Milk Carton

            November 29^th and 30^th are my days off from work and since I can no longer deal with the slow, although free, WIFI from McDonalds or the other cafés in Sydney, I have decided to purchase a Broadband Mobile Internet stick.  On Monday, it rains nearly the entire day so I lazily sleep the entire day.  On Tueday, I purchase an 6GB pre-paid stick for $99 from Dick Smith’s, which is the Australian equivalent of Future Shop or Best buy.  After this, I treat myself to a Kangaroo Kebab, which ends up being quite scrumptious.   Outside my apartment, I am approached by a stranger who asks me if I know Dirk.  I tell him I am perplexed and that I do not anyone by that name and he begins to tell me who HE is:

“My name is Robert and I work with a German fellow who lives here or used to live here named Dirk Engelhardt.  We are both employed as engineers for a company called “FLAT”.  Dirk hasn’t shown up for work in almost two weeks now and as a close work friend of his, I am quite worried about him.  He mentioned to me, just before he went missing, that had become ill.  I have tried to call and text him every day for the last week or so and have been unable to get a hold of him.  Today I decided to wait here until he showed up and I have been sitting on this bench now for a couple of hours.  Please take my number and contact me if you see or hear from him, and ask your landlord if he knows anything about his whereabouts.  If he does turn up, tell him I was here and that it has nothing to do with work and as a human being I am worried about him. Everyone at work is quite concerned that something bad has happened to him and we would like figure out what exactly happened to Dirk.”

Upon getting Robert’s phone number, I suddenly put the pieces of the puzzle together and realise that I am living in this Dirks apartment.  He must have snapped or something.  I call Fred to ask him if he knows anything about this situation and just tells me the same story as before, that he came to pick up the rent and Dirk and all off his stuff was just gone.  Hopefully this is true and Fred didn't chop him up into little pieces to collect his bond.  When I text Robert back, I mention that maybe he could start a Facebook group so he can get closure to this situation.  I was going to say that if he has a picture of him, he could post it on the web page, sort of like they used to do on the side of a milk carton.