The Building, part 5

The guard was several inches taller than me, so I felt like a child as he advanced further into my home, right where I wanted to draw him into. I backed into my kitchen and pulled the lever I had rigged. It pulled a string through several hooks that led it up and along the ceiling to the front door. It released a sledgehammer that had been fixed up above the door, and now swung down and into the face of the guard at the door. It swung in a perfect arc, and my estimation of his height and placement had been perfect. It appeared to hit him right in the nose beneath his mask, and he crumpled to the ground right in the doorway.

This all happened so fast that the minion who was now in my kitchen wasn’t even aware that his partner was down before I grabbed the pot of boiling oil I had left on the stove and threw it on his face. Even through his mask, it burned his skin. It hit some exposed parts of his neck and ran down his torso.

He screamed and fell to the ground as well, clawing the mask from his head and wiping at his face. The skin was burned and melting. He kept crying out and I grew worried one of my neighbors — or worse, Krimm — would hear. 

While he cried out, I quickly ran to my doorway and pulled the other guard inside, slamming the door closed and praying that the eyes hadn’t seen what I just did. They could clearly see my doorway from the tower, but there was a small sliver of hope that none of them had been watching during those few seconds.

Now there were two men in my home: One unconscious and one screaming in agony from his burning skin. I figured it would only be a matter of time before he went into shock from the pain, but I figured I could help him along. I had a bottle of ether on my counter, which I now poured onto the rag by the sink and held it over his mouth, telling myself it was the most merciful thing I could do. The man whose skin was still bubbling fell silent and breathed in small, shallow breaths on my kitchen floor.

I returned to the man by the front door and began removing his uniform. I now realized that to put them on, both would be too large for me, and I had to choose between a mask filled with blood or a mask filled with oil and burnt skin. I opted for the bloody mask after a thorough scrubbing. I knew I had to work quickly before the men woke up, so I put on the uniform, rolled up the pant legs and tucked them into the boots so they didn’t look so long, and scrubbed the inside of the mask with bleach.

But then I realized my miscalculation: the minions never traveled alone. There were always at least two or three walking together. Would Nephilous Krimm see this from his tower and be suspicious about the lone minion?

I decided to tie up the one who now lay in his underwear, so that when he woke up, he wouldn’t be able to get out. Once he was secured, still bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth, I returned to the guard in my kitchen. I pulled his mask back over his face and dragged him to the front door by the wrists.

I opened the front door, turned toward the panopticon, and waved my arms over my head. I saw several of the eyes lock onto me immediately. To them, it looked like two guards — one waving and one unconscious on the floor. And for now, that was true.

It was barely two minutes before one of Krimm’s trucks turned the corner onto my block. It pulled right up to the front door and two minions ran out while the driver waited behind the wheel.

“What happened?” one asked me.

I didn’t want to answer in case they noticed the voice being different, so I just pointed at the body and at the kitchen. The guards were in such a hurry they barely took notice of me. They saw the blood on the ground and the oil spilled all over the kitchen, and decided it was too much work to clean up or help. After thinking for just a few seconds, he took a strange weapon out of his belt. It was gray and smaller than a brick, but I could barely see through the foggy lenses of my mask. He unfolded it once, so it doubled in length and extended it toward the man’s head. It clicked with a sound no louder than a seatbelt, and I could tell that the man on the ground was now dead.

I couldn’t react and risk giving myself away, so I watched in silence. I was grateful the mask hid my face, because I had no idea what it was doing currently.

“Come with us,” the minion said and turned to walk back to the truck. He left the door open and gave no other instructions, so I turned and followed him to the truck. The other one who had gone to the house said nothing, just walked back to the truck behind me.

I was so nervous I felt like I’d throw up the entire trip to the tower. I would likely go into the mysterious building, and may even speak to Krimm himself. Would they interrogate me? Ask about the death of ‘my partner’? What would I say?

to be continued…

e

100 days of blogs, day 12

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