Each Friday, I will blindly pick a picture card from the board game Mysterium, and set a timer for fifteen minutes. When the timer goes off, the story is done.
Jonathon sat in the chair. He closed his eyes and gripped the arms tightly. He could feel the warmth of the worn, red velvet start to meld with his skin.
As he concentrated everything around him started to fade away. The faces of the people expecting to get good news about their missing loved one, even the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway started to lose its cadence in his mind.
Suddenly, he was in a different room. A room he had been in many times. This is where he always went when people asked him to find their loved ones.
Photographs, just like the old Polaroids he used to take when he was little, flew around the greenish air around him.
He tried to focus and grab one in hopes of getting a glimpse that would tell him where the family could find Kelly Connors, a twenty-one-year-old girl who went missing a few nights ago.
He could make out a group of girls with their arms around each other at a bar. Another photo had her talking to a young, attractive man.
Jonathon squinted harder. These weren't any of the pictures he was looking for.
He held his hand up and reached for a photo. When he snatched it down he sighed. He had found it. It was a picture of Kelly's hands covered in blood. He knew it was her because of the distinctive heart ring that she was wearing.
Jonathan held on tight as he grabbed another photo. This time it was of Kelly's dead body lying in an alleyway, probably close to the club where the other photo was taken.
He clutched it as he searched around to find another picture he was looking for. His eyes scanned the floating and flying pictures until he zeroed in on what he wanted.
Jonathan snatched it out of the air. It was a photo of him. Holding a knife. You could see the back of Kelly's head. This happened right before she slumped onto the ground in a heap.
He smiled to himself as he remembered that moment fondly. It also made him recall all of the other murders he had committed. How else was he supposed to keep getting work from the police department to find missing persons? He was a sham. There was no way his psychic ability could help him find real victims. So, he had to create his own in order to keep getting work.
Jonathon took the photo of himself and tore it into confetti sized pieces. He then grabbed the photo of the man Kelly was talking to at the bar. He looked at it and concentrated harder until he found the name of the guy; Thomas Harper.
Jonathon closed his eyes in the dream and thought about the room he was in in the real world. The images started to fade back into view, the expectant faces, and the grandfather clock.
Jonathon pasted on his canned, sad expression and told the family, "I'm so sorry. Kelly is gone."
He waited for their sobbing to end before he added, "I also found the name of her killer."