It was then I saw that my phone, which I set to silent when Jay arrived, had a list of “missed alert” notices now illuminating its screen. I unlocked the phone to find two new messages and a bunch of missed calls from my girlfriend and was immediately knocked out of my fixated stupor by an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had been so obsessed with this whole Enid thing that we hadn’t spoken in almost two days, which is a long time for us.
I tried calling her twice and got her voicemail both times. A sudden feeling of dread began to mount in the pit of my stomach as I checked my messages. The first one was my girlfriend saying she had just gotten home and was hoping to hang out tonight and that she missed me.
“Plus, and I’m sure you’re gonna say I’m just being paranoid, but you know how my parking spot is at the back of the complex and I hate it because it’s like a million miles away from my apartment? Well, I swear the last like three nights now I’ve had this feeling like someone was following me on the walk from my car. I was hoping to talk to my boyfriend so I wouldn’t be so freaked out this time but I’m almost at my door now so I won’t hold it against you. Call me when you can, sweetie. I love you.”
The second message seemed like a pocket-dial at first. Nothing but rustling sounds for about thirty seconds. And then suddenly my girlfriend whispered, “…He’s coming.”
That was the last time anyone has seen or heard from her in over forty-eight hours. I went with her parents to file a Missing Persons report today and played the two messages for the detective who took our statements. I didn’t mention anything about Enid’s computer or the masked man because, though a part of me desperately wanted to, I was still reeling from everything and simply couldn’t think of a way to arrange the words in my head that didn’t make me sound bat-shit insane.
Jay texted me a couple of times about having something important to show me but I haven’t called him back yet. I needed to write all of this down first, if only to help me mentally process everything.
Chapter 2: This Rabbit Hole Is A Sarlacc Pit
By the time I finally called Jay back, I ended up getting his voicemail. I tried two more times but he never answered. Eventually, I decided to simply drive over to his house.
Despite the stereotypical depiction of the computer nerd as some kind of perpetually lonely super virgin, Jay was actually happily married to a fairly attractive girl named Amy. She’s who greeted me at the door later that night, a somber smile on her face as she said, “Hey… I’m so sorry about Alice. That’s crazy. She never seemed like the flighty type.”
“I know. That’s what worries me.” Amy’s smile faltered and I immediately felt bad. My whole woe-is-me, my-girlfriend-might-be-murdered vibe had been really bumming people out all week. I quickly forced a smile of my own and asked, “Is Jay home?”
“No. He left me a note saying he would be out late doing research on something and that if you came by, I was to give you this…” She handed me a thumb-drive.
“Did he say where he was going?”
Amy shook her head, “I figured you would know. I called his office, because that’s where he always works on stuff, and the guy who answered said he hadn’t been in all day. I tried his cell but of course his phone’s off. You know how he gets when he’s working on something.”
“Yeah. I do…” I said, probably a bit too ominously as I stared down at the thumb-drive clutched in my hand.
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