Speaker 1: I used to work as a night clerk in a
downtown condominium. The association had a lot of security concerns
due to the way the building was constructed back in
the late sixties. Both levels of the parking garage were
accessible from street level, so there were a lot of
possible entry points, many of which were located in blind
spots of the security camera system. For that reason, I
was required to make two rounds around the entire building
during my shift to make sure no non residents had
found their way in. The most serious issue that we
had was the occasional car jacking, but what I encountered
most often was homeless people who had found their way
into the garage and were huddling in some corner for
a bit of shelter. Kicking them back out into the
street was by far my least favorite part of the job,
but I had to do it. After working there for
several months, I knew all the spots that people liked
to hide in. The building was very old and had
undergone many renovations in its lifetime, which created a lot
of nooks and crannies, unnecessary concrete protusions sealed off rooms
and hallways and stairs that led to nowhere. The creepiest
spot in the whole building was so weird and potentially
dangerous that I took a picture of it and I
brought it up to management. On the first floor of
the garage, there was a door that opened up to
a corridor directly underneath the ramp up to the second
level of the garage. It was about three feet wide
and ran about twenty to thirty feet, but it led
to literally nowhere. At the end of it was a
large water pipe with a valve, which was the only
reason the space existed. But in the dark, with just
a weak flashlight, that pipe seemed to take many other forms.
What made it dangerous, however, was the lock on the door.
There was no padlock or keyhole on either side, but
on the outside was a large sliding boat latch. There
was only one way in or out, and it locked
from the outside with no way to unlock it from
the inside. Ever since I discovered the spot, I couldn't
help but imagine how easy it would be for someone
to get trapped in there. However, nothing I said to
management made any difference. They were already aware of it
and had no intention of doing anything about it. Unfortunately,
that meant I would have to open the door and
check on it every night, but I never stepped foot
inside of it. I was way too scared of it.
Things went on like that for months, and then one
day my worst fear was realized. It was about three
in the morning, halfway through my shift. I was doing
my rounds in the parking garage and everything was normal.
It was a slow Wednesday night. There hadn't been any
problems or suspicious activity on the cameras, so I was
far from on edge at the time. But then, in
one moment, I was forced to go on alert. I
heard the sound of a door slamming across the garage.
I wasn't exactly sure where it was, so I walked
over to investigate. My heart sank a bit when I
saw that the door to the dead end hallway was
wide open. I looked around to see if anyone was
in the garage, but I appeared to be alone. I
shout out to intimidate any if they were hiding somewhere
I couldn't see, but I got no response and nobody appeared.
I was just worried that there was somebody hiding in
the dead end hallway, so I walked the rest of
the way. I shined my flashlight down the hallway, and
for a moment, I was relieved to see that nobody
was in there. There was, however, an empty glass bottle
about ten feet inside. I sighed and rolled my eyes,
thinking that somebody had been drinking in there, and they
ran out in a hurry once they saw me snooping around,
accidentally making noise as they rushed. It wouldn't have been
that hard for somebody to climb up on the car's
park there, to get above the wall and hop the
fence into the neighboring parking lot by the time I
got there, since the garage was partially underground in that spot.
In fact, that's how a lot of people get in,
because the dead end hallway happened to be in a
prominent blind spot of the cameras. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed
to leave trash anywhere if I saw it, so I
knew I had to pick up that bottle. Of course,
I felt the anxiety bubbling up inside my gut just
for knowing I had to walk a few steps inside
that hallway. I almost didn't do it, but I rationalized
myself into thinking there was no way somebody would pop
out and lock me in. I took a deep breath
and stepped inside, but right as I reached the bottle,
the door slam shut. I immediately ran back to the door,
but by the time I got there, it was already locked.
I started banging on the door and screaming for help,
but there was nobody there. I felt like I was
being buried alive, like I could barely breathe. If it
weren't for my flashlight, I would have been in some
deep trouble. I wouldn't have been able to see a thing.
Once I realized I wasn't getting out anytime soon, I
reached for my phone so my utter heartbreak. However, there
was no service at all. The walls were made of
cinder blocks and the door was made of metal. Plus
the entire six story building was on top of me.
No matter what I tried, I couldn't call nine one one.
There was absolutely nothing I could do. I was completely stuck.
The only way I was getting out was if somebody
opened the door from the outside. But it was three
in the morning, and it would be hours before anybody
left for work in the morning, and during that time,
whoever trapped me was doing whatever they pleased in the
parking garage. Heard several car alarms go off, and I
knew what was happening. Somehow, they all turned off after
a few minutes. I kept banging on the door and shouting,
but nobody came. After a while. If I'm being completely honest,
I gave up that I would be free anytime soon,
and I just focused on staying calm. I sat down
against the wall and I turned off my flashlight to
save the battery, but only after making sure I was
completely alone. Every few minutes, I banged on the door
a bunch of times. It took me like two hours,
but finally I managed to get the attention of somebody
going to work early in the morning. I thank them
as they let me out, but unfortunately, the next thing
I had to do was call the cops because I
quickly noticed that a dozen cars had been broken into.
There was broken glass all over the parking lot from
all the windows that had been shattered. Whoever it was
knew exactly what they were doing. They knew how to
trap me in there, and they knew how to silence
the alarms of the cars they were breaking into. We
only have security guards on the weekends, and it left
us vulnerable on a seemingly benin Wednesday. All in all,
there were tens of thousands of dollars done in damages
and theft, and I was fired from my job. Not
like I would want to go back anyway. Culprit was
never identified on the cameras and it was never caught.
During the summer last year, I chose to not take
any classes and I got a job at a gas
station right next to my college campus. I was sort
of delusioned with school and wanted to make some money
while I had time off. The gas station was one
of the first places I'd tried applying to, and it
turned out to be the last. When they hired me
on the spot, I thought it was a little weird,
but I didn't question it. Unfortunately, they said they only
wanted me for the night shift, which was from eleven
PM to seven AM. I knew it would wreck I
already messed up sleep schedule, but I decided to go
for and just see how it went. To my surprise,
most of the time it wasn't that bad. The first
few hours of the shift were pretty busy and it
would get crazy, but then it would always get really
slow until about five in the morning, which gave me
plenty of time to clean, stock the shelves and chill
out until the morning rush. Occasionally somebody suspicious or problematic
would wander in, but I never had anything get too
out of hand with hours of course, until something did happen.
It was a Thursday, which wasn't usually a busy night.
I had a coworker until about midnight, then they went
home and I was left alone. Time went by pretty fast,
and before I knew it, it was almost two am. That's
around the time a man walked in and I immediately
had a bad feeling about him. He had a shaved
head and a bunch of tattoos of weird symbols, so
I was pretty sure he was a skinhead. I noticed
he had parked his dirty, old lifted pickup truck in
the handicap spot, too, but I didn't want to get
on his case about it, and I ended up getting
called slurs because I looked Jewish to him. It was
one p fifty eight when he walked in, and he
spent a few minutes wandering around the store. In the end,
though all he brought up to buy was a case
of beer. However, by then it was two oh one,
and my county has a law that says all call
can't be purchased between two am and six am. I
told the man that and politely and apologetically as I could,
that he couldn't buy the beer. He immediately became agitated
and went off on a rant about how it was
a free country and that was a stupid law. I
tried my best to reason with him, and I said
that I was just trying to do my job, but
this only made him start to criticize me, like I
was some kind of spineless pond for my boss. That's
when I asked him to leave if he was going
to be that way. Then he suddenly changed his tone again,
acting all chummy and saying it wasn't a big deal
and that I should bend the rules for just a
few minutes since it was before two when he walked in.
I mean, he kind of did make a good point,
so I eventually a cave just so he would get out.
I sold him in the case of beer, and then
of course he asked for a pack of cigarettes to
go with it. I let him have it, as there
was no rule against tobacco sales. He smiled at me
and then left the store, and I breathed a sigh
of relief. But that relief was short lived. However, thought
he would get in his truck and leave, but instead
he opened the tailgate and sat down in the truck bed,
cracked open a can of beer and started drinking it. Now,
I had a feeling that this was far from over,
and that was exactly the case, because a few minutes later,
another truck pulled up right next to his, and a
couple of guys got out, both of them with shaved
heads and tattoos. They stood around the back of the
first guy's truck, just smoking and drinking. I knew I
had to go out there and tell them that they
couldn't loiter in front of the store, and that it
was illegal to drink out in the open like that anyway,
especially that close to a car. But I was a
little scared already. They kept looking in the window at me.
It's just smirking as if they knew what I was thinking,
and they were challenging me to try to try it
before I could find the courage. Though, another car, this
time an SUV, pulled in next to the two of them,
and two more guys got out and joined the others.
They were all a part of the same skinhead group
without a doubt. My guess is they were coming from
a bar that had just closed and didn't want to
end the night yet. That was the most reasonable and
most likely explanation, but my paranoid thoughts made me think
they were about to get together and burn down the store.
His owner's wife was Mexican. And then the first guy
came back into the store. He was drunker than before
and all smiles, but then he came back to the
register with another case of beer. I was about to
tell him he definitely couldn't buy at that time, but
before I could even open my mouth, he looked at
me all smug and said I really wouldn't want to
disappoint him and all of his friends. I took that
as a pretty solid threat, and I let him do
what he wanted again. My hands were shaking and I
was dreading having to count change in front of him,
But then he told me to keep the change, like
he was giving me some kind of big tip. He
walked back outside and all the skinheads cheered at the
fresh case of beer. Apparently they had worked together and
finished all twenty four cans of the previous one, and
then I realized that they had been tossing the empty
cans all over the ground and kicking them around. It
felt like I was completely stuck with these pricks, and
I knew I would get in trouble over it at
the best, or get literally ganged up on and have
any manner of horrible things done to me just for
saying no to them. What normal person would see the
meeting of a bunch of drunk skinheads smoking cheap cigarettes
on top of their pickup trucks in front of a
store in the middle of the night and still want
to walk past them to get in. Pretty much nobody,
not a single person except more of the skinheads. Finally,
I couldn't take it anymore. I walked up and I
locked the door so they couldn't get back in. Then
I walked back in the office and called the police.
Several minutes later, a cruiser showed up and told him
to screw off. There was some shouting outside that I
couldn't quite make out, but I was worried for a
few minutes that things would escalate. Thankfully, they left without
causing too much of a scene. But I have no
idea how close it got. The cop waited for them
to leave before doing so himself. Right before he got
in his way, I came out and asked him to
stay awhile while I cleaned up their mess case. I
decided to show up and kick my ass for ruing
their little party. The next day, I unfortunately had to
quit that job. There was nothing more terrifying to me
than the thought of being stuck behind that register. Those guys, ever,
decided to come back. Still, I kind of get worried
that one of them will see me around town and
recognize me. Don't know what those people are all capable of.
All I know is my town is full of dudes
like that, and they're always causing problems. Years ago, I
worked as a barista at a locally owned coffee shop
that doubles as a popular venue for local artists and
musicians to host all sorts of small time gigs. Even today,
it gets most of its business in the evenings during
the open mics, and it stays open until two in
the morning. However, when I worked there pre twenty twenty,
they were open twenty four to seven from Thursday to Sunday.
For the most part, everyone that worked there hated the
graveyard shift. It was easy hours, but the tips were abysmal,
as barely anyone came in. As far as myself was considered, however,
I didn't mind the lower pay. What I hated was
being alone and running the only place that was still
open for miles. The shop was in a good part
of town, if not a little close to a bad part,
But the fact of the matter is that there's really
no such thing as a good side of town during
these overnight hours. That is, if we're being completely honest.
I was advised to never keep more than fifty dollars
in the drawer during the graveyard shift. For a reason,
I was always afraid that somebody would drag me into
the back of the store. So every time I was
scheduled for the overnight shift, I asked one of my
male friends to come hang out with me. The one
guy that would help me more than anyone else was
named Nick. It usually turned out to be a good time.
I made some money and I slipped him some beers
under the table, and of course I felt much more
comfortable not being a woman on her own Nick would
work on his laptop while I was busy, and we
would talk when things were slow. We had been friends
for a while, but we became close after spending a
lot of time together. It was always platonic, though Nick
was also friends with many of my co workers, and
lots of us joked that Nick knew so much about
the coffee shop that he might as well work there himself,
but he always laughed it off and said his career
in photography was more important, which we always gave him
a hard time for. I didn't really think there would
ever be any bad blood between us, and if there was,
I was sure it would be because we slipped up
and had an awkward one night stand. But then came
a slow Saturday night in the summer of twenty nineteen,
I was working the last overnight shift of the weekend.
I had worked the last two nights in a row
without Nick because he had bailed on me to go
to a wedding for one of his family members. I
managed to get another friend of mine to fill in
for him for Thursday and Friday, but on Saturday night
they were too tired and never showed up. I was
anxious about being alone in the shop, but I knew
I could manage. Thankfully, it was surprisingly so that night
for some reason, and by three I had only made
ten dollars in tips, but I was glad I didn't
have to deal with any crazy people. Unfortunately, that's when
things took a dark turn. Shop was completely empty except
for me. I was putting a batch of coffee into
the roaster when out of the corner of my eye,
I saw a figure walk past the front window. I
glanced over, but there was nobody there. I waited for
someone to come around to the back door, which customers
could also use, but a full minute had passed now
and nobody came. Stuck around by the register for a
few more minutes, but after nobody showed up for a while,
I decided it was time to mount the floors. I
went into the back to fill up the mop bucket,
and of course, as soon as I turned the faucet on,
I heard somebody come in through the front door. I
shadowed that I would be with him in just a minute.
Then I finished filling up the bucket and rolled it
out behind the counter. When I got there, whoever came
in had disappeared. I shrugged it off just figuring they
had gone straight to the bathroom, and then I started
mopping behind the counter. The strangers feeling hovered over me,
though I couldn't place what it was, but I knew
something was wrong. The first thing I looked at was
the drawer, but it hadn't been broken into. Even then
that would have been loud enough for me to hear
over the running water. I leaned over the bar and
checked to the bathroom doors. The men's room door was
closed and the light was on, so I knew somebody
was in there. My stomach churned slightly as I knew
it was a man in there, but so far I
had no real reason to think anything was wrong, so
I just kept on mopping. When I finally got finished
beare behind the counter, the bathroom door opened in To
my surprise, Nick walked out. I immediately felt a sense
of relief, but I had to ask him what he
was doing there. He explained that he just got home
from the wedding and thought he'd stop buy and say hi.
I was grateful that he decided to show up, so
I told him he could have whatever he wanted on
the house. So I got behind the espresso machine and
got to work pulling a shot. I packed the grounds
into the portafilter and locked it into the machine, then
looked over to say something to Nick. But whatever I
was thinking of saying was immediately forgotten, and his facial
expression had gone from friendly to devilish in just a
moment of time. And suddenly a wave of chills went
through my body. What are you doing? I asked, fighting
back trembling. Nick grinned like a psychopath and pulled a
knife out from behind his back. I'm finally going to
bang the barista, he said, as he started to laugh.
Don't be crazy, I shouted, We're friends. What about the cameras?
Nick began walking forward, forcing me to backpedal. We are friends,
he said, and nobody will believe you because the cameras
aren't even on. They never are. How do you not
know that? I knew. At this point, I was being
pushed into the back of the shop, and my throat
started to close up. It was also in that moment,
when I looked for an exit that I realized he
had locked both the doors and turned the open sign off,
keeping anybody from coming in. Your boss already thinks we
do this every night. Nick pressed on, inching closer and closer.
Stop it, I shouted in desperation, looking for something to
defend myself, trying to not slip on the wet floor.
Shut up, he screamed. You should have been giving this
to me for months already, not know how much time
I wasted on you. I was pleading and about to
be cornered. The last hope I had was something on
the sandwich counter. The last moment before he pushed me
out of sight into the back of a shop, I
grabbed for the panini press and ripped it off the table,
slamming the corner of the metal against the side of
his head. He tried to block me and sliced open
my arm, but I connected the hit and combined with
the water on the floor, the blow knocked him off
of his feet. I wasted zero seconds and climbing over
the counter and rushing out of the back door and
into my car while I locked myself in and called
to the police. It wasn't until I thought about driving
off that I realized Nick had parked his car in
front of mine to deliberately keep me from getting away.
Moments later, while I was on the phone with the operator,
he came outside and attempted to break his way into
my car. After he failed to do so for several minutes,
he gave up and drove off not long before the
police arrived. I was treated for my wound, and I
gave my statement about what happened. I didn't leave out
a single detail. I was too much in a state
of shock to be even in disbelief. As it turns out,
he was right about the cameras inside the shop just
being for show. However, nobody thought I was lying about
what he did. Unfortunately, though, due to civil liabilities on
the part of my employer, and more importantly the fact
that Nick completely up and disappeared after posting bell, I
decided to drop the charges. Came to the conclusion not
long after that he'd already ruined his life sufficiently and
I simply didn't care enough to do anything else about it.
Nobody has seen or heard from Nick and years, and
the coffee shop has since stopped staying open overnight. People
might think I quit because of what happened, but I
actually continued to work there until just a few months ago.
Before I moved out of my hometown, I was working
as a waiter at waffle house. Chose to work the
third shift because I had the best hourly pay and
brought in pretty good tips due to us being the
only twenty four to seven diner in the entire town.
It took me about a year to save up enough money,
though to rent a place in the city and get
out of the middle of nowhere. But in that time
I saw quite a few things that still stick with
me to this day. By and large, most of the
customers I had were truckers and other random people traveling
on the Interstate through the middle of the night. The
town was just a stopover point, not a destination as much.
The quote unquote locals consisted of farmers and ranchers from
the surrounding area and anyone else like me worked in
the fast food and hotel chains clustered around the interstate exit,
the final one yet the most characteristic residents of that
depressing cesspit of a town where the vagrants, hitchhikers, tweakers,
and destitute opportunists that had been strand with us. They
could be stuck there from anywhere to a few days
to several years, clinging to the parking lots and awnings
that were the only meager shelter for dozens of miles
in any direction, panhandling for whatever they could until they
got lucky enough to get a ride to somewhere else. Really,
the only stressful part of my job was dealing with
these people. In the beginning, I tried to be empathetic,
after all, they are human. However, it didn't take long
to end up like my usual coworker, the cook that
had been there for fifteen years and had seen just
about everything. His name was Carl, and the only thing
separating him from them was a steady position at the grill.
Nobody ever got a chair thrown at them, as far
as I know, but Karl was prone to throwing turners
and other utensils at anyone who got in his bad side.
I usually followed his lead based on his body language.
He knew who was trouble and who wasn't. However, even
with Carl as reliable backup, things sometimes got out of hand.
There there was this one night that I'll never forget.
I don't remember what day of the week it was,
but all I know was that I had been unusually
slow that night. It was around four o'clock in the
morning when this guy walked in, and even I knew
something was not right about him. He was wearing soiled
clothes and a completely torn up jacket, covered head to
toe and dust, and he was in a completely panicked
state of mind. The weird thing was that he said
nothing as he ran past us, clutching his right arm
to his chest and immediately locking himself in the bathroom.
Carl and I rolled our eyes at the same time.
Here we go again, we thought, although I think we
both had a feeling this wasn't a regular hobo bathroom
emergency or a tweaker looking for a private place to
do their thing. That's when I asked Carl, doesn't he
kind of look familiar. He brushed it off at first,
but then after a short conversation, we realized that he
had been inside about two hours ago, desperately asking all
the customers for rides, until eventually we had to kick
him out for being a disturbance. It seemed he obviously
hadn't have any luck on getting a ride, but something
else had happened to him too. I became worried if
that guy needed help, it would be a while before
an ambulance could get to him, and even longer for
them to take him to a hospital. Carl told me
to take care of it, so I ran the check
for the only customer we had in the store at
the time and got them on their way. When I
took to bathroom keys and went to check on our
stranger in distress, I knocked on the door prey loud
and asked if everything was okay. There was a pause,
then finally a distraught voice answered me. I think I'm
really hurt. I just need a ride. Suddenly I knew
something was seriously wrong. The sound of his voice made
the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I fumbled with the key ring as I told him
I was about to open the door. Sir, if you
need help, I have to come in there. I shouted, no,
The stranger screamed, you have to come get me. I
stopped for a second, confused, but then I snapped out
of it and shoved the key in the lock and
turned it. Then opened the door to a terrifying sight.
The bathroom was empty, completely empty, no injured man, no blood,
no dust, just nothing. It was as clean as it
had been since I last cleaned it, as if nobody
had been in there at all. In fact, it even
looked cleaner than that. What's going on in there, Karl
shouted from the kitchen. I was just at a loss.
I let the bathroom door close and I stepped back.
I looked at Carl and told him the truth. There's
nobody in there, I said, don't give me that. Carl shouted,
see for yourself, I told him, and he did. He
stormed over and barge to the bathroom door. I saw
him go blank, just like I did when he saw it,
the impossible absence of a person. He turned around and
looked inside the woman's room too, but again nothing nobody.
In raw disbelief, we gathered ourselves behind the counter. We
interrogated each other uselessly, thinking one of us must have
let him slip by unnoticed. However, we both knew we
had been on high alert since the second he came in.
There was no way neither of us would have not
noticed him leaving. With then a fraction of a second,
our conversation ended as we both saw the same thing
out of the corner of our eyes. Stranger was somehow
outside looking at us through the window. He still had
his right arm stuffed out of sight, but Now as
we got more of an eye full of his face
than we ever wanted to, he saw that wasn't his
only problem. His face was bloody, like he had been
hit with a brick. His nose was broken into and
lip was split and missing a piece, showing us his
cracked and missing teeth. One of his eyes seemed completely
swollen over, but the one that was open was gushing blood.
Karl and I didn't move a muscle. He didn't even
breathe for a second. After a few horrible seconds of
realizing what was happening, I finally thought to call nine
one one, But as soon as the idea occurred to me,
the man started to move. He turned to the side
and started to limp across the big front window. We
watched him in silence. He made it all the way
to the corner of the window, where it wrapped around
to the other side. On the hell, I whispered, only
for Karl to quickly shush me. Was at that moment
I saw he had gone pale and wide eyed, which
only terrified me even more. Something about this man had
gotten through Karl's defenses, and that meant we were not prepared.
Before we could say anything, else, we heard a crash
from the back room. We both ran inside and searched
for the source of the noise. It was coming from
the walk in freezer. Somebody was tearing things up and
freaking out. Karl ran up there and threw open the door,
and there he was that guy. He had ripped open
a box of burger patties and was clutching a handful
of meat, pressing it to his right arm like an iceback.
When he saw us, he froze, the patties, dropped from
his hand and revealed the condition of his arm. His
hand was stuck in a thumbs up position, but his
wrist had been snapped clean off, and his hand was
dangling from the rest of his arm by a thread
of skin. After a terrifying moment of deer and headlights stairs,
the stranger bolted from the freezer, crashed through both me
and Carl. He sprinted outside, screaming before we had a
chance to react. I stumbled to my feet as Karl
ran out to the dining area and locked the front
doors and switched off all the lights. Then he pushed
me back into the back room and started yelling at me,
how could you leave the back door unlocked. He yelled, no, look,
it's still locked. I pointed to the back door, and
sure enough it was locked. Now absolutely nothing was making sense,
but we gave up on trying to decipher it. For
the rest of the night, until the sun came up
and the morning crew came in, we kept the doors
locked and stayed out of sight. When we were finally
freed from our nightmare of a shift and set out
into the world, we noticed the train of police and
paramedics on the freeway right outside of town. We asked around,
only to find out that a man had been killed
in a hit and run right there at the off ramp,
not even a thousand feet from the waffle house. He
died some time after midnight, but his body laid on
the shoulder on Discover until daylight. This corpse was mangled,
but his thumb was still sticking straight up from trying
to hitch a ride. Of course, by the afternoon they
had scraped him off the pavement and washed away his blood,
until the spot in which he died was cleaner than
night I ever seen it. I've been a night out
of my whole life, so I work night shifts exclusively.
I really don't work well with other people, whether than
my coworkers or not, so I picked a job I
could do completely on my own and became a nighttime
janitor my local school district after I graduated from high
school myself. Schools have always had nightly cleaning as a
part of health codes in most areas, but obviously in
recent years it's become much more important. My first job
was in a fairly large k through twelve. There were
a couple of daytime custodians as well, but at the
night it was just me and one other person, splitting
the school down the middle. My coworkers and I barely
ever interacted, which I appreciated a lot. Every single night,
all the floors get mopped or vacuumed, every desk table,
indoor handle is disinfected, and every toilet, urnal and sink
also gets cleaned. It takes a full eight hour shift
to accomplish, and for that entire time I don't talk
to a single person. It's great. Honestly, most of my
coworkers are women and they don't want me talking to
them either. When I tell people about my job, a
lot of them think the hardest part is having to
clean up after the messes left by the students, and
for the most part, I guess they are right, but
I always tell them I would rather plunge and clean
ten clogged and traumatized toilets every single night that ever
have to do work directly with another human being all
day long, especially a horde of miners these days. There's
one example I give of why say that. It was
the night after Halloween. I came in from my usual
eight to five shift and got started without even saying
hello to my coworker. We start on opposite ends and
met in the middle, so we would only see each
other when we were finishing up. The first hour was
mostly normal, except for one obvious thing out of ordinary.
I always keep my music at a low volume on
my headphones, but from outside them, I kept hearing things.
Usually all the other faculty are gone by eight o'clock,
but sometimes there's somebody who stays late. I couldn't decide
what I was hearing through my music, but I wasn't
in the mood to turn it off, so I just
ignored it. A little while later, I took a break
from mopping to change the water in the bucket. I
was gone for about five minutes. But on my way
back to where I stopped, I walked past one of
the hallways I had just mopped and noticed the wet
floor side had fallen over. For legal reasons, I had
to step over the wet floor and stand it back up,
then mop back over my tracks on the way out. Annoyed,
I walked over to it, but I froze for a
moment when something else caught my eye. There was another
set of tracks in the water, leading to and from
the sun. They were little footprints, something a kid would make.
After I stood the sign back up, I followed the tracks,
knowing I would have to mop over those two, basically
redoing the whole hallway. The tracks ran all the way
to the end, where there was a flight of stairs
up the second floor. From there, they dried up pretty quickly.
I stormed up the stairs and got to the second floor,
but nobody was there. I took my phone out of
my pocket and paused my music so if anyone was
running around I would be able to hear them. Right
as I looked down, I saw a flash of movement
at the end of the hallway. I also heard a
bunch of footsteps echoing across the empty school, so I
started making my way to the end of the hall,
but it's how I got there. I still couldn't see anyone,
but then I heard a little kid laughing. It felt
like I was in a horror movie, but at that
point I was more annoyed than scared. I stood there
looking around for a few seconds until I heard a
crash from the first floor. I rushed downstairs and nearly
flipped my lid when I saw the mop bucket I
had just refilled was knocked over. The water was spilling
everywhere in a huge pool. I absolutely swarm my head
off as I went back to the nearest janitor's closet
for a dry mop and bunch of towels. It took
me half an hour to clean up that mess, and
then another fifteen minutes to redo the hallway that got
messed up, which meant my lunch break was down to
fifteen minutes. However, I was so pissed off that I
walked to the other side of the school and interrupted
my coworker to ask if she had been messing with me.
She looked completely dumbfounded and innocent. She asked if I
was all right or needed any help. But to that
I just walked away. I set up again and got
back to work. Another hour passed and I managed to
make up some lost progress. I was angrily powering through it,
debating in my head the whole time about what I
should do. I thought about reporting into the school, or
maybe just calling the police myself, but in the end
I figured I would seem crazy to everyone, just like
I did to my coworker. So nothing happened again until
eleven o'clock. Out of nowhere, the lights shut off and
the whole school it was pitch black for about three
seconds until the dim emergency lights turned on, and then
everything had a reddish hue to it. It came as
a shock to me, and to be honest, I was worried.
I tried to tell myself it was a malfunction or
maybe some kids messing around, but my mind was going
to all sorts of possibilities. I had keys to the
electrical room where the light switches were, and I was
the closest to it, so I stopped what I was
doing and marched over. I was pissed off about losing
more time and missing out on my entire lunch break,
but halfway there, something pushed those concerns out of my head.
I heard the most blood curdling scream of my life,
the panic shriek of my coworker, echoing endlessly. I stopped
in my tracks, feeling like I had just been hit
by an electric shock. Seconds later, I heard the sound
of a door opening really loudly, like someone was ramming
through it from the inside. I hoped it was my
coworker escaping and not somebody else making their way into
the school. I forced myself to keep going and finally
made it to the electrical room. I was right outside
the door, trying to find the right key when I
noticed that it was already cracked open. I pushed it
open slowly, afraid of what I might see, and the
shape appeared in front of me, standing unnaturally in the darkness.
My blood ran cold. It could have been anyone. It
gave up on trying to turn on the lights and
instead reached over from my phone in my pocket. However,
as soon as I moved, the figure bolted forward and
slammed the door in my face. I cursed and then
jumped back, stumbling until my back hit the wall behind me.
Once I regained my balance, I started running I wanted
to leave, but for once in my life, I thought
about the well being of somebody else and ran to
the other side of the school to find my coworker.
After checking a few over hallways, I finally found her
mop boocket sitting alone in the middle of the floor
next to a bathroom. Without hesitation, I rushed over to it,
hoping to not see any evidence that she had been hurt.
Nothing seemed unusual, except for the fact that she was
nowhere to be found. I looked all around in the
dim lighting, but as far as I could tell, I
was alone, but not completely alone. The sound of a
laughing child echoed in the distance, again, striking fear into
my chest. I clutched the handle of the mop for
the lack of anything else to defend myself with, and
I lifted it out of the bucket, holding the end
of the handle out like a spear. I faced the
direction of the laughter, looking down the hallway so intently
I got tunnel vision. In a moment of sheer terror,
someone whispered hello into my ear. I turned around, and
without thinking, I jabbed the handle of the mop into
their chest with all my might. I heard a grunt
as the person that snuck up on me hit the
ground and they vomited. Only a second later, I showered
at them to tell me who they were, but then
they started to cry. I could tell they were trying
to hold it back, but they couldn't. Gradually, my eyes
made out what I was looking at, and it was
a student kneeled over on the floor. Suddenly, all my
fear of danger was replaced with the fear of losing
my job for hitting a student. However, as things shook
out over the next few days, it turned out all right.
Two twins in the ninth grade and their little brother
got the idea to keep the spirit of Halloween going
and prank the overnighters in the school by hiding in
the lockers. There was one set of lockers in the
whole building that wasn't in use and had no locks
or ties on them, and those kids were skinny enough
to fit in there and hide after doing their after
school activities. They managed to get out of being expelled,
probably from crying a lot. The school district understood my
actions and let me keep my job, but I was
transferred to a different school. All in all, this is
why I don't like people, especially kids.