The curious soul drowns in 3 inches of water

I am a curious soul. As such I'm also in a perpetual state of being 'a student'. I had been taking classes at my local state college for years now and when i realized that wasn't going to make me money i had to get a job. With my various certifications i was almost qualified as an EMT but not quite. Honestly i only took the CPR and first aid classes because this girl from my fencing class was doing it. I had no military experience but I'd taken a couple karate classes on campus. I could type but so what, so can everyone. I can sort of program but not good enough to get paid. I was no mechanic and i am not good with my hands. The campus has 4 coffee shops but I'm not big on waking up before noon so they're all out. So what was i qualified for. You guessed it, campus security! Third shift.

The campus sides up to a small tributary that feeds the Missouri river and the towns main industry is pumping students through this school. Me, I'm a local born and raised so i can attend cheap. but not free. So getting a job on campus was natural. My new supervisor tony promised I'd have lots of free time on my hands and as long as i didn't go overboard, i could study on the job. This was going to be a cakewalk. There were two dorm buildings but each was covered by a private security company that had a more national presence. There were a couple rowdy parties, some rape allegations and even a couple convictions. The campus had a black eye and had to crack down. The campus went from a nationally mid ranked party school to ........ well honestly it is still a nationally mid ranked party school. Just not on campus. Plenty of apartments went up across the bridge on the other side of the river.

The bridge crosses the river , on one side the campus and on the other apartments, housing and a couple strip malls. Lining the road on either side of the bridge is 4 or 5 blocks of what could be considered downtown nicknamed "the main". A number of boutique shops nobody ever seems to buy from and bars. Lots of bars. So this means we have about 100 students that live on campus and about the same number of faculty. It is not a long list of people and we have pictures of everyone. When some drunk wanders in from 'the main' we can look them up fairly quickly tell if we have an issue. Once in a while we have to go out and break up a fight, stop people from pissing all over the campus. Once in a while we even break up some sweet sweet loving. This campus is a bit like Disneyland in that way, there are camera's that can see every inch of the campus, everyone knows it, but they still get naked and go at it. Then there are the truly awful incidents.

Rapes are down to 0, robbery down to 1% , murders are 0, but assaults. A smidgen high. With all the testosterone and booze in this town its inevitable. We have a fight a week during football season. ON the campus. It's usually between the dorms and the bars where bad relationships end or start. Guys punch each other out, friends jump in and kick them while they're knocked out or worse a guy knocked out on his feet falls back and cracks open the back of his head on a curb or fountain cement, a bench. Like i said, I'm almost an EMT so i like to go check these out since an ambulance always comes. I try to shoot the shit with the E MT's once the victim's stabilized. Honestly I'm kinda pumping them for tips on getting a job other than "finish your certification". I became friends with the guy that usually shows up, Kurt. He and his partner who didn't talk much were the closest and also ran third shift.

One day Kurt was picking up an overdose , by the way we "don't have overdoses" on paper. But an overdose none the less. After the guy woke up Kurt told me they were gonna go get some breakfast burritos at the cafe on main. I finished up and met them down there. I told him it was pretty fucked up seeing somebody overdose, that has to be the worst thing to witness.

"nah not even. I mean we all know that the dorm security would rather wheel these guys out than have a kid die on the property. That's fucked up but that's not the worst thing going on around here."

Kurt went on to explain that when the bulk of housing was moved of campus the pedestrian traffic across the bridge quadrupled.

"I get called out because people see somebody floating in the river and they call 911, dispatch sends us thinking we might have a live one. nah. Always some gray faced body. Luckily they're not bloated or whatever but , its at least once a month. Last October was 5 in one month. ya don't hear that shit when they publish the numbers do ya? Nope, its always we're the safest in x and the best at y"

I asked "whats going? drunks on a slippery bridge? Hitting their heads?"

" i don't think so no. I don't usually have time to go follow up but when I'm there i haven't seen one with a head injury. Which is strange if they're falling. The bridge is pretty tall and this river is more of a stream, its just not that deep. In most spots even knocked out your chances of landing face up are high and you'll just float to the bank. My cop friend told me that one guy had drowned, case closed. How the hell do you drown in that thing? its like 4 inches deep upriver from the bridge"

I left that morning and got to sleep around 8am. The whole conversation left me uneasy. When i got on my shift a couple nights later i just couldn't' picture it. A baby can technically drown in a bucket but a grown man can't. They would have to fall up river, face down, knocked out and still breathing in the water long enough to drown while the river bumped them around on the stones. I even asked the second shift crew if they could picture it. They couldn't either, it was strange. Upriver was technically part of campus. I kept watching the walking path up by the river. It was pretty well lit and our cameras could see most of the path all the way until it went off campus. I responded to a couple drunk wanderer calls and bounced them off campus. I kept watching the river path cameras, bingo , people. Well, drunks. A staggered parade of drunks coming home or going to get more drunk , it was hard to tell until they turned onto the bridge and crossed the river. They all seemed to just be on this path too smoke, smoking being banned city wide. It was a pretty secluded spot and drunks love to smoke. I'd broken the case, the best place to smoke a cigarette after drinking on main. Great. They would mesh well with the constant night joggers. The super fit vs the whiskey soaked smokers.

I asked for some third shift help and on weekends i got some. I got 1 other person that was going to head out and shew the smokers while i sat and watched the cameras. The very first night my partner went down to the path. I watched the cameras and without issue he got rid of the drunks without too much piss spilled.

The next day around 10am i was woken up and asked to come into work. Kurt was out front and so were the police and my manager. They'd found another body in the river. Kurt remembered me talking about our camera system and his cop friend came by to see if we recorded anything. Since i was on shift he asked me some questions and asked to see how the system worked. Then my manger , myself and one of the officers went into a separate room and watched the recordings from the night before. They had a time of death predicted around 3am so we watched our video from 1 to 5am , multiple times , from every angle. After the 10th time i noticed somebody that looked like the picture the officer had shown me of the deceased. The timestamp showed 1:45am. They were walking slowly , and drunk by the look of it. At about 1:47 a faster group passes him, he is walking solo now. At 1:53 another solo walks by and it looks like they sneezed. Our deceased appears to yell at the man , probably sneezed on by the looks of it.. The sneezing man we started referring to as 'our walker' and our deceased disappear from our camera view for 5 minutes under a part of the path with trees blocking our camera view. Only 'our walker' comes out. By the look of his pace he hadn't deviated. Not necessarily a suspect but this guy might have been the last person to see the deceased alive. No matter what angle we looked from we could never get a shot of his face. It was like he always looked down or away at exactly the right moment.

I followed up with Kurt, the police had to chalk this up as another accidental drowning. T Hey said they were able to catch up with 'our walker' who ended up just being another student. This rubbed me the wrong way because i kept watching videos. at about 5:30 am on another part of the campus i saw 'our walker' and i got a shot of him, the face was blurry but a blonde beard. I requested more third shift help and since we had another dead body the campus agreed. This gave me freedom to go down and watch the river. For 2 weeks straight i spent 45 minutes of every hour in a dark spot by the river where i could look up and see both the bridge and our river path. Eventually i knew I'd see 'our watcher'. Then one night i did.

The drunk smoker parade was filing along when I noticed one slow solo walker. Behind him was a familiar site. "out walker" was hooded, walking quickly. He really stood out. No stumble, no slowness, no smoke and no deviation on his path. A straight line to the solo stumbling drunk. The walker passed and turned his head towards the solo drunk. Then walked on. The solo stumbled on. Walked slowly until the tree covered part of the path. This is where i saw it. The walker turned back and grabbed the drunk by the shoulders, pointed him towards the river and pushed him up and over the rail. I guess i shouldn't call him the drunk, how about the victim. The victim rolled down the slope and onto the bank of the river. The walker then ran to the end of the part of the path where the trees opened up again and walked off. I couldn't see where the victim went. I froze. Was i watching a murder? I couldn't be. I looked , hard to tell in the dark but the victim was face up and on the bank. His legs in the water and the rest of him dry. So i waited. An hour passed , the victim started to move his legs. I wanted to rush over and help but just then i saw our walker come out of the bushes up river. I saw him kneel down and pull a bottle out of his pocket. He put it in the victims mouth. Then proceeded to move the victim into the water, The victims eyes were open and looking around, he was talking but none of the words made sense. Our walker then dunked the victims head. For 20 seconds , then pulled it up. 30 seconds and pulled it up. Whispered in the victims ear. Over and over again. Each time the head stayed down a little longer.

Just then my radio crackled loudly "Dood you've been gone 2 hours, get back here i gotta take a piss!". The walker stopped , dropped the victim and turned to face me. He looked right at me. It was Kurt. I felt a painful sting in the back of my head and all the vision and light went out from my eyes. Something had hit me hard.

I woke up in what looked like a motel bathroom. I had my hands tied behind my back. I was propped up on the toilet. I focused my eyes a little more and could see the water was running in the tub. I could feel everything but my limbs weren't working. In a panic i tried to heave my chest and breathe, i tried to scream but little came out. A light groan at best. I lost consciousness again for a bit and woke up. This time Kurt was in front of me , the water now off.

"hey buddy. Sorry my partner had to crack you on the head, but i knew after our talk that you'd be watching. I didn't want you ruining a good thing for us. Now you might be wondering why you can't move. GHB my friend. On its own it doesn't act very fast but mixed with other drugs and then aresolized in a high enough dosage it can do its work pretty fast. We managed to come up with a cocktail that makes the GHB hit harder and come out of a persons system faster. The best part is , the additional elements make it very volatile. If eddy and i drag our feet long enough , by the time the cops show up to look at the body there's nothing left. They could take a sample right then and there and run toxicology on it, they'd find nothing. Better yet autopsies around here don't screen for GHB. These rubes wouldn't know to look for it in the first place. If you just wouldn't have come down to the bridge man. But like you said, you're a curious soul. I guess i knew you'd come looking and come inquisitive.

Here's one last curiosity for you friend. Have you ever wondered what it's like to drown while fully aware , while able to feel all pain , and unable to stop any of it because your limbs don't work?

The two men lifted my body. I could feel their grip but i couldn't move the limbs. I was yelling at my own limbs but they wouldn't budge. They moved me over the tub and my head went in. The truth about drowning is it's very painful. The lungs and head feel like they have hot jets of steel stabbing them. The diaphragm convulses. The esophagus convulses too , trying to puke out what ever is blocking the air. But its no use. Eventually time slows, light fades to a pinhole ...