#meet amelia montez! a random bit character

[albatris]

snippet sunday.....

sunday snippet.....

oOoOo mysteries abound

“And his name…?”

“Robert,” she said. “Robbie.”

Alex pried and she answered. What was Robbie like as a person? How did he find out about the job at March Pharmaceutical? What drew him to the company? Despite her obvious distaste for the situation, she was surprisingly obliging.

“He was fresh out of uni with a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science,” Amelia explained. “The job was advertised as requiring minimal experience. The pay was insane. Nothing else seemed off about it at the time.”

Amelia went on to say that Robbie had always been a bit isolated and odd—he’d had some pretty severe mental health struggles—but things got markedly worse a few weeks into the job. He was coming home late, his speech was becoming bizarre and increasingly vague, and he reported strange gaps in his memory. This in particular piqued Alex’s interest.

“What do you mean by strange gaps?” it asked.

“He couldn’t remember what he was working on,” Amelia replied. “He could describe to me the building he worked in, the cubicle, and he could tell me he spent a day writing reports, or a day in the lab, but… the actual details always escaped him. He would talk in circles, avoid the question.”

“Did he seem distressed by this?” Alex asked. “Did he know he was forgetting things?”

“Sometimes it bothered him,” Amelia said. “But you have to understand… it was like he was drugged. He was so listless and vague. It was like all the emotion had left him.”

“And you were concerned with his safety?”

“I was. I thought he might have been having some kind of depressed or psychotic episode. But whatever it was—it was tied directly to March Pharmaceutical. I’m sure of it.”

Occasionally Robbie would stay out all night. And soon, the odd night or two absent turned into the odd week or two.

“It would have been easier if he’d just been cheating,” Amelia said. “But I knew it was something far more sinister.”

He’d come home with mysterious bruises and punctures in the crook of his elbow. The longer he was gone, the more frantic Amelia had grown, but the police told her he wasn’t a missing person so there was nothing they could do. He always came home.

Until he didn’t.

“By that point he’d been missing for three and a half weeks,” Amelia said tiredly. “I was used to it, so I hadn’t flagged it with the police. By the time I realised he wasn’t coming home again… well, I suppose the trail had already run cold.”

“Run cold?” Alex pressed. “How could it have possibly run cold? Did they investigate March Pharmaceutical?”

“March Pharmaceutical told the police he’d quit weeks ago, and they had the paperwork to prove it.”

“You think they’re lying?”

“I know they’re lying.” Amelia set her jaw. “What they did to him at that place… that wasn’t my husband anymore. I don't trust a word out of that Reuben March's mouth.”