A Cold Case of Curiosity [Shyan]

A Foggy Haze

My eyes flicked open. I grabbed my watch. 5:23. Right on time. I threw the covers off of me and stretched. Natural light pouring into every crevice of my house. I flicked off the safety of my bedside lamp. I stood up, cracking my back. The floor creaked as I stood on it. I grabbed a white button up, tan pants, tan suspenders, and my brown dress shoes. I threw it all on in a hurry. I remember what one of my coworkers had told me:

"Be at the boss' office everyday at 6 before you're set to a case."

It was a 10 minute walk from my house. So I threw on my trench coat and my white Panama hat, something I was fond of.  I walked outside and the sun greeted me. No one else did however, as I prefer to keep to myself. I made it over to the boss' office, and promptly knocked on the door.

"Come in." He rasped. I opened the 6 inch thick door.

"Rookie, good to see ya. Luckily we have a job for you." He paused.

"Now since this is your first major case you can't go alone so we've paired you up." Now I really started to sweat. It was only my second day handling major cases and I already have one on my hands? And I have to solve it with someone? Gosh, I'd rather tear my eyes out.

"Mr. Madej come on out." From a room not surprisingly hidden behind the bookshelf came a giant. Pale skin, dark eyes, scruffy brown hair, faint stubble growing in on his face, droopy eyes, and about 4 feet of legs. He closed the entryway to the 'secret' room and stuck out his hand for me to shake. I did, but something didn't feel right. His hands were remarkably cold; in fact they felt like a dead body's. Who was I to judge though? Maybe he just ran cold? Yeah sure.

"Alright boys you're not both here for nothing. We've got cold cases of murder on our hands. All taking place deep in the bayou. We've only gotten reports of them and obviously we need you two to go investigate all cases, 7 to be exact." My eyes shot open. 'That's a lot of time, this'll take ages to solve.' I thought to myself.

"There's a car waiting outside for you right now that will take you all the way to the bayou. Once you get there, there's a boat man who will take you where you need to go. Once you meet him, just say: seven. He'll row you to all the locations." The boss huffed on a cigar.

"Don't just stand there, go!" He shouted.

"yes sir," I responded quietly. We both quickly walked out of his office, out on the road was a black car pulled over to the side. The driver manually rolled the window down to yell at us.

"You guys the two going to the bayou?"

"Yup that's us." The giant responded.

The driver simply nodded his head as a way of saying 'come in' as he manually rolled up the window. I got in the backseat of the car first, and the giant followed.

"Say what was your name again? I asked, stupidly forgetting.

"Madej." He chuckled for a moment.

"Shane Madej." He continued, smiling.

"And you?" Shane inquired.

"Ryan Bergara." I said rather softly. Shane simply nodded and turned his focus to the window. His legs were crammed in between the passenger seat. I chuckled to myself about it. The car continued all the way through the city, then we finically got into the country territory. It took about 30 minutes to get to part of the bayou we needed to go to. The whole trip in the car was silent. The car stopped.

"Alright you two good luck." The driver said before kicking us out of the car.

I stepped out. The dirt road leading to the bayou. Mud clutching onto my shoes. Shane walked out of the other side doing the same as me, waiting for the car to pull away. It eventually did and we hesitated our way further into the marsh. Twisted trees looked over us moss and debris hanging off of their bare branches. Bugs chimed from every corner and birds chirped all around. A light fog drifted over the murky land.