there are some gases in the air that cause our consciousness and cognition to be in a fog.
“But I see nothing here. What was so urgent there then?”
“You dingleberry! There is another door! The only catch is that it has a padlock, so we need to break in there. It may well be what we’ve been looking for”.
“OK then. How are we supposed to break the padlock?”
“Are you serious right now? Just hit the door with all the power you have. Kick it with your leg or your side. Didn’t expect to be explaining such an apparent thing.”
“If you are so clever, then go and do it! There’s no need to infantilize and preach me as if I’m like “the lights are on but no one’s home” or something. I can comprehend you normally without this patronizing”.
“I’m really sorry, my dear friend. I did not mean to offend or insult you. My primary goal as your supervisor is to help you learn some nuances and as the Head Detective Gwendoline Gull adores saying “integrate into the community”. Sorry again if I was too blunt. I promise to be a more constructive critic”.
“OK. We should stop all this sentimentality”.
They both hit the door so hard that it splitted in two parts. The small debris of glass embedded in the door were scattered all over the floor. The two men went inside immediately.
“What the heck am I seeing right now! Brandon, punch me if I have delusions already”.
“Unfortunately ,you don’t “,pitifully replied his colleague.
There was a gigantic piece of tech. It’s like a booth .Its height is from the floor to the ceiling. Obviously, it has a door with a code lock and a key hole just in case. When you open the extremely secure door you see a dial and arrows. Actually, you just specify which year you need to transfer to. After doing so, you have to lie down in a capsule. Then, everything is spinning and the time traveler starts seeing some visions from their current life gradually getting to the events pertaining to the chronology they’re getting to. Basically, the machine can be controlled from one computer system wired to it. This way, others can watch you and adapt your travel in time. They can even block it and thus you are stuck and cannot get out.
The two men finished their investigation and went to the car. Their only task was to scrutinize the crime scene, the victim’s corpse was taken immediately when it was known about the lynching. This operation was also carried out by their department. During the forensics it was discovered that the assaulted woman had a stroke and there were some changes in her brain structure. The scientist who committed this is not known as a prodigy, but as a coward notorious for conducting experiments on mere people.
Gillean Cullen has finished the paperwork he had to fill in for this case. They didn’t find any documents of the suspect, but they had his diary and searched for his name in some databases. Obviously, he’s abroad and wanted.
***
It’s been a week since they ruled out this crime. The criminologist has already forgotten about it, when suddenly he was forced to bring it back to his memory again. The man was in a peaceful sleep ,when he heard a gust of wind in his bedroom. Something was scratching his carpet alongside with this wind.
“What’s going on? I didn’t leave any windows opened and I distinctly remember locking the door.”
Gillean got up and saw a cloud of smoke in front of him. He started yelling, but there was no response. The terrified man closed his eyes, and something thudded on the floor. It was a key and a letter.
“It’s not freaking possible! It’s a key to the time machine!”. Petrified though he was, Mr. Cullen read the concise message:” The game has commenced! Hurry up till the time isn’t up.”
He passed out and fell on the floor. The ghostly figure dissolved in the air.
