Missed Appointment

First let me say thanks to my volunteer editor Kjplotts, second this is a LONG non-erotic story. So if that's what you're looking for you should keep on looking. Also any fair comments are always welcome.

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Being careful, as was his habit, to always keep a discreet distance from the events unfolding in front of him, the completely nondescript man observing the proceedings was again struck by a familiar thought. Funerals are always so depressing, don't you think? People gather, friends and family, individuals who might not have seen each other in years have to now come together to pay their last respects to whom the observer thought of as the lucky bastard about to go in the ground.

At least paying their respects is what the participants of these ceremonies usually tell other people that they are doing, if they are asked about it at least. . Hell, he thought with a snort of amusement, they might even tell the same story to themselves.

After having witnessed so many of these sad displays, the observer had come to believe something closer to the truth would be that these people came to this funeral today in some sort of collective unspoken agreement between them so that when there time eventually comes, as he knew it inevitably would, someone will hopefully come to their funeral, since there is nothing sadder in this whole sad spectacle than having a funeral with no one in attendance but the stiff as he well knew. .

In this one instance anyway the deceased needn't have worried; there was a good turnout. She must have been popular, he thought with a shrug, of course it didn't hurt that it was a bright sunny day which always helped with the attendance, even though no matter what the weather and even if going to a funereal was depressing, being here was still better than being at work.

In fact on a second look at some of the people milling around the cemetery afterward, at least some perhaps even most of them appeared to be looking like they were genuinely sad.

The observer could relate to their apparent grief in this one rare case anyway that while he hadn't really known her well or really at all, he was in his own way sad to see her go. It was always sad to see the young die even if he was more than a little conflicted since for while he hadn't wanted her to die, not really; he did long more than anything for that experience himself. Of course another source of his conflicted emotions in this case was that he was in a way partly responsible for what had happened.

The older pastor who had led the graveside service went through the motions and said the usual things about the short time we have on earth and how we need to make use of every moment. Considering that phrase for a moment, the man observing the scene knew better than most that some people have a far shorter time than others.

But the pastor still spouted the usual sort of condescending generic crap they always say about someone that they didn't know and really couldn't care less about one way or another. . This was just a job to him like towing a car or fixing a drain; just another day at the office. .

But still so much had changed recently and for someone who usually measured change at the pace of a glacier, the last few weeks had been more than a little unsettling; but it happens like that sometimes, he mused to himself; things can sometimes move so quickly, as if you look away for just a moment the whole world will change and you're suddenly running around playing catch up.

The observer could identify just when the world had started to change. It all started less than a month ago, it was all so clear to him now, the chain of events that led to them all being here today. Of course even if you see changes occurring you can't know where they will lead, not really; it's not like a train wreck or something when you can see what bad thing was going to happen and try to either do something about it or just get the hell out of the way. Cold hard reality just doesn't work that way. It's only with hind sight that the events really become clear and you can see where it all went wrong; where you'd gone wrong. . Being human you always tell yourself, in what's almost a reflex action, things like it wasn't really your fault or that next time it will be different and you'll be ready then but you never are, not really; such is life, ever onward always onward. That thought brought on a very deep sigh.

A few weeks ago

The insistent and very annoying buzzing of her alarm clock woke Holly Johnson from what she considered her all too brief slumber. . She'd gotten in late again last night and with the sounding of her alarm the young women could see when she'd could finally and more or less successfully focus her hazel eyes that she was already running late today. Must have slept threw the damn alarm again, Holly grumbled to herself. She rolled out of bed and tried her best to hit the ground running, but to anyone that would have been watching it would have resembled more of a stagger than a run but it was the best she could with so little sleep, she had a lot to do again today and, if she wanted to be someone in the TV news business, she had to get moving.

First things first she, though, and after puling her long reddish blond hair out of her face, Holly headed to the kitchen for the first of what promised to be many cups of coffee. Only after that part of her morning routine was done to her satisfaction could she head into the bathroom for an even more urgently needed shower. Holly tried not to look at her freshly awakened appearance too closely in the bathroom mirror since from experience she had a good idea of just how bad she looked. One old roommate had told her with a laugh that first thing in the morning her long hair had looked like she'd stuck her finger in a light socket. .

The reason she'd gotten in so late again wasn't that she'd had a hot date like her mom would have wanted, but instead she'd spent the night with a variety of dead bodies. First there had been a double murder in one of the seedier parts of town and then just as she and her camera man or rather camera person, Tami, were wrapping that up they got a call from Roger the manager of the station telling them to get their cute little butts over to the interstate where there had been a four car pileup. He wanted some good footage for the morning news and if they didn't screw it up he would run it again at noon and maybe even at 5pm, that is, if nothing better happened. Holly had to remind herself of the old but true saying in the news business, if it bleeds it leads. So as a consequence of that, the two women had been in for a late night. .

They'd already done the edit for the morning news but Holly had to get into the station early to do the reedit for the noon show. As if reading her still foggy mind, Holly's cell phone started chirping. Checking the caller ID she could only groan. Pulling the tooth brush out of her mouth she flipped open the source of her current annoyance.

"Yea Tami," she told her over-achieving assistant and camera operator/ jack of all trades. .

"I know I'm late."

"Yes, I over slept again, no don't worry about picking me up. I'll just meet you at the station and have the video from last night ready and we'll quickly redo it before Roger even knows about it ok?" Holly assured her, knowing full well Roger was a stickler for certain things in fact he could be a real pain sometimes but he was the boss. She paused in her musings to listen to Tami argue about Roger and her being late again.

"Look," Holly told her, "Just stay away from Roger and if he corners you just tell him I'm on my way."

With that she flipped her phone shut and tossed it onto the counter and headed for the shower. At least she had her own car today. With the two of them working so closely together they had gotten into the habit of one of them taking there own car to some of the scenes they shot video at if they knew its going to be a late night. At least that way they both didn't have to go back to the station just to get their own vehicle. Even with that it wouldn't have been the first time that they had talked it over and had swapped cars between them. But fortunately not today, since Holly really hated that little piece of scrap metal that Tami drove around.

Earlier that same morning in a more dilapidated part of town than Holly enjoyed living in, someone else was nearly ready to face a new day. But rather than wake up to the sound of an alarm the man in question awoke with a shout of panic, waking from his dream or rather a nightmare. The dreams of what was, as he called them had come again, they always seemed to find him, no matter what he did.This one had been particularly vivid and it took him a moment to remember who he was and where he was. But after a moment he put it all together again. His name was John Collins; that's right, he remembered now. . There were times he would forget for a moment since he'd been so many different people over the years it was sometimes hard to always keep it straight. He'd even taken to having it written down so he could refer back to it if he needed to but fortunately today he wasn't that out of it. .

The dreams were simply variations on a set of themes. . His nightly torment would find him somewhere in one of his past lives. Last night he had gotten to see his beloved wife Edith and be reminded once again how young and beautiful she was all those years ago. As if he could ever forget her. With her soft brown hair and hazel eyes, she had been so young and full of life; of course, back then, he had been too.. Regardless how he might have looked to someone he met walking down the street, he didn't feel young; in fact he was hard pressed to remember a time when he had felt that way.

But in his dream John could see her and he'd go to her and try to touch her but she would draw away as if she was afraid of him even though he would never hurt her, ever. Another thing about the dream was all the people; the young couple was surrounded with all these people, almost countless individuals, there were so many, men and women as well as children, young, old, ever color, and race.

She had started to run, but even though they were in a dense crowd of people, she seemed to have no difficulty slipping between them so that no matter how hard he chased after her, he could never quite catch up; she would always just stay out of reach.

But finally the crowds closed in and had cut him off so he couldn't get through, only then did he realize he had seen these people before. Not in this realm, but in what most people think of as reality. But too him that was the real land of nightmares and to make matters worse it was a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.

But fortunately this tormented soul could wake from this particular dream and he did so with a shout to find himself back in his run down little apartment and his drab life.

Seeing the time was still well before dawn, John knew that after his dreams tonight he would never be able to get to back to sleep so he did the only thing he could do and that was to roll out of bed and face another new day. Shuffling through the living room in route to the kitchen to get his coffee started he passed the small collection of treasured items that he kept with him; through necessity he'd gotten in the habit of moving a lot and as a consequence of that liked to travel light.

The small drab apartment had come furnished which suited him. It even had a TV, not the he watched it much; the radio was more his speed. One of the few exceptions to the lack of technology you would find around the apartment was the laptop computer set up on the rickety kitchen table. That, along with his cell phone and digital cameras, were about the only things in the apartment you could even generously consider as up to date. . He had those only because he had too. He worked as an freelance photographer so he would get calls about crime scenes, accidents, all sorts of things and he'd go there to shoot some pictures and then email them to whoever it was that hired him for the shoot. He worked with a lot of online publications; he really wouldn't call them news sites but they paid well when he got the shots and that's all that counted.

He was also known for being able to find a lot of opportunities himself, especially in the case of murders or any other violent crime or accident. His nominal bosses just thought he had a nose for that sort of thing. If they only knew the truth he sometimes wondered, what would they really think then? But seeing the camera gear reminded him that he still hadn't checked to see if he'd gotten paid for last nights work. It had been a car accident, a fairly grisly one too; not that the site of the blood and broken bodies bothered him anymore but he did know the old saying about if it bleeds it leads. . So after getting confirmation that they liked the shots and would pay him his usual fee, he lit up a cigarette and went to get his breakfast ready. .

At last pulling into the parking lot of the station Holly did manage to slip into the building without Roger seeing her and even made it into the editing room to find Tami looking over the footage from last night just like she said she'd be. At least one of them had been on the ball, Holly thought ruefully. It wasn't til about an hour later that Roger poked his head into the room to find the two women had already finished up the noon edit. Seeing that it looked like a slow news day he told them not unexpectedly to have another edit ready for the 5pm show just in case and then left.

Later the two of them were just finishing up a fluff piece about dog groomers when word came in on the police scanner of a hit and run of a woman not too far away. The two news women knew a good thing when they heard it and got to the scene as fast as they could (without breaking too many traffic laws) so they'd have some good shots before the whole area was swarming with people. Unfortunately by the time they arrived and set up, the cops had the area closed off so they couldn't get too many close ups but, well, you just had to take what you could get in this business.

Holly decided and, not for the first time, to get some shots of the crowd too, more on a whim than anything else. After all who knows, maybe they could see some of the dead women's friends crying or something; Holly knew those shots were good from experience.. Unfortunately, while there were a few people around that looked upset, most of them were just rubbernecking to see what they could. . Holly spotted a few people that even had cameras of there own. Of these most of them she dismissed as just civilians but a couple could have been professionals. It wasn't just the more sophisticated camera gear they carried or the easy way they carried it but rather they had the look of having seen a lot of these types of things before themselves. Pushing those thoughts out of her mind as unimportant, Holly knew the two of them had to get the raw footage back to the station ASAP so they packed up as fast as they could and headed out.

John though had gotten some good shots of the hit and run. In fact he'd gotten here first. He'd hung around longer than he usually did especially on jobs that he hadn't been sent out on. He really wasn't sure why he stayed this time; it just seemed like the thing to do. . That's when he saw her. She was a member of one of the TV crews that wasn't really all that interesting to him; he'd seen plenty of them over the years. . So many in fact he hardly even noticed them anymore. But there was something about her that got his attention and on a whim he brought his camera to his eye and shot a few frames of the petite women with the reddish hair and of the other slightly taller brown haired woman that was with her. The two of them shared such a passing resemblance that John wondered for a moment if they were related somehow. .

Deciding that he'd seen everything that he was going to see here, John sent out some electronic inquirers to a few web sites to see if anyone was interested in the shots he'd gotten. . After that John did what he always did when he had time to kill, which was most of the time: havea few smokes and cruise the city watching the people. He especially liked to head to places where there were lots of people since they were what he was after.

Sooner or later he always found what he was looking for and not surprisingly he did tonight as well. . Stopping by a food court that he knew was open all night, John was just starting in on his burger and chili fries when he sensed the person he'd been looking for had entered the room with him. Now there were lots of people around so as he munched on his food, John paid closer attention to those around him and it didn't take long for him to zero in on the women in question. Sizing her up John figured she was 30 to 35 year old black woman; she seemed attractive enough with long black hair and big brown eyes. It was too bad really that she was going to die, he thought to himself, but shit happens.

Holly and Tami had both thought at various times that maybe they should just move into the station since they both seem to spend so much time here and tonight was no exception. They had barely gotten the footage for the hit and run done when the call came in of a women being found raped and murdered down town. . So once again they were grabbing their gear and climbing back into there well worn van and off they went. Not for the first time, Holly considered that it was shaping up to be a rough year for violent crime in the city.

The crime scene looked pretty straight forward to both women. Even if it was a bit grisly from what the police were willing to tell them, the victim, an African American woman, was jumped and dragged into the ally where at least one but possibility multiple men raped and beat her to death. If it hadn't been for a semi-homeless man looking for tin cans, who knows how long she could have lain there, Holly wondered. If she had it would have given vermin-like rats a chance at the body and that really would have made this a lot worse. Early on in her career she'd seen something like that and the image still haunted her. But shaking herself out of those gloomy thoughts, Holly got to work.

So after getting the shots they needed the duo headed back to the station to get it edited and ready for the morning news. Being the more tech oriented of the two women, Tami spent some of her limited free time checking out a few online publications. It was while doing this she found to her surprise that one site already had shots of the same murder scene that she and Holly had just gotten back from. In fact whoever had taken the pictures had somehow gotten some real up close and personal ones. Looking closer Tami realized that whoever it was had even gotten there before the police had closed off the area, since she couldn't see any yellow police tape or even any cops in the pictures. She did find herself wondering out of professional curiosity just how whoever it was had pulled that off. But glancing back to her own footage running on the monitors, she wondered if maybe they had gotten a shot of the mystery photographer here somewhere. .

Without considering the chain of events she was setting in motion Tami mentioned what she'd found to Holly then got back to work. Later though, Holly's thoughts though kept going back to what Tami had said and the more she thought about it the more her little reporter's antenna started to twitch, could there be a story here? These so called online magazines wereconsidered more or less bottom feeders by the more mainline news agencies and no one really paid all that much attention to them. But could she maybe track this one person down and use whoever it was as a window into how these groups work? She mused that idea over to herself.