Chapter 5
I walked into the factory through the open garage door. There was a button on the pillar that held the ceiling up. I walked over and pressed it to close the door. 'Of course this shit doesn’t work, because that would be too easy.' I thought to myself. I looked around and examined the giant room I was in. 'This place looks like a hurricane hit it and then decided to come back for seconds.' I said before walking over and grabbing a rope from underneath a metal beam. I tugged the rope and heard a creaking sound as the rope slid out from under the metal beams. I stopped and looked up. The metal beam stack that was approximately ten feet tall had started sliding forward. All of a sudden the beams started tumbling towards me as I ran as fast as I could to the opposite side of the room. I sat down and took a breath before standing up and walking over to the open garage door. I took off my shoes and stepped onto the car’s hood, then the roof, and tied the rope to the red knob at the bottom of the emergency door release, having seen my father set up garage doors before he moved away after getting divorced with my mother gave me a small knowledge of how a garage door worked. I jumped off the car with the bottom of the rope in my hand and walked over to the wall where a rusted hose was entangled around a wall-mount. I grabbed the hose and threw it on the ground. I quickly pulled on the rope as much as I could till I heard a click in the garage door and the rope pulled forward as I let go of it just in time to let the garage door close without my face hitting the back of the car. I just finished tying off the rest of the rope onto the wall-mount when I heard a noise come from farther into the factory.
I picked up a metal rod from the ground and started to walk closer to the hallway I had heard the noise from. 'Is anyone there?' I asked into the hallway. I heard the echo all the way around me coming from every direction. I took a couple steps into the hallway before smelling a familiar smell. I slammed the metal rod against the concrete wall making an extremely loud and horrid sound from the metal rod as I dropped it on the ground. Hundreds of rats started flooding to the other side of the hallway running away from the sound. I took a step back, not knowing how to handle this many rats since the most I had ever seen at once was four or five. They all scattered into the holes in the bottom of the walls and floor boards. I picked up the rod with my other hand and slowly started walking down the hallway. I opened the first door to see a destroyed AC unit the size of a small bedroom. I continued walking down the hallway checking behind all the doors. The next door I tried to open was stuck, almost like something was jammed at the bottom of it. I pulled the knob a couple more times before it started to feel loose. I continued to the next door. The door opened to an empty room with nothing except cobwebs all over it filling every corner. I walked over to the third door and turned the knob. 'Locked,' I sighed. I walked over to the first door and wedged the metal pole into the side of it right below the handle. I tried to push the metal bar to jar the door open but it wouldn’t budge. I finally took a step back and kicked the bar with a running start, snapping the door frame and launching the door open. Rubble began falling as the room filled with broken concrete, and rocks emptied into the hallway. 'Shit,' I said under my breath. I looked to the locked door and tried the same thing with the metal bar, only to break the door frame and leave the lock in-tact. I started to kick the metal door over and over again until I felt my foot start to hurt. I walked to the wall opposite of the door and ran full force, slamming my body into the door. Again it didn’t budge. Tired and lazy, I walked to the farthest point in the hallway to see it branching off to a hallway in both directions with a door directly in front of me. I turned the knob to find that the door was unlocked. I slowly pushed open the door to see what appeared to be an empty room with a mattress on the far wall, two metal shelves on the left wall, and a desk with a mirror on the right wall. I walked over to the bed and dropped face first into the pillow as I fell asleep listening to the rattling of the fan coming from the main room.
Tick, tick, tick, tick, creaking metal, SNAP. The fan turned off. I opened my eyes and looked around the room recollecting everything that had happened to me. I shot up remembering that the girl had told me if she caught me slacking she would kill Star. As I started to walk towards the door I realized that there were objects on the metal shelf. I walked over to see a change of clothes, a pistol, and two magazines. Below that shelf there was six stacks of canned food ranging from chili to… more chili. I quickly changed into the clothing that was on the shelf and looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing a black tank-top and a pair of sweatpants. I turned before leaving the room and gazed at the gun still sitting untouched. ‘It’s better to leave it here until I have time to learn how to use it.’ I thought before walking out the door.
I walked to the main room I had entered from earlier. As I looked up through the giant windows that had previously had sunlight flooding through them into the room I saw nothing but darkness and a crescent moon. For the next two days I was endlessly doing push-ups, pull-ups and running as far down the road as I could before having to walk or jog back.
The girl got back finally on the third day and looked at me. She walked over to my desk before quickly turning around and hook-kicking me in the side hard enough to throw me into the wall. ‘Pathetic’ she growled. ‘I told you to get stronger and push yourself to the limit, however if you can’t reach your full potential you are useless to me and I will kill you’ she said as she walked away. ‘Get in the car kid’ she yelled at me as she walked towards the garage. I slid the gun into the back of my waistband and ran over to her. As I got in the car she looked at me and said ‘You might wanna try a bit harder to hide the fact that you’re carrying a weapon on you since it’s illegal’. I was dumbfounded, how did she know that I had the gun? She opened the garage door with a remote and then closed it as she pulled out.
As we drove down the road she declared ‘Alright kid, this is what’s going to happen. You are going to go home and explain what happened to your little girlfriend but keep her in line. If anything gets leaked I will kill you both. I will call on you anytime I need you and if you cannot perform to my expectations then I will kill you myself or let you die by your own failure’. ‘Okay, but what about school?’ I asked. She looked at me briefly and laughed saying ‘You will attend as much as you want and we will assure that you graduate since we don’t want idiots in Inferno. But remember that if you do not uphold-’ ‘Yea yea, if I don’t hold up your expectations you will kill me’ I said cutting her off.
We reached the coffee shop that I had been living on top of with Star and she dropped me off outside it with her final words being ‘Keep the gun, you will need it’ and she threw me a rolled up wad of money. I stood outside the cafe for a solid 20 minutes wondering what I would say to her before I finally gave up and decided to fight that battle when it came. Little did I know it would be a tough one.
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