Chapter 1
It was surely not a great start in the morning for young Harper having dropped the only sandwich he had in centuries. He could hear his mother screaming and walking towards him from the street’s corner. Harper was seventeen and he had been living in the streets since his father’s death in a car accident a few years back. His family, including himself, his mother, his brother, Drake, had been living in poverty since then. They had no source of income except the money they’d got from the kind-hearted people walking down the streets and some petty thefts Harper did. Apart from this, Drake himself was very weak from having little or no food in the past few days. Harper had dropped the only sandwich they had in days. Drake had fallen unconscious a couple of times in the past week as well. Harper had hoped Drake would feel better this morning but he seemed no better today. Harper’s mother was still down the street when Drake suddenly fell unconscious to the ground, for the fifth time in the week.
Harper called out to his mother as loudly as he could and she came running to him followed by a small group of tramps. One curious man among them knelt down to check on Drake. Harper’s mother could only cry as she had no money to even take him to the hospital. Harper had been watching all this from the corner of the crowd feeling guilty that he was the reason for all this. And there did Harper make the biggest decision of his life. Harper continued to slowly slip out of the crowd when he heard a loud ringing in his ears but no one else around him seemed to notice. The ringing seemed to grow louder and louder until Harper jumped out of the bed sweating and panting having had one of his worst nightmares ever.
Coming from a middle-class family, Harper had always worked hard to make a decent living. He’d left his family at 17 when his dad died in a crash leaving his mother to take care of the 2 children. Being the adopted son, he knew he would have to leave sooner or later. However, now Harper had a quality job at an IT company called Maxwell corporations.
He’s used to being a night owl, so he preferred night shifts, and worked till the morning sometimes. He decided to do just that today, May 2nd. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to the excess work piled over the past few days, but it still had to be done. The mornings were mostly boring for Harper as he had nothing to do. He was more of an indoor guy so he rarely left his home, except for work.
He brushed his teeth and went straight to his couch to watch some T.V. And as he saw the headlines, it said: “Man murdered by his wife”. This was surely not a good start to the day for Harper as he felt the chills running up his spine seeing the woman’s face. But luckily he was a bachelor and had no plan changing any time soon. After a long time of surfing through the channels, he prepared himself lunch, with the help of his servant Chad who has been working with him for the past two years.
Lunch was nothing special as usual. Chad was the only person Harper could interact with during the day. After lunch, Harper’s phone rang. It was his friend Daniel who had called him asking if they could meet at Harper’s the next day. Harper readily accepted as it was a rare occasion of his friends or anyone for that matter visiting him. He asked Chad to work overtime today and tidy up the house. Chad nodded with an unusual smirk, which Harper didn’t notice, because he remembered that he had to work late today anyways, on a job that had been given to him quite a while ago.
Later that evening, as Harper was getting dressed for work he heard a loud metal sound in the kitchen and went down to investigate. It was nothing but Chad who had dropped the knife. Harper picked it up and placed it back. It was time for office and Harper left as usual giving the spare keys to Chad.
Harper’s office was just a 5 to 10 minutes walk from his house. Harper reached his office at 10 pm and found the security in deep sleep. None had bothered to wake him up. Harper entered the lobby and made the dreaded walk up the staircase to the seventh floor where his office was. Surprisingly it was empty, but Harper wasn’t bothered at all and began his work.
The time was 10.30 pm when Chad was wrapping up his work. He locked the door behind him and walked through the eerie silence of the mundane night, with only the sound of his breathing.
He was carrying his worn-out bag as usual. Finally, he reached home and came out after ten minutes with the same bag but was wearing a hoodie and a pair of gloves which he wears at work.
It was 12.10 am and Harper decided to take a break. On the other hand, Chad was on the way to Harper’s neighbor on the opposite side of the street. Here lived Mr. Kenny Cotton who always had bad blood with Harper. As Chad entered, he pulled out a knife. He knocked on the door vigorously even though there was a bell.
Mr. Kenny, who lived alone, woke up breathing heavily frightened by the beating on the door. He tried looking out of the window, but couldn’t see Chad as he had his hoodie up. As Kenny was one of the daring guys of the neighborhood, he went to open the door anyways.
Harper had finished his break and was returning back to his desk to continue his work, but his mind was still elsewhere. He was just hoping that Chad had done his work well because he knew Chad would mess up at times.
Mr. Kenny took out his pistol which he always had close to him for erratic situations like this and went to the front door. He tightened his finger on the trigger and opened the door with his heart beating and pounding out of his body, but to his relief, he saw nothing there. He thought that this was either his hallucination or that a thief had given up trying to rob him. Before he could close the door, he heard footsteps that chilled his blood. He could have sworn that the sound of the footsteps came from right behind him. He tried to fire a wild shot into the dark, but before he could fire, he felt a strong muscular body above him and the next moment, he was pinned to the ground with a knife buried deep into his body.
Chad sighed a sense of relief as he had completed the job cleanly without any suspicion. He then began cleaning up the spot. As he began leaving the neighborhood as he had been told to, he became a little bit emotional as the task assigned to him was a bit out of his league. He didn’t have a family or any relatives so leaving this place and finding another place to live and work wasn’t really difficult for him and he even had been given a ticket to another city, but the only problem he was dealing with internally, was guilt.
Time passed like a bolt of lightning as it was already 2:30 am. Harper had been typing for 2 straight hours, but he was still not done with all the work given to him by his boss. The files had to be submitted to his boss, by the morning. He was only halfway through, and he needed to stress himself on completing the work as he had accepted Daniel’s visit which was scheduled to take place at 9:00 am in the morning. He started to regret the fact that he accepted the visit, which was now stopping him from taking even the slightest of naps.
The typing continued for another half an hour, as his eyes started to blur out and he started losing consciousness. Just when he was about to fall asleep, he snapped out of it. The words on the screen almost shocked him to death, as it said “Murder Kenny”. He realized that he was crossing limits with typing, and also noticed that these were the first words he saw in the morning.
Seeing Kenny on the screen reminded Harper of all the controversies he’d had with him, like the time when he was invited by Kenny to a party at his house, where he was embarrassed in front of everyone by Kenny, as he termed Harper an “Orphan dog”. Then he remembered the other problem that occurred recently, where they both got physical in the street as Kenny kept reminding Harper that he had no one to care for him and no one would even bother if he died. All these incidents kept rummaging in Harper’s mind, and he looked at the screen and said with a chuckle “My timeless foe”.
Chad was looking out the bus window staring out at the passing scenery. But his mind kept moving back on the events since he had not done this kind of job before. He vividly remembered every scene. Finally, he decided to drown his thoughts in some music. So he opened his bag to take his headphones when he noticed something which wasn’t supposed to be there. He noticed the new knife still in its cover which was supposed to be used in the murder. Then it dawned on him that he had made the mistake he warned himself a million times against.
The next shift of workers was arriving and Harper realized that he would not be able to complete the assignment, so he started thinking of ways to convince his boss not to decrease his next paycheck. Finally, he decided to get back home and then take care of the rest. He got off his seat and realized that his entire body was exhausted and done for the rest of the month. He left his desk thinking of the dreaded 7 story fall. There was no fuel in his body to even stand up properly.
