Fired.

DAV

Based on a True Story
Yet Utterly Fictitious




Beach drivers block me up on the bridge. Nobody cares that men work on Saturday mornings. The sun doesn't care that I don't have sunglasses and it's glare is damaging my eyes. I have no swimsuit and I ain't going to any beach. If I want to be uncomfortable and get sticky sandy much in between my toes and burn up in the sun and get wet and exhausted and angry, I'll work!

I drive up to the hopspital shell. Inside, half built/half deconstructed concrete walls, with re-bar jutting out from the broken off bits, enclose me. The white paint cannot penetrate the darkness.

This is the definition of powerless.

My tiny Mag-Lite clears a path through the rubbish. Hospital beds and random medical technology junked. Imported. Exported. Inported and outported. Outpatiented. Patented. Ted. Pat.
What?

I walk down a dusty corridor. A chunk of metal thwacks my leg, but it's alright. I'm wearing jeans. Dungarees. Can't bust 'em. Can't break me. I can walk through napalm. I can walk to the light switch. Flick it. The light flickers. The background noise buzzes. The noise is reminiscent of an ominous warehouse in a horror movie. Or in Miami. Whichever. The power is dead, and that dictates the mood, which is currently DEATH. Either way I have no clue what I'm really doing.

*ding*

The elvevator door creeps open. When looking to be locked up in a claustrophobic trap in an abandoned building in the sweltering summer heat, using elevators in powerless buildings is the way to go. Without keen confidence in my ability to jump from one eye-beam to another over an 80 ft gap, however, this is the only way to get to where I need to go. I push the button to take me to the top floor. Floor 4.

*ding*

Floor 3. DEAD silence. I flash my flashlight around. The walls are pink. There are many rooms along the hallway with healthy looking equipment., unlike on the bottom floor. This stuff is reusable, sellable. The syringes are fresh. I want nothing to do with any of it. Back into the elevator.

*ding*

Mag-Lite. The lobby. What the hell? Is this some kind of circus elevator? I tapped the button for floor 4. The walls here are off white. There is a plastic plant in the corner. Empty pots. Plastic chairs line the wall near a semi-circle reception desk. There is a gigantic hole in the floor. If I jump down, perhaps I'll be back where I started. If I throw garbage into the hole, perhaps I'll achieve the mentality of the numbskulls who made the ground floor hallway into such a dump. I have no business here.

*ding*

There's the gigantic hole in the concrete. There's a flimsy, rotted slab of plywood that might not support my weight (not that I'm fat). The sun shines over the balcony.I can see my truck from here. I turn around and open the door to the electrical room.
Mag-Lite.
The buzzing begins again. I feel like I am surrounded by ten million gigantic (possibly mutated?) bees. It's so insanely loud. I flick the switch. The bright white light illuminates the ochre/yellow walls. -Not reminiscent of Yellow Jacket- The whirr of my generator outside, downstairs, is loud and clear when I stand near the inner window, but the buzzing is infuriating.

Dust and old parts, screws, brackets, whatever, are strewn and flung all along the yellow floor. The rustbucket machine takes the forefront as focal point. Large cracked pipes hang precariously, yet still solidly attatched to the old generator by their thick iron and steel. Rusted bolts carapace the broken machine's tender electrical underbelly, but that is for my protection. Today, I shall hassle myself to remove the iron plate.

The machine hooks itself to some crusty old power boxes. Switches on. I peer into the sloppy array of high amp wires. The empty eye sockets of a long-fried, long-DEAD rodent peer back at me from the knotted confusion.

Flash. Flicker.

Or not so long-DEAD.

Is it... alive?

Not the rat. The friggin box. This place is a bomb! I dive out the window as the ticker strikes the crucial time. I hear the flare. The inferno envelops the room, melting the paint, scorching the wires, burning the impenetrable metal shields of the malfunctioning machine.With a crash, I land atop my temporary generator. Adrenaline keeps my back strong and I lay on my back watching the flame tongues lick about the window, occasionally venturing out towards their father sun, searching desperately for me.

I unplug my generator. This is not a job well done. Not by me. Not by the murderous explosion. Nobody did what they were supposed to do.