The plane landed in Montrose, Colorado on a Saturday. Evan stepped out of the plane, yawning. The flight’s departure had been scheduled for 11 A.M. but his friends were anxious and had insisted upon getting to the airport three hours before the takeoff. They always poked fun at Evan, saying he was a “bad luck charm” of sorts and they didn’t want to miss this flight due to some unexplained phenomenon. Granted, the validity of that claim had a pretty strong backing to it. His friends once went hiking in Arizona without him and they had a great time. Beautiful views, wonderful memories, and a magical experience all around. Every time Evan would tag along, though, they would have fun until an unexplainable accident happened. There was the time someone rolled their ankle at the top of the trail, which caused a group effort to carry the wounded hiker down three miles of declining terrain. Then there was the great scorpion debacle. “Who did that happen to again,” he asked himself as he subconsciously rubbed the stubble on his chin.
“Get the hell out of the way, dude.”
Evan’s eyes lit up again as he turned around and began to say, “Do you have a problem?” He’s pretty sure that his voice trailed off after the word ‘have’ and his short-term memory flooded back in. He was staring at his friend Tyrone. Tyrone’s girlfriend soon poked her head out from behind his broad shoulders and briefly glanced at the two of them.
“What’s the hold up, guys?” Her name was Jennifer. Evan began realizing he was partially clogging up the exit of the plane and started walking to the double doors that would lead him to the airport.
Evan found himself slightly annoyed that Jennifer was here. It was nothing against her, just the idea of her. He realized that this rationalization felt quite a bit more offensive than he originally intended when the thought came to him. It’s just that when he had proposed the idea of going to stay at his family’s vacation home in Telluride, Colorado for spring break; he only thought of going with a couple of guy friends. Of course, his male friends all had girlfriends. This forced the two girls to be factored into the equation and much to his shock; his parents were fine with it.
“They’d never let me have a girl over here without some supervision. They’d probably install cameras in every room to make sure there was no fooling around going on.” Evan chuckled at this thought and then grimaced at how creepy of an idea that would be.
He reached the airport entrance and turned around to make sure his friends were all accounted for; all four of them. Tyrone and Jennifer stopped next to him. Evan was taller than Tyrone, but lanky. He was an unimpressive brunette that was good enough to score a date with an attractive girl, but if he admitted to someone that he’d been single for the past four years, it wouldn’t particularly come as a shock.
The group of friends were all seniors at Arizona State University. Tyrone had long locks that came down four inches past his shoulders. He was muscular and dark skinned with a few family-centric tattoos scattered across his body. He was actually a walk-on running back his freshman year until he realized that he wasn’t great at multitasking and almost failed his first semester of school. His girlfriend Jennifer was the stereotypical psychology major who believed she was already a trained therapist, with a dash of psychic. She was short, around five feet and a quarter. That left two others.
Evan turned to Tyrone and asked, “Weren’t Tony and Anne right behind you?”
Tyrone shrugged, “I dunno. When I left my seat they were still snoring. A flight attendant will probably throw them off eventually.”
“I wouldn’t say thrown off, but thanks for not waking us up, dicks.” The low voice came from a chubby Korean guy with a flannel shirt on and shorts. Tony was a funny looking guy or at least that’s what Evan thought. He always had on some type of flannel with sporting shorts. Not that Tony would ever even entertain the thought of playing a sport. He had glasses and some traces of acne, but he was smart. Not “racist caricature of Asians” smart. Tony was out-of-this-world smart. Maybe that’s what got him his girlfriend, Anne. She was Vietnamese American and smitten with Tony. She was about five feet and ten inches, which was enough to beat Tony by a couple. She was slender, a regular pretty girl and valedictorian of her high school class. She met Tony in college and became just a regular person. Maybe she liked feeling like a regular person.
Tyrone replied to Tony, “Hey man, ain’t our fault you fell asleep on a short flight.”
“No, but it is your fault that we went to the airport so damn early. What are you, paranoid?”
“I’m punctual. Some people find it a very attractive trait.” He gave Jennifer the side-eye look.
Tony raised his eyebrow, “Well unless you’re trying to get your boss to fall in love with you, might want to find a new way to be punctual.”
Evan intervened, “Hey guys let’s look for a guy holding a sign with my name. He should be driving us over to Telluride.”
Anne’s face lit up and asked, “Ooooh, will he be chauffeuring us around the entire time?”
Evan chuckled and shook his head, “Sorry to disappoint, but we have a Jeep over at the house that we can use.”
Jennifer asked, “So are we gonna rent our skis and stuff today?”
Tyrone snorted, “Skis? You must have me confused, I’m snowboarding.”
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Even replied, “Tyrone, we know. Jen, yeah. We’ll get them today but we’ll probably just hang back at the house. Show you guys around, maybe drink a little.”
Tony grinned and nodded, “A little? You know Tony can only drink a lot.”
Evan chuckled, “Yeah and it’s weird as hell that you refer to yourself in the third person so much. “
The group arrived at the front of their home for the next week. It was a two-story cabin with snow piles on either side of it, a few on the roof, and a small one taking shape at the front. The white enveloped the entire background and gave the cabin a sort of safe-haven type of feel to it. Jennifer asked, “Is anyone else’s service pretty spotty out here?”
Tony responded, “Yeah, plenty of natural interference around here. I’m sure the undying devotees that follow you on IG can wait a little while to get updated, though.” Jennifer gave him a sarcastic grin and the group began getting out of the car.
“Damn, look at that,” Tyrone exclaimed, pointing towards the driveway of Evan’s neighbor. A black Range Rover shimmered in its partially wet glory. The body of the vehicle didn’t seem to have lost any luster. It looked brand new.
“It’s nice, right?” The voice broke the group out of their trance and they looked to the front door of the neighboring house to see what created it. It was the neighbor, as if it would be anyone else. He was a tall, muscular man who had graying hairs on the side. He was probably in his lower forties, but in great shape.
Evan called back (the houses were about forty yards from one another), “Yes, sir! It’s a beauty and it looks brand new!”
“You’re right! That’s because it is brand new! Drove her up here myself,” the man began walking towards them so that they could stop halfway shouting at one another, “The name’s Mel.”
“Hey, I’m Evan. This is Tyrone, Jennifer, Tony, and Anne. So I guess this means that the Petersons moved out?”
“Ah, yes. They downsized, couldn’t afford to keep this house on his salary and her bitchy attitude. Of course that’s all speculation based on the arguing they did in front of me,” Mel noticed a collectively awkward eye shift to the ground by the group and smiled warmly, “seeing as we’re neighbors now, I feel like we should be comfortable enough to share little updates, y’know?” He continued to smile. It was a big smile with teeth that crinkled his eyes. Evan laughed hesitantly at this.
“Yeah, uh, I’ve definitely heard them go at it before. It gets pretty heated. Did you just move in? I haven’t been here in a couple of years so I might have missed out on a bit.”
“Moved in a little over a year ago. That makes sense; I’ve never seen anyone at this house until now. So what’s the deal here? Young entrepreneur who’s made some money? Maybe that’s too high of a standard to set on someone. Parents’ vacation home?”
“Ha, yes sir. Parents’ that is. It’s a beautiful place.”
“I’ll bet it is. Well, it’s been good meeting you kids, but I’ve got a nice friend that I need to meet for a late lunch,” at this moment Mel bunched up his eyebrows and stole a quick glance to the bottom of his sleeve on his black long sleeved shirt, “take it easy now.”
“You too, sir.” Evan admired his broad back as he walked away. He wasn’t staring in an attracted sense, more of a ‘wow this guy could kick my ass’ sense.
Tony whined, “I’m gonna freeze my little nipples off out here, man. Can we go inside now?” Evan smiled and nodded. He produced the key from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole. The doors opened. The interior was nice. Wood finishes on the walls and the floors. There were deer heads scattered on the walls. A few stuffed foxes positioned on shelves as well. The house wasn’t particularly wide, but it did have plenty of rooms and two stories.
The vacation home screamed, “Hi! Rich white people live here!” They journeyed down to the bottom floor (the upstairs was technically floor level, as the house was on a slope that extended lower) and Evan distributed rooms to the couples.
He went into his room and shouted, “Hey let’s meet upstairs in a few minutes! We’ll go out to town and get some lunch.” He was answered by various “ok’s” and “alright’s”. He was excited for what the week had in store for them, although something was bothering him. His neighbor seemed nice enough, but he was strange. Definitely someone who Evan didn’t want to run into any more times than he had to. Unless he was in the mood for another awkward conversation full of details that were probably best left unsaid.
“Hey Mr. Mel! I swung by in case you wanted to tell me about the time you lost your virginity! Spare no detail, I want to hear it all.” Evan chuckled at this thought. He laughed at a lot of things that went on in his head. Still, there was something odd about Mel. He was obviously wealthy, he made that much clear by flaunting his new car and highlighting the fact that Mr. Peterson had to sell the place because he could no longer afford it. He was single. He had no wedding ring, he had to meet someone for a late lunch (possibly a date), and he mentioned Mrs. Peterson’s constant “bitchy attitude”.
Evan was hoping to go into FBI work when he graduated so he constantly overanalyzed things. He felt he could solve any mystery the same way Jennifer felt like she could solve all her friends’ emotional and mental problems.
“Still.” This word kept on popping up in his mind as if trying to escape from his head so he finally let it.
“Still,” this time Evan was back inside of his head, “he was wearing a black long sleeved shirt. It looked nice, pricey, but it had a hole in it. Right around his wrist. It would have had to have been recent because a man like that wouldn’t be wearing a torn shirt in front of people he had never met. Especially someone who puts such an emphasis on money. At least that’s how he came off to me. Then, when he talked about his friend he immediately reached his hand for the tear, but he acted surprised when he felt that it was torn. What could it mean?”
Tyrone popped his head into Evan’s room, “Hey, we’re ready man. We’ll be up top.”
Evan raised his hand in a gesture that meant, “Yeah I’ll be right up.”
“Still,” Evan was back in his thoughts, “it’s probably nothing. I’ve analyzed what feels like hundreds of people since freshman year and no one has turned out to be a killer. Nobody’s been a threat. Maybe I’m just itching for some adventure. Although there was that lady down the street back home who turned out to be stealing silverware from us whenever she came by. How the hell did she even get to the kitchen? And that couldn’t really be put up to my intuition. You could hear the spoons in her pocket a mile away.”
Evan snapped out of that rabbit hole and began thinking again, “But this guy is probably just some dude. You’re just bored is all.”