TAPELESS CHORD (1)

It's the story of a teen guy around 20 years prior. He was my classmate in senior high. He was into music, he was artistic, and he had good friends and great respect around the town for his skills. As far as I knew, he never talked about his biological parents or any siblings. He lived most of his young age in foster homes. He was lucky enough to find good families and build good relations with them. Then he lived independently doing stuff he liked and working shifts at a motel as a receptionist. He never wandered off his coarse and was always a bit cautious of his surroundings. It was final days of our graduation that's when we lost him. It was a month before the graduation, I went to meet him near the motel he worked. He was fine and we talked about many things our past, our future, about our classmates and he told me how much he was going to miss all of this. 

About 3 days later he went missing suddenly and nobody knew where he went or what happened to him. He was at the motel doing his night shift and all his belongings were in his room except for him. There was a huge search Operation conducted for a month and to no avail. Nobody could ever solve his whereabouts. The people who knew him were devastated. His foster parents were living in hell. They were still hopeful for his return and did everything possible. Everytime they see me they would ask if anything had come up. It was disheartened to watch them not give up. Years went by and most of us moved on and even the cops had put the missing case behind the shelves. 

It has been 20 years now and rarely I ever recall him, just for the fact that he mysteriously vanished from this world. Today I accidently met his parents on my way back home and we had a long conversation at their place. They still thought he was going to come back some day and they still kept his old room as it was from 22 years ago. His name was Garry/ Garry Teller. Mrs Teller was repeatedly talking about something creepy in his room and asked me to check if I could have any clue. She took me to his room and it was exactly as it was in 2000's. She made me sit down and she started to talk about his music passion and all the things that were unrelated to the subject. I stood up to leave as it was clear to me by the look of it Ms.Teller had lost her mind or she was trying to make me lose mine. She stood up with me and by opening the cupboard she took out a Walkman( A famous music and radio device of the 2000's). She handed it to me and looked at me with a serious gaze. I was already freaked out by her behaviour now she is handing me over this Walkman and looking dead in to my eyes as if I knew something. I calmed myself and asked her what was I supposed to do with the player. She asked me to turn it on and I did, as it was a digital one it did not need a tape or CD to play a song. And I did.

 As it switched on I pressed play and we could here someone's breathing in the recording. My body went out cold. I could sense it was 100% Garry's. I looked into Ms Tellers eyes and asked her if she told this to Police or Mr. Teller. She shook her head in a disagreement. I was puzzled and questioned for a reason that's when showed me, the Walkman was running without a Battery or Juice. I was shitting myself seeing there were no batteries inside body of the device nor there was any memory chip in it. It was running all by itself and the thought of Garry breathing inside it as a Ghost made me lose mind. I instantly threw the Walkman inside the cupboard and took Ms. Teller out of the room and asked her about what was happing. She stated that she came across this 2 years ago while cleaning Garry's room and she could listen to someone on the other side breathing and making minor clicks and noises. Initially she was scared as I was and tried telling it to Mr. Teller but he called her dilutional and denied her claims refusing to accept it by saying that, there might be a glitch or the recording might be on the internal memory of the device. It was evident that after this many years of search and seing lots of dead ends he was not letting himself to stumble upon a false hope and he even considered Ms. Teller to have gone insane and argued that someone in the house needed to be sane to survive. It was clear to both of us that nobody in the right mind would believe them even Mr. Teller. Ms.Teller on the other hand was glowing in her face, the woman who longed for her lost son for 20 years has found something concrete and the fact that she found some one else who could verify her belief and made her forget the doubts of her being gone insane. She was happy for a while that it weren't her imaginations and I belived her. 

Garry's Unsolved story will continue with 4 more parts.