Rose Street, Mucker residence.
Maria lay still in bed unable to get up. She felt her whole body spamming as if she was crushed under a huge block of metal. Her head was aching too, and she felt her facial muscles tighten. It was a horrible pain.
What did I actually do last night? She kept thinking hard to remember what she did that would result in such severe backlash. She discovered that she mostly had a vague memory of last night.
Strange, I can't seem to remember a thing.
She rubbed her forehead and pushed herself out of bed with great difficulty after failing to recall her activities the previous night. She supported herself by leaning on the wall of her room as her legs felt heavy and didn't obey any commands to move. She wasn't a person who did extreme exercise otherwise she would easily attribute it to over exertion of her body. The only thing she recalled was that she ate with her brother, Frederick, they chatted for some time, and she watched a movie and....
That was it. She couldn't remember going to her room, or if she did anything else.
After some few minutes, she was able to move her legs. She wobbled to the wash room to wash her face first before resting to recover her body functions. On her way, she first went to the sitting room to look for Frederick, she wanted to know if she had done anything last night and if so what. The sitting room was quiet, the TV remote was strew on the sofa, she found her blanket on the floor and bent down, with great difficulty, to pick it up. Apart from these, she found that the sitting room was in the same exact state as last night.
Glancing at the wall clock, she discovered it was only 6:15 a.m., and Frederick was probably not awake. She sauntered to his room door and knocked but received no answer. He wasn't in. She sighed and went straight for the wash room. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. She noticed she had eye bags and dark circles around her eyes which stood out oddly on her fair skin. It still troubled her that she couldn't remember a thing yet.
Ever since she was involved in an accident some years ago and developed a temporary amnesia, she would occasionally have a relapse and memory gaps here and there. She could remember what she used to do when she was around 13 to 14 years old, but beyond that nothing. She even had difficulty remembering some information from her childhood; it was like she had a hood covering her whenever she tried to trigger them. This was the reason she felt uneasy when she realised she had another relapse this morning.
Turning off the water tap, she wiped her hands and face with a towel and went out. When she went out, she was startled to meet her brother leaning on the door frame while waiting for her.
"Is it bad?" He asked, concern filled his voice.
"Ouch, you scared me, Fred!" She punched his shoulder playfully, "my whole body aches" she pouted putting on a pained expression.
"It's okay. Rest and take some drugs" he patted her head giving her a reassuring smile. She grabbed his hand and brought it to her face. Fred reacted by caressing her cheek. She loved it when he did this.
"What happened last night?"
"You don't remember?"
Maria nodded slowly with her face down.
"Humph," Frederick sighed and pinched his glabella, "you passed out while drinking wine, remember? You wanted to "celebrate" for unknown reasons"
"Is that all?" She felt this was not all that could make her body spasm so much. She knew that she didn't have high alcohol tolerance, and she had avoided it, why would she drink? What was she "celebrating"?
"Also, you fell asleep on the sofa, I had to carry you princess style to your bed," Frederick teased and pinched his sister's nose. She slapped his hand away as she digested the information. How come she couldn't remember this?
"Where did you go just now? I looked for you!" She looked at Frederick who used his hand to scratch his head before giving a terse reply that he went for a morning jog. Maria nodded but found it strange that he would go out so early.
"What are you hiding?" She noticed that this entire time Frederick had his other hand behind his back. She tried to circle him but Frederick was smarter as he also moved in circle the opposite way. Since the corridor wasn't large enough for such games, Maria decided to give up.
"A surprise, now go sit and I'll feed you later," he gave her a bedazzling smile that made her heart flutter. She obeyed and left him standing in the corridor.
Standing alone, Frederick sighed. He felt sorry for his sister. He felt sorry that she had to struggle everyday with memory relapses, he felt sorry that she had to lose her most precious childhood memories, most importantly he felt sorry that he couldn't tell her what happened some years ago, he would keep it a secret from her. It was bad enough that she, knows, he was suffering the consequences.
He turned around and headed for the wash room by his room. The house wasn't that large, but its unique feature was that the wash rooms were placed beside each room, which numbered 4, rather than inside.
He walked to the tap and turned it on. He placed his left hand, which he had been placing behind his back, under the running water. He washed as red, dark, sticky blood stains washed off his hand and into the sink. Some spots still had red blood marks which he removed by scrubbing harder. He looked into the mirror in front of him which reflected a pair of cold, black eyes which seemed like a whirlpool that could suck out the life force from a person who looked into them.
....
Over at the Police station, Bryan was shown his cubicle. This was very contrasting with Wakeville's luxurious office which he was used to. He also met some few colleagues amongst whom he still remembered Collins Flint, Jason, Morgan, Regina, the beautiful police lady with a high sense of aesthetics. He was fairly familiar with these ones because they were directly involved in the case he was sent over to handle. He had been given his desk with all the case files he needed, the CCTV footages, the post mortem results and other materials which he would study later.
He decided to have a cup of hot tea with a few others to further warm up his body. The weather seemed to have changed again; it was warmer than some hours ago.
"This is good tea," Bryan commented as he swallowed a mouthful. It tasted nice.
"My very favorite. I added some few ingredients," Jason smiled sipping his tea. Bryan nodded and drank some more.
"You'll have to teach me some few secrets too."
"Not a problem," Jason sipped some more tea, "I could even show you around town if you're up for it."
"Of course, I really need to go sightseeing" Bryan beamed. He felt it was necessary to check out all the cool places in Haston city as he only got to read about them. He also needed to know some important places so as to avoid in his investigation.
"Here." He handed a black box to Jason. He had given the others gifts too. He gave Collins a bottle of red wine, to Regina he gave a perfume, to the chief he gave a hair product; he had known from his superior in Wakeville that Mr. Denise had a receding hairline and also lost some hair occasionally.
Jason opened the box to find a small device which Bryan called a Nano communicator, according to him it could be attached to his wristband and used to track or communicate with others who had the device.
"Thanks, it might come in handy."
After a while, another police officer walked in. She seemed to have just arrived. She had her hair, which looked like it hasn't met the comb for days, tied up messily in a bun, her face was pale and she had dark eye circles around her eyes. She seemed extremely fatigued. Bryan's eyes followed her as she passed by only waving at some few people. He only retracted his gaze when she plopped down on her desk.
"Family issue," Jason tipped his tea cup at the lady, "she's Bernadette Christopher."
"I see." Bryan quickly finished his tea and made a mental note to treat the rest to lunch sometime as he didn't bring enough gifts.
Towards the afternoon, he and Jason went out for sightseeing.