FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #3

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. Little did I know how quickly something that seemed so insignificant would change everything. I laughed to myself, thought bullshit, and left the paper on the seat of the train as I left. It wasn’t even on the front page for fucks sake. I wish I had a copy just to show people. The article was positioned about halfway through the Health and Living section of the paper, just above the movie times. Funny place to find a article about something that would change the way I would live my life forever. Who would have thought that the most important thing I would read on the blue line that morning wasn’t the headline about the swine flu, or the feature article about the battered economy, but would be a short, dry, factual, article titled “Gene Therapy May Help Slow Ageing”.

Really it was probably the most important thing that I would ever read, and I read it half hazard, in fast skim mode, with some brat in overalls singing the theme to "Sesame Street" while kicking the back of my seat to the beat of the music with his bright red sneakers. I probably remember that ginger faced brat better than the details of the article. I just needed to get to the top drawer of my desk where my little bottle of Tylenol was. I was reading to try to relax, it and my coffee would give me sanctuary, give my mind something to focus on other than my train being at least ten minutes behind schedule, me being hung over from one to many pints of Guinness at the pub last night and the rug rat tap dancing "Sunny Days" on the back of my chair. I wish I wouldn't have left it, so I could read it again word for word.

It was so matter of fact, it read like a medical journal. No matter how many times I go over it in my head, I can never remember exactly what it said. I didn't take it seriously enough. I am sure that no one did really. It was just one of those short blurbs about medical advances that you think are probably years into the future, or just someone’s wishful thinking. Huroo! Another crackpot cure for ageing. Most of what I do recall is something about virus's being able to change the way that the body functioned on a basic level, and how it could cause major leaps in evolution. I was always a sucker for popular science. There was talk about promising early results with rats and how they were making way for human trials. I remember laughing sadly to myself, I recognized the name of the company that was responsible for the research, it was based out of the same building I worked at.

Small word huh I thought as I tossed the paper on the seat of the train. The fact that the paper reminded me that I was late made it course, irritating, like less of a friend and more like the red headed step child drumming on the seat behind me. So as the train slowed, I folded it and tossed it on the seat to disappoint some other lucky traveler. I don't know why I even bought that damn thing, everyone knows that there is never anything good in the paper. It seemed I couldn't escape this shitty day even in print. I remember muttering to myself "what else could go wrong" as I stepped off the train. Then I hurried out of the tunnels and made the ten minute walk to my building in less than four. I barely had time to smoke my cigarette.

Just as I was starting to think things today might be starting to look brighter I slammed square into the doorman and spilled my now cold coffee all down the front of my shirt and into the top of my pants. Now I looked like I had pissed myself, perfect. I wouldn’t have been nearly as upset as I was by this if I hadn't been paying attention and had accidentally ran into the doorman or if there had been any doubt in my mind that the doorman hadn't stepped in between me and the door purposefully, just as I had been about to pass through. It didn’t help that the doorman was about six foot four inches tall and weighed in easily over 300 pounds.

"What the fuck!" I exploded.

"Sorry about the coffee sir, but I just received orders over the radio no one is to leave the building, I have to lock the door."

"So why the fuck can't I go inside then.? " This asshole was going to make me late because some jerk in the coffee shop had skipped on the bill.

"You can. I guess?" replied the doorman in a almost questioning tone of voice. He looked shocked and confused at my response like he didn’t know what to say to me. Through thin, angry eyes he stated "I can't let you leave after you go in though" and he stepped out of the way.

I should have taken that as a cue to just go home and say screw it to the whole day but instead I muttered "Get the fuck out of my way, you’re making me late, dumbshit doorman" as I pushed around him and into the lobby of the building.

I was scared of losing my job, but that was nothing compared to the fear that griped me when I walked through the door and looked around the lobby. It was sticky hot, like walking into a sauna, and packed almost overflowing with people. Four maybe five times the number that should have been here at this time of day. Every seat on the benches along the walls were filled. All the table's in the small coffee shop that occupied the north corner were full. Many even lay sleeping on the tables. People were camped out everywhere, some sitting on lab coats, like they were beach blankets, in the middle of the floor, it looked like the beach on the Fourth of July just before the fireworks start, but there were no fireworks and no one looked happy. The mood was more like that of a crowded waiting room at the doctors office. Over half the people were, what at first glance appeared to be asleep, or maybe worse, dead. From the inhuman stink in the air I would have guessed dead. Many of them were laying close together in lines along the edges of the lobby, just in front of the big glass windows that look out onto 8^th street, like some sort of creeptastic sun bathers at the pool. More were slumped like sacks of potatoes in chairs. The ones that were awake had gathered into small groups and carried a scared, far away looks in their eyes. They all looked stressed, unkempt, tired and shaken. Most had on lab coats. All the sun bathers were in lab coats. There was one large group of women in skirts and heals that obviously did secretarial work, hanging out just inside the coffee shop. Everyone stared at me with hollow, expectant eyes.

I wanted out twice as bad as I had wanted in, almost as soon as I walked in the door. Maybe the dumbshit doorman wasn't so dumb after all. No sooner had I thought “surely he will let me out”, then I heard the door lock behind me. I turned just in time to see the door man smile as he slid his key out of the lock.

"LET ME OUT!!" I yelled as I pounded on the glass.

He flashed me a cool, I told you so smile, as he slid the keys into his pocket and turned his back on me on and walked the six feet to his station. I stood there watching him for a minute in disbelief. Just long enough to watch him talk on the phone once more. I banged on the glass. The asshole just spread his legs shoulder width apart. He wasn’t going to help me.

I was close to losing it. My head was throbbing from the hangover. I walked the six feet down to the glass directly in front of his station and I banged again, harder. This time he turned around and looked at me, smiled an I told you so smile and started to fish in his pocket. Just as I started back for the door thinking he was getting his keys. He pulled out his pocket knife and started to clean his nails.

When I turned back around it was dead silent. Any small amount of noise that had been going on in the lobby when I first walked in had stopped. I wanted answers. Why were all these people in the lobby and why couldn’t we leave? The eyes felt like needles as I slowly picked my way across the minefield of bodies from the buildings door to the help desk.

"Why are we locked in here?" I whispered to the shy girl, in a short, plaid, knee length skirt, and schoolgirl stockings with her back to me, behind the desk.

"Excuse me?" She snapped back,as she turned to face me. She looked strained, tired, and sick of dealing with people already this morning, but less traumatized than the refugee camp of people in the lobby. Her black hair was styled so that it framed her pale face.

"Why are we locked in here?" I replied louder, slower, and with much more pronunciation than I would use even in every day life. Any other day I would have been hitting on her. Now I was speaking to her as if I were talking to her as if she were a resident at the Sunset Home. She had to have heard me the first time. The lobby was still so quiet that now my voice was echoing back to me.

"I didn't know we were locked in" she said slowly and loudly mocking me as she wrinkled her forehead. Just then the phone rang and she picked it up. Whispers started to run through the crowd like a cold fast wind. I asked her. “Why is everyone in the lobby?” but she just got a frustrated look, muttered something about “I thought busses were coming a half an hour ago” into the phone and turned her back to me once again. The only other thing I caught sounded like “even more of them have fallen asleep.” Other people were coming up to the desk now and trying to ask questions. A few people were checking the doors.

My head was throbbing now. Everyone who was awake was starting to talk now. Either to each other or on cell phones. The at first strangely quiet lobby was quickly becoming a private hell for my hangover. The stink of the packed body’s and unnatural heat of the crowd were not going to make me feel any better, my stomach churned, I was uncomfortable and out of place, so I decided to pick my way back across no mans land to the elevators and go up to my nice, quiet, air conditioned cubicle. The cubicle where my Tylenol was stashed in the back of my top right desk drawer.

As soon as I got into the elevator I felt a rush of relief. Whatever had been going on in the lobby was no longer my concern. Probably some kind of accident in the research lab. Poor suckers, it almost made me glad that I was thirty minutes late to the exciting world of data entry. I was just glad to be out of the lobby. For once I was happy to have the lower paycheck and just punch numbers . The worst thing I had to worry about was carpel tunnel syndrome, I wasn’t going to get some weird sleeping bug crunching data for the man.

My stomach churned as the elevator quickly slowed to drop me off on the 17^th floor. No worries though I was just that much closer to my Tylenol. I stepped off as soon as the doors opened grabbed a cup of cold water from the cooler and bee lined it straight to my cubicle to get logged into the system.

I had barely logged in and taken my pills when Jeremy popped his head over the divider between our cubicles. I wasn’t particularly fond of Jeremy he was one of those overly friendly way to chipper first thing in the morning kind of people. He never really shut up and never had anything important to say about anything. He talked mostly gossip and office politics. The only reason I even tolerated him was because his cubicle was next to mine. Not that I really cared what he thought but I find it best not to start wars with the neighbors, even in office politics.

“Were the lab workers still in the lobby when you came up?” Jeremy sounded like he was about to explode with curiosity.

“Yeah, what is that all about anyway?” I probed. If anyone knew any roomers about what was going on it would be Jeremy.

“Word round the water cooler is that some spray, that they were testing on rats, in the labs on twelve contaminated all the workers on that floor. I heard that they are being shipped somewhere else for decontamination.”

“I wonder how they plan on doing that when they are all asleep?”

Jeremy looked at me with surprised questioning eyes. “Asleep?”

Just then our supervisor rounded the corner, gave us the knock it off guys stare and started down my aisle.

My Tylenol was finally starting to kick in so I just buried myself in the endless pages of names, birth dates, and telephone numbers that patiently waited on my desk. If it wasn’t for the craving for my ten thirty cigarette I probably would have worked right through my break. Instead, I did like I did every day, I grabbed a short from the box in my desk drawer and my lighter and headed to the elevator. So that I could ride the elevator down the seventeen floors with the same old familiar faces, barely have just enough time to slam a few quick drags and ride back up. It was the same every day the only thing that ever changed was where you stood in the elevator.

Of course today I was crammed all the way in the back. Any other day all that would have meant was a few less drags on a my cigarette. Today standing in the back saved my life. I was so far in the back that when the doors opened at first I didn’t understand what was going on. I heard screams and a couple loud “what the fucks? “ from closer to the door. Then the crowd in the elevator surged back. I felt someone grab onto my ankle and scratch me as the crowd surged again and I was smashed back into corner and fell.

As I got up the view through the elevator door was almost dream like. No one laying on the floor of the lobby now was asleep. The lobby looked like a huge bloody bar fight. The same familiar faces I rode with everyday for my smoke break were being attacked, pulled limb from limb, and what looked like eaten by freaks in blood soaked lab coats. A lucky few were running towards the exit. It was too bad they didn’t know that the doors were locked.

I just pressed seventeen and waited for the doors to close. At about the tenth floor it hit me. I immediately lit my cigarette. Zombies! It sounded almost comical inside my head. My mind kept flashing back to the article about the research that was going on in my building. It had blathered on in a humorless, medical jargon about how the same genes that caused the small heads in patients with microcephely ( a disease that causes tiny brain size ) might possibly be responsible for the jump in the brain size of early humans, and thus the gene could have spurred evolution. The theory the article proposed was that if the genes that caused Progeria ( a disease that causes rapid ageing ) could be found and manipulated properly using viruses, humans might be able to enjoy yet another evolutionary leap and enable us to slow ageing, maybe even reverse it.

I slowly walked down the third isle to my cubicle, smoking the whole time. Catching dirty stares as I passed by my coworkers. When I reached mine I sat down and slowly finished my cigarette. Now my supervisor was talking to me. I could hear him but I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, and that made me angry. I was hungery.  My cigarette was now almost finished, the cherry was down almost to the filter and it was burning my hand, that made me angry too, but I didn’t do anything about it. All I could focus on was, my anger, the article from the paper, and the events of the day that had lead me here.  Suddenly I felt sleepy.

back to Contest #3