Sánchez Potes Lucas, The Mysterious Hero

THE MYSTERIOUS HERO

Written By Lucas Sánchez Potes

Ifeel lost and confused, my mind solely perplexed. I am like a ball of tangled yarn. It feels inexhaustible and at most times relaxing but there are days it feels like my brain cells have been randomized. I am standing in the middle of the center mall with an ax in my hands, a little bit anxious and scared about what is going to happen, but I know that losing is not an option.

Hello, I’m Jake and I am going to tell you how I got there, please concentrate because if not, you will be lost in the middle of the story, so, prepare the popcorn. My name is Jake, I’m the normal guy, not popular but not antisocial, a little bit shy and with some problems to put my trust in people, but you get used to it. I’m sixteen-years-old, luckily skinny but more than normal, 180 cm tall but not very handsome for that height, unfortunately, there is not a gym for the face and my posture does not collaborate that much. 7 am, I’m preparing for school, Ocala’s Junior High School, the day is without clouds, that means that it would be a hot sunny day, perfect for a cold pool if I had one. getting out of my house to catch the school bus as I do routinely, as I entered the bus, I saw Mr. August Ambles, our bus driver, red hair, fat and tall, He is not a nice person, as always he does not say hello to me, he doesn’t even stop the bullies when they are bothering new students, he doesn’t care about anything else but to get to school on time no matter if someone is shooting the bus.

After saying hello to August, I always sit in the middle of the bus, —not with the popular guys at the back, nor with the nerds at the front of the bus—. I sit with my friend Felix, he is two years younger than me but he is a nice person, red hair with medium height and fat, but he is a nice person, on my last birthday he was one of the two people at the school that said happy birthday to me last year, it was him and my other

friend Jacob Johnson, but his father got transferred to Canada because of his job so he left with his family.

We arrived at school and as always August didn’t say anything after I said goodbye to him but that is normal. I saw a newspaper flying because it was a windy day, the headline caught my attention, It was titled barely; “that an old man was missing” but I did not pay much attention to it, so I continued walking to my class. I had a history class, but it is not history is sleeping class, nobody pays attention because the teacher does not show any authority. After the school ended for the day, I took the bus home and my mom told me to be careful in the city because people are disappearing, so I said “it’s because they do not like the new mayor” she laughed.

Normally, I never paid attention when people tell me to be careful at certain things, I only answer whatever I think at the moment with a bit of sarcasm, but this was different, I remembered the newspaper that I saw at school in the morning; saying that someone disappeared, I also remembered that it was “an old man”, and when I finished the conversation with my mom, I overheard her talking with my dad and I remembered she told him,

“Mrs. Murray disappeared, she didn’t get home yesterday and her family is looking all around town”.

The sounds of those words repeated in my head as a melancholic song that you can’t get out of your head. Next day in the morning I woke up and my mom made me breakfast, eggs, and waffles, she told me that our neighbor Mr. Collins didn’t get home yesterday, I started to get worried, three people disappeared in less than three days. Mayor Thomas Pitt has not announced the news to the public yet, he didn’t say anything about the disappearing problem in my neighborhood, he always tried to avoid the problems easily, that’s why people did not like him.

The next day, on Tuesday, I was getting desperate, thinking about all those people in the morning going to school, with Mr. August always mad at all the kids. When I was a child, one of my dreams was to be remembered for something good, to leave my mark in this world, so people could remember my name after I passed away,

“This was the perfect chance. one week, a missing person per day, all after 4 pm.” I told myself silently.

I thought that the person or thing that was disappearing people had to be very smart so that nobody had solved the problem yet since the police could not. That same day after school I decided to walk home, it took me 2 or 3 hours to get there but I had to think and try to solve the problem. It was already 5:00 pm, I was half an hour away from home and the sun was setting, there was a lot of fog all over the street and you could hardly see anything, I was a little scared and I took a shortcut in the woods, I felt that someone was chasing me and I started to run very fast heading back home, it was not enough, a tall man with red hair was chasing me, his face was covered with a mask but you could see his hair, he tried to grab me by the shirt but I was a little faster and he stopped and I continued running until I got home, with my heart beating a thousand times a second.

I came home and locked myself in my room, I thought about everything, the time of the disappearances, the people I knew, who might have the profile of a killer or a psychopath, who had red hair. I connected all the dots, then I finally realized that the person I was looking for was Mr. August Ambles, our school bus driver, I couldn’t make my discovery public yet, I had to unmask him first to be certainly sure, that he is the person responsible for all the disappearances in the neighborhood, nobody knew yet if he was killing or torturing them or who knows what he was doing with those people. everything

made sense, the one who started chasing me was tall and had red hair and so did Mr. August, additionally, Mr. August didn’t work at 5 pm, all the disappearances were reported after 4 pm, it all made sense to me, But I just needed solid evidence that he was the kidnapper.

All these years I learned that August doesn’t tell lies, no matter what, because once he told a girl that she was fat and very ugly and didn’t care about her at all and she started crying.

The next day in the morning, I wanted to stay at home because I was afraid of getting on the bus with Mr. August but my mom made me go to school, I didn’t think he would recognize me since it was so dark that night, So I entered the bus and said hello to him as I usually do but this time, more terrifyingly and he didn’t say anything as usual, and I asked him;

“Where are you going to be this afternoon”

“Tonight I’m going to go to the town mall”; He responded laughing sarcastically.

Anyone would have thought that he was just messing around, but he doesn’t tell lies.

When the school ended that day, I went home and prepared myself for this discovery, When the night came, I took my dad’s ax and went straight to the mall, it was about 8 p.m., people were eating, I asked myself which was the loneliest part of the mall, then I figured it would be; the winter stores, since in summer they are not open.

Now; here I was, with my ax scared, I didn’t know what would happen to me or what would happen if August is going to show up with the same black mask as the other night, my hands were sweating and my heart was starting to beat very hard. I started to walk very gently through the stores, and suddenly I saw a shadow on my right passing in front of the bathrooms very quickly. I’ve never been so scared in my life, I counted 1 to 3 and ran out behind the shadow, there he was,

standing with a knife in his hand waiting for someone to come into the bathroom corridor, at that moment I said to myself,

“It’s now or never, I’m going to find out what’s going on, even if it may cost my life.”

He saw me running towards August, wielding my ax, pointing it straight at his head, and suddenly I heard a voice behind me saying;

“Stop! Don’t kill him,” a man said.

“It was August’s voice, and if August was behind me, then who was the one in the mask? who was responsible for the disappearances?” I told myself confusingly.

I told him that I had a gun and that he should get on his knees, he obeyed and took off his mask, and to my surprise, it was August’s older brother, August, started to cry and telling me not to kill him, to just hand him over to the police, and in my mind, I thought that nobody deserves to die, we all have the right to live regardless of our mistakes, so I forgave him, tied him to a rope and took him to the police. After all, every human being deserves life, even if he did commit the crime, he had the rights to present himself in front of the jury and take responsibility for his own mistakes, the judges will be the one to rule his sentence and not me. A few months later, the verdict came, and he was found guilty of all the charges and sentenced to serve 20 years in a maximum-security prison, and the kidnapped people were found alive in the basement of his house, he wanted to keep them as prisoners for life just for fear of loneliness, he wanted some people to talk to, there were already 9 people, all alive, safe and sound. the next week the Mayor gave me a medal of honor and commitment to the town, I felt like a hero, in that second, and I understand that every person has the right to live, and every man can have a second chance.