Chapter 3: CHAPTER 2
I remember going to Disney World once with my father when I was five. It's my earliest memory, and I remember the carousel most of all. I hadn't ever experienced that sense of extreme dizziness. Seeing the characters all around and that many people in one place...it all coalesced into a single perfect memory.
I remember calling out to my father and running toward him after leaving the carousel. That feeling of the world spinning underneath my feet. The total loss of control—and now I sit here with the exact same feeling, and the world's
I look down at my ID in my hands. With the force I slammed the card I saw that it bent quite a bit. Damn things were cheap as all hell, anyway. Don't even think that this thing will work anymore now. It was always just another way for them to get you to shell out another thirty dollars.
Hoping that I'm wrong, I gather my bearings and stand up with the bent card clutched in my hand. I make my way across the room and press the card against the reader. Once, twice, and a third time and it does not give. I groan loudly. I turn and rest my head against the door, pounding it slightly.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. God...goes to show how awful these things really were. The door is locked tight and the windows were so thick I wouldn't be breaking them with anything short of a battering ram. Of course they couldn't cheap out on the budget for that. And I'd definitely classify this as an emergency situation.
I look back to the security desk, peering around the wall I can see that power is still running to the computers. Of course, these computers had direct access over the scanner system. I hop over the counter top and pull the chair up to the side and ready my fingers on the keyboard.
Username:
Password:
Of course, how could I have forgotten? Damn it, I don't know any of their log-ins...unless, wait a second. I think I remember that the computers here all share a default log-in. I just have to use "admin" for the username and the password should be just "123456." I found that out last year while dicking around in the computer lab. I had the bad habit of forgetting my account password from time to time and I just resorted to using the default since it is much easier to remember.
I type it into the fields and the computer boots up fully. Success! Now it is just a matter of finding the program that controls the scanners. I open up the start menu and go to the search bar.
"Scanner," 0 results. "Lock," 0 results. "Student ID" 1 result, "ID Manual." Ha, perfect!
And to think, I could have made an excellent security guard. I just did the extent of the guard's work that worked here. Especially this one guard who watched Golden Girls on the portable TV he always brought into work. I'm pretty sure you could've been John Wayne Gacy and made it past him.
Actually, reminds me of the time I learned I didn't have to take them seriously. I was out with a friend of mine...well, he was a friend, at least. Don't know if he made it out alive. Anyway, sorry, side tracked. He was this real tall guy. Kieran was his name. Easily the tallest guy on our floor. Could leap a mile if he tried. He passed as over twenty-one when we went to go get some booze down in the city. There was this store they had set up—little mom and pop shop with a cashier who didn't card if you looked the part.
So Kieran heads into the store and buys a few cases of beer. Nothing too fancy. College kids don't care what gets you off if it does the job right. It could be—and often was—the nastiest dirt that did the damage but you sucked it up and you did it because in some small way we were all telling the world that we didn't care for its limitations. We were in control of our own selves.
Turns out, the world was perfectly suited to showing us just what little shits we were. Still, I have very vivid recollections of walking back with Kieran to the dorm. I had the same backpack I got on now—except it was loaded to the brim with bottles and bottles of booze.
Turns out, the natural flow of walking is a lot less stable for glass bottles sitting in a backpack than either of us had planned. I felt it all shatter—one after another and felt all the beer drip through the bag down the back of my legs. I froze right there on the spot and knew I was fucked.
Kieran though, he knew he had none of it on him. His part was done. He didn't even chip in for any of the beer. So in the end, he didn't lose anything. We were just outside our building and I was standing there like an idiot with thirty some-odd bottles of broken beer dripping down my body and signaling "Please get me in trouble."
I was fucked. I'd gotten in trouble before about it—that time not being my fault but instead that of some obnoxiously loud girls one of my floormates invited over. But anyway, getting caught here likely would have led to some serious consequences. I had no parents to radio home to—both died long ago. Pretty sure I would have just been booted out on my ass, handed a fine farewell, and left to my own devices.
I figured if I was going out, I was just going to walk in, accept it, and figure it out from there. I was angry at Kieran, but I figured if I was in his shoes I would have done the same thing. So, rather than get caught out there like a moron, I walked inside.
I swear, my blood froze to the touch as I passed the security guard. And he just...let me through. I slapped my ID against the reader and I walked upstairs. Past the second staircase up and pressed the button for the elevator. I almost expected security to meet me on my floor, arms crossed and all "Yeah, right buddy. Come on, you know exactly what you did."
But they never came.
I walked out of the elevator toward the end of the hall and let the door swing shut behind me as my roommate looked me dead in the eyes with the most shocked look I'd ever seen on his face. He was as frequent a drinker as I, but he didn't have the build of Kieran to avoid getting carded at the shops.
"What the hell are you reeking of?"
And that was how that story ended. From that point on I brought many a bottle back past these gates that now block me from my things. Even now I see that as much as a useless oaf he was at his job, if he was here I probably would never have been able to do…this.
I switch the scanner system off, and I can hear the door unlock. I jump back over the counter top and reach for the handle.
Success, baby!
I grab it, swinging the door open and pulling it closed tightly behind me. That same elevator I took before was to my left, and to my right is a divided staircase that either led down to the basement floor or up to the first. Down in the basement lies the laundry room and a few student lounges. The laundry room is nothing special, five floors of students crammed to do laundry with six washers and driers, it is almost the scariest part of the whole college lifestyle. I've never seen anyone get so vicious over a few dryers.
Then there was the time I walked in on the dance team and their massive orgy down here at three in the morning. There is nothing more indicative of the college experience such as blatant sexual deviancy and large pools of prohibited alcohol.
I tend to stick to one poison over the other. Never much enjoyed the thought of getting attached, specially in a time where people were so desperate in looking for attachment.
Lemme tell you, that time down in the laundry room—kept me away from using those machines for the rest of my stay. Everything felt...like I could imagine exactly who was in which position over which load. I'm sure they enjoyed it well enough—I could even recognize two of the girls who had been the cause of my first meeting with the school dean about improper use of school facilities. What a rip that was.
The lounges weren't that much different, people who wanted to bone usually chose down in the two separate lounges if their roommate was busy with the room. My room's on the second floor. I begin walking up the stairs to the right, and I swing open the door right at the top. The first floor extends in both directions, rooms line each of the walls. Each of them locked, needing their own separate key given only to those that live there or in use by security. I don't remember seeing any of the keys that security had, so I suppose it went with the last guard, wherever he may be. He may as well be six feet under.
My exit is through the door on my right, the stairwell that climbs all the way to the top floor of the building. I'm climbing up the stairs and push the door open onto my floor. To my left are the rooms where everybody smoked a lot of pot. It just seemed like the place to gather, and I remember my hall always smelling of the stuff constantly. To the right are the bathrooms and the rest of the people who would join the people on the left, and just past them on the end is my room. Of course, my roommate was asthmatic, so weed was a deep no from him.
He's gone now, just like everybody else.
I don't know if he's still alive, probably is. He seemed like the kind of guy who would know what to do in a situation like this, he's from Jersey. I walk down to the end and stand in front of my room. It would be a real shame if my door was locked like everybody else's, mine was always so weird that it never fully locked when it closed. That led to some irritating times where a couple of the guys down the hall would sneak into my room and do shit to me while I slept. Well, now I'm making a positive of this, I'll bet they're absolutely jealous now that I have access to my room and all of my shit. That is, if they're still able to feel jealousy.
I open the handle and walk in, smiling at the place that I called home. My bed remains made, my roommate's stuff is still here. I even see the drawer where he kept all his expensive knives. He could become a serial killer with all these fucking knives in his drawer.
I always gave him shit for it.
Turns out his fascination with them just came from the design instead of the use. I toss my backpack onto my bed, and I see a box of Cheez-Its on his desk. He's not going to be eating these anytime soon. They're stale, but at this point I don't give a shit. I'm grabbing them by the fistful and shoving them into my mouth, savoring each bite. Thank the lord for junk food tasting so good.
I walk over to the mini fridge sitting beside my bed, it is still plugged into the wall. I reach inside and grab one of the bottles of soda from the shelf and twist the top open. I'm guzzling the drink down, but have to stop about halfway because it burns. It is a good burn. I miss this burn. I need to shower. I grab my key off of my desk. You know, just in case my door were to actually lock itself. I want to be prepared. I bend down beneath my bed and open up my drawers, clothes I hadn't worn in so long. I'd been so used to my gray t-shirt and shorts that I'd almost forgotten how much stuff I'd actually brought to school.
I could make serious rep by starting my own Salvation Army back on the outside. That's assuming I want to leave. I could ride this place out all the way to the end.
I grab out some clothes and a towel and hit the showers. The showers of course are located directly across from the toilets, so if you happened to be in the middle of a shower while someone was taking a shit you had to deal with the smell the entire time. It was absolutely awful. And don't get me started on the people that actually took shits in the shower.
I shake my head in disgust and hop into my shower. Of course it isn't actually my shower, but it kind of is. Third from the right, nobody ever thinks to use it, much less shit in it, so it's usually the cleanest one. I toss my clothes outside alongside my towel alongside the bar at the top.
The hot water hits my skin and I let out an audible moan. It feels so good after sleeping in my own filth for so long to finally get clean. I don't have any shampoo. I'd run out actually before I had to leave and was going to get some more, but obviously that didn't happen. Looks like I'm going to have to just stick with my putrid locks. Man, what a shame.
I run my hands through my hair and down my face, letting the water cascade down as I scrub myself. Then I hear a sound from outside, the ding from the elevator stopping on this floor. I freeze. Why would the elevator be running? It is set to the basement automatically when it isn't in use, and it isn't like anybody else is-The scanner.
I went and turned it off, it must have turned it off for the whole building. The whole system is connected. My skin begins to crawl as I imagine all different kinds of things crawling through that elevator door, and then I remember the sole Vulture that nearly got the best of me outside. How could I expect it not to want to find its way in? Of course it wouldn't let a new source of food out of its sight. God, I am so stupid!
I turn around and shut off the shower, letting the water drip from my face as I curse myself. Stupid! It definitely heard the shower running! I'm fucked I'm fucked I'm fucked. I begin to panic, but I can't panic because then I'll make more noise, and if I make more noise-
I hear the bathroom door swing open, it squeaks, it is a very heavy door and prone to making loud noises. I go completely silent. I can't think of anything, I'm completely paralyzed. I hear the footsteps come closer, I'm shaking underneath my skin. I see the curtains pulled aside, and I see a gun pointed directly at me.
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