The Building, part 1

The building went up faster than any before it ever had. The permits sliced through the red tape of the city like a knife through butter. Zoning and construction permits passed effortlessly through the various hands of bureaucratic offices that normally hold up construction for months, yet the ground was broken on this building within days.
Initially, no one realized what an amazing feat this was. To the outside eyes like mine, it seemed like nothing more than another skyscraper being put up in a city riddled with them.
It wasn’t until a few weeks into the build that word began to get out about the mysterious new addition to the city, and the one behind the project. The news registers named the man behind the project as one Mr. Nephilous Krimm. Once the news broke the stories about the man and his skyscraper, people became even more curious both about him and his building. Yet, despite the headlines, everyone I talked to was unable to find anything about him at all. He seemed to not exist, according to city records and newspapers and hospital birth certificates. I had one friend who contacted nearly every hospital in the state to find information about the man. But he came up empty.
Most people had no idea what he looked like either. Unlike other wealthy businessmen, Mr. Krimm was not featured posing with a shovel at the groundbreaking, or in front of the construction machines as the work began. One construction worker I talked to claims to have seen his leg and shoe as he turned around a corner near the construction site, but didn’t see his face.
He famously refused interviews, though his responses were polite and intriguing. To one newspaper he wrote,
“Thank you for thinking of me and my project, but I am inextricably bound to my work and unable to peel myself away from this very important work. Please feel free to write about the tower as it rises, but I am unable to provide further comment on the situation. I wish you all the best. NK”
The paper ran his response and of course the town went wild, and his ominous language only made us all more intrigued.
For the next few months, the tower went up with just as little information being released. After the first couple floors were completed, however, something became glaringly obvious that set this building apart from every other skyscraper in the city, if not the world: There were no windows. It was a solid wall. It was beige and seemed unfinished or hasty, like an adobe texture. It did not seem like the sort of exterior for a skyscraper created by a mysterious, wealthy hermit.
The tower rose higher and higher as the months went on. It began to look like a ragged finger rising up in the midst of the city, pointing at the sky. If it was a finger, it looked like it was accusing the sky of something, or perhaps rising in a triumphal victory gesture.
By winter it was dozens of stories high, approaching the heights of some of the highest buildings in the city. It still looked crazy, without a single window visible.
One day I tried to get close and ask one of the workers some questions. I paced the sidewalk leading up to the odd building and tried to catch someone dressed like a worker going in or coming out. But there was no one. Attempting not to look conspicuous, I paced around the block a few times. Eventually a full hour passed and I hadn’t seen anyone come in or go out of the spot that looked like the front door. I decided to walk right up to it and look through the window.
I crossed the street and turned on the sidewalk toward it. Right as I got close to the glass door, someone came out of it. It was a short, middle-aged woman. She marched right up to me and, not very politely, asked if she could help me.
I was stunned. I hadn’t prepared to explain why I was snooping around the building. She could clearly see my confusion and reached up to touch my forearm.
“Perhaps it’s better if you walk away and come back another day.” She offered me a joyless smile and abruptly turned and walked back into the doors. From where I stood, the doors appeared to be glass, yet I couldn’t see a single thing on the other side of them. They were highly reflective and perhaps it was dark on the inside? It was impossible to see anything inside, but I dared not get closer to them and try to peer in.
to be continued…
e
100 Days of blogs, Day 8
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