Gabriel's Story by Roxas Winchester (best black authors .TXT) 📖

The rain was pouring and the wind was howling the night our story began. In the small town of Salem Mass. a lonely man wearing a trench coat that drug in the muddy puddles he walked through headed home for the night from the pub he had just been to. His shoulders were hunched and his dark hair dripped cold rainwater in his eyes making it even more difficult for him to see where he was going. The man was of the young age of 23 years, had black hair, and pale blue eyes that were bottomless pools when you got caught in their staring, knowing gaze that seemed to search the deepest depths of your soul.
As the man neared his house, the rain let off and was replaced by a heavy fog that made it near impossible to see his house twenty feet away. The front door of the house was open a crack, when the man saw he withdrew his gun from the shoulder holster he wore everywhere. The silver gun glinted off the light from the lamppost six feet away; as he neared he pushed the door open all the way, revealing a small two story house that had been around for generations in his family. The light switch’s click when he tried it was ominous.
Alright, the lights won’t work. That’s just great. “Hey, come out here now and I won’t shoot you.” His voice was deep and smooth, like ocean waters after a large storm-calm on the surface, but deadly below. The building was hauntingly eerie; in his six years of living there he had gotten to like the styles of the building’s previous owners who had each added something new to the house which made it feel lived in even when the man wasn’t living there.
There was a crash from the kitchen that sounded like someone panicking for a way out or a weapon to protect themselves with. The man raced into the kitchen, his gun held ready and pointed to shoot the intruder.
“Hey. Turn around or get a bullet in you.”
The intruder turned around to reveal a man of similar age with a larger build that showed the guy rarely worked out. “Now, is that the proper way to greet your guest Gabe?” the intruder’s expression softened then became relaxed as Gabe lowered his weapon and holstered it again.
“You know you can’t do that to me Brian. I could have shot you.” Gabe’s features were worried but still calm.
“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve shot me. Remember two years ago? I still get sore from that time to time.”
“It taught you not to sneak up on me didn’t it? At least for a little while it did.” Gabe-short for Gabriel the archangel that was the messenger to God- looked around the room to see if anything was out of place. “Why are you here now Brian?” Gabe sounded tired from his walk home and the startling surprise of finding his friend in the house.
“There’s a problem in Boston.” Brian started looking around the small kitchen as he spoke. “One we need your help with.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s always a problem somewhere which you need me to help you with. Sorry, but this time you’re on your own.” Gabe started to leave the room when Brian spoke up.
“They’ve got her.” Gabe stopped and turned back to Brian, intrigued. “They’ve got Amelia. I know you don’t care for her in the least, but would you deny your only living relative their life because you have a problem with them? I also know you never forgave her for the man she took for her husband, I think it’s time to let it go and at least help us on this case.”
Gabe’s eyes shot fury at Brian. “No, the reason I don’t approve of helping you on your little rescue mission is not because I don’t like, you know as well as I do that she committed those murders back in LA. Once she found out that we knew- mainly once she found out that I knew- she took off; dropped off the face of the earth basically. Why would I help save someone who ruined their own life in the first place?” Gabe calmed down some then added, “No, I don’t think I can even let myself help save her, sorry.”
“But you can help me, can’t you? You wouldn’t even have to see or even have to talk to her.”
Gabe shook his head no in answer then left to get dry clothes to change into instead of his wet ones he was wearing.
Ten minutes later Gabe came down to the living room where Brian had turned on the show Supernatural. “Why are you watching that? The storyline is so different from the first season there’s no point in watching anymore.” Gabe sat down in the leather recliner that was next to the leather couch Brian was sitting in.
“Hey, did you hear about that guy who killed his victims and made it look like the kind of thing you see on this show?” Brian was trying to distract Gabe from his refusal of helping on the case by bringing up Gabe’s past.
“Yeah, I heard about it. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one who solved that case as well, along with his copy cat, and the one who was killing one family from every state.”
“You know, you‘re so good at solving these crimes that finding Amelia should be no sweat for you. I’ll bet you could solve this one in less than a week.” Brian glanced over at Gabe who was glaring daggers at him.
“What do I have to do to get you to leave?” Gabe asked Brian after a little while of silence between them.
“It’s easy, all you have to do is agree to help me on this case.” Brian looked hopeful, as if he were a little boy on Christmas morning waiting to see what Santa had brought him.
Gabe closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, with out opening them he answered. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but fine, I’ll help you, not her, you.” Gabe opened his eyes and looked at Brian. “Now get out of my house before you get another bullet in you to add to the other one.”
Brian stood quickly, too excited to sit still any longer now that he had Gabe’s cooperation. “Thank you, thank you very much. I will go tell Sergeant Uclees right now.” Brian almost bounced out the door like a giant super bounce ball.
Once the door closed behind Brian Gabe was left alone with company of the television which was now playing an ad for some fast food chain. Gabe picked up the remote and turned the television off on his way upstairs to his bedroom, but even sleep wouldn’t allow him some peace for the night.
The redness was spreading from his parents’ throats as their lives slowly seeped away and soaked into the pale carpet Gabe was standing on. He had just gotten home from a movie with a friend and found his parents on the floor and the back window broken out from the inside. Fearfully, he reached down to feel for a pulse on them, nothing. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood, his parent’s blood. Deftly, Gabe went to the kitchen- careful to avoid stepping on the spreading stain- and tried to call the police, but the phone was dead. Someone rang the doorbell, so Gabe raced to see who it was. When he opened the door he was greeted by his favorite pet dog lying on the welcome mat, it too had its throat slit. The beautiful thick white fur was stained red at its neck.
“No!” Gabe shouted as he bolted upright in his bed. The memory of the night ho lost both his parents and his best friend sent sleep far away. Out of all the cases Gabe had solved, he never found the person responsible for murder of his parents or for Blizzard- his dog. When he was sixteen his parents were killed, so he did everything possible to find their murderer, but their still evaded him. The police never could find them, so they put the case away in storage.
Gabe looked at the clock by his bed; the hands showed him it was five thirty-five, only twenty-five minutes until he had to get up for work. “Great.” Gabe mumbled under his breath. “Oh shit.” He had just remembered about his agreement to help Brian on the case of the missing Amelia. For him to get to the agency on time he needed to leave the house at five, but his clock stopped the alarm from going off once in a while, and it never failed that when it didn’t go off, he needed to have left about and hour earlier than when he woke. Quickly- before he could fully wake up- he was out of the house, and speeding down the road to the agency Brian worked at. Luckily for him the police weren’t out shooting radar that morning, so they couldn’t pull him over again.
“You’re late. I was thinking you’d gone back on your word.” Brian greeted Gabe as he almost ran into the building after parking his ’68 Mustang. The car had been his parents’ pride and joy. Out of all their possessions, the Mustang topped them all for their favorite, so after Gabe’s parents died he inherited the car. After Brian stopped trying to get Gabe to sell it, he helped replace the engine with a newer model’s, so it could run year round without much fuss. After a few years the original pale yellow paint started flaking and showing wear, so Gabe had it completely repainted in a burgundy color that highlighted the car’s lines.
“I know I’m late, and you should be glad I’m even here right now.” Gabe suddenly pushed Brian against the wall, pinning him there with his arm and his gun to the man’s throat. “If you want to keep breathing don’t you ever suggest me going back on my word again. Understand?”
Brian nodded, short and quick movements. His eyes were wide with the terror of having a gun pressed to his throat. “Can you let me go now?” Gabe released Brian and holstered his gun. “If you weren’t so god damned good at solving these cases I would have locked you up years ago for you r temper. You really need to learn to control your anger; you’re always pulling your gun out on me.”
The corners of Gabe’s lips pulled up into a smile. “Maybe if you would stop doing things that make me want to pull a gun out on you I wouldn’t so much.” Gabe took a step back, and then started to walk down the hall to Brian’s office. “You going to show me what you have so far, or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?”
Brian shook his head then started down the hall next to Gabe. “She was last seen at the store that sells that adult paraphernalia with a man who looks like he goes to a gym regularly and it looked like they were arguing over something, but I can’t tell what it is from the store’s parking lot video surveillance.”
“Fantasy Dreams?” Gabe asked Brian.
“Yeah, that’s the place. Oh, here we are.” Brian turned into a small office which contained a table, some chairs, a couple of file cabinets, and a top of the line desktop computer.
An older man stepped into Brian’s office a