Chapter 18.

Once the cops were finished examining the scene and body, I was escorted away from the bathroom and out of my apartment. However, when I left the room, something at the corner of my eye caught my attention. It was something I hadn’t noticed initially that left my eyes shrinking into pinholes.

Beneath the murky water inside the bathtub, my eyes honed in on the stopper that prevented the water from draining. The rubber stopper was the exact same one from the hotel I stayed the night before.

In my blank state of shock, I was escorted out of the building and brought to a police car. Before I knew it, I was tagging along for a ride in a cop car down to the station for questioning. Yet, with my mind left in shambles, the only thing on my mind was the mysterious reappearance of the rubber stopper. My thoughts were a chaotic mess and no matter what type of logical explanation I tried to put together, I could only presume I was seeing things. It was true that the water was drained from my tub and the rubber stopper was missing back at the hotel, but for it to show up there was far too strange.

Was the nightmare I had actually me after all? Did I somehow kill my coworker? Do I have a split personality, dissociative identity disorder, or some sort of brain-related disease affecting my memories? No way. This can’t be for real.

If I was the killer, wouldn’t everything that happened fall into place and make perfect sense? No, before I jump the gun, I need to wait for the result of the cop’s investigation. My theory is far too ludicrous for it to be true. I refuse to believe any of it is possible.

“Sir.”

“...”

“Sir!”

“...”

“SIR!”

“Ah. Yes?”

“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Hahaha. Yeah. I bet I do.”

“Well, coming home to suddenly find a dead coworker is sure to leave you spooked.”

“Ah. Yeah. Right.”

I could only return a lackluster response with saggy eyes to his show of empathy towards my situation. After that small exchange, ignoring the occasional reports broadcasted through the radio, the rest of the ride was spent in dead silence. When we arrived at the station my statement was taken, it took a few hours, but I was eventually released. They also took down my contact information and fingerprints then told me I would be contacted should they require anything further from me.

When I returned back to my apartment building, the only thing I could do was take my car and leave empty-handed for the time being. The place was presently a crime scene and until the case was closed, I couldn’t take anything out of the apartment.

They offered to provide me with accommodations in the meantime, but I declined since I wasn’t interested in another hotel scare. I told them I’d just stay at a friend's place for the time being as I was too spooked by the case to be alone. Though that was a lie and I just camped out in my car at a nearby shopping center’s parking lot.

I bought a blanket, huddled up in the backseat of my car, and passed the time by surfing the web on my phone while gazing at the stars in the night sky. Somehow it was the most peaceful I’d felt in quite a while. It was to the point that I wanted to quit everything, move away from the city, and start a new life alone as a secluded recluse distanced far away from society.

If I went where no one else was around, surely none of my five crazy exes would be able to find me. Psycho ghost girls wouldn’t go after someone living alone out in the boonies, right? If a crazy ghost chick like the rumored ghost girlfriend was real, she would definitely prefer areas with lots of people around to haunt and kill, wouldn’t she?

While I passed the time and admired the stars overhead, I figured I’d check out the message board I occasionally visited. It was the one I’d recently posted my story to, the same one that guy posted about his so-called first girlfriend before he allegedly committed suicide.

I leisurely scrolled through some of the threads, but I found there wasn’t really anything interesting at the moment. I was curious about how the thread I’d started two days ago ended, so I searched through a site that archived threads and luckily found it. Picking up from the last message I sent, it went as follows.

“FormerLurker: I’m really not.”

“Troll1: ^Bro, you are absolutely trolling right now.”

“Troll2: Lack of response is proof of trolling.”

“Troll4: … guys I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but did nobody notice the hidden message in the keyboard spam from earlier?”

“Troll3: What hidden message?”

“Troll4: Remove every second letter from the keyboard spam starting from the first ‘arsidcfkgwhijlklldqiweetrotmyouriroopw’ and you get rick will die tomorrow.”

“Troll1: Holy shit! Is OPs name Rick? Does he also plan to commit suicide like the last guy?”

“Troll3: ^Bro calm down, this is clearly next gen troll tactics. Rick probably doesn’t even exist and it’s just a made up name.”

“Troll1: ^No shit Sherlock, it’s sarcasm.”

After that, it was just some back and forth nonsense about them debating that even if someone named Rick died tomorrow, it would just be pure coincidence. I, on the other hand, was absolutely horrified by the revelation of the hidden message. What I initially thought was a result of a keyboard malfunction or even processor glitch, foretold the future. Of course I would be creeped out, it was just more evidence to convince me that there had to be something wrong with my head. Did I actually plot his death without realizing it? Am I merely trying to blame a nonexistent ghost that I’ve simply made up in my head?

I debated whether I should start another thread to seek out others' opinions, but I was worried if I gave too much information they would discover my identity so I refrained for now. It would be best to see whether any of this story gets covered by the media and also what the cop’s investigation turned up first before I decided what to do.

If it turned out it was in fact somehow me and I really was insane like I’d thought, everything would make sense. However, if I really was at the hotel the entire time and the cops can verify that through the recorded footage and the times in which the keycard was used to enter the room, then that would prove my innocence to myself. It would also be enough to convince me I’m really not insane.

If there are no signs of the window in the hotel room being damaged, that would mean I was in a locked room situation as well. If the logs showed me entering the hotel room only once with my keycard and no one else but the housekeeping lady, who saw me in the morning, came in afterward; I could thus verify that I was definitely inside the room the entire time. That would also prove it was physically impossible for me to be the one that used that rubber stopper in the bathroom at my place; of course, that is assuming my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.