Safe House

Day One

Safe House One

            I forgot to turn the kiln off. Okay, I know, you’re being targeted by trained murderers and you worry about something your glass fusing teacher told you to do. My brain’s weird like that, alright?

            I’m in a concrete room under the fusing studio right now, huddled up in a corner. I’m not scared, I swear-it’s just really cold, and I’m still in shorts. I can see Newt and James across the room, trying frantically to find an outlet for a hot plate. God, we’ve only been in here for three hours and they’re already hungry.

            Only three hours. That’s terrifying-it’s felt like an eternity. Yet I have a feeling being stuck here isn’t a simple, day long thing. Who knows-I’m pretty sure we’ll die down here.

            I can see Megan, the poor thing, crying her tiny tears into the shoulder of Phil. Phil might be able to keep us alive-he has the whole being an adult thing going for him. Do they even train counselors for things like this?  He was with Megan in their animal care class when the first shots were heard-I don’t know where the rest of their class ran off too. In fact, I don’t know where the rest of my glass fusing class went either, now that I think about it. That isn’t good, is it?

            Oh god, James, that hammer will not help you solve your problem of finding an outlet. James and Newt were in carpentry class when everybody started to run-I guess you couldn’t help but to keep that hammer in your hands, could you? There’s no limit to how much I hate that kid. Newt’s fine, I haven’t talked to him much, but James? Awful. Flirts with every girl with a pulse. Not joking. He even flirted with me once, and I’m just about as appealing as an inner city public bathroom. But it’s not like he’d even remember that night-his actions have never held much significance to him.

            Good, they finally found an outlet. I didn’t want to admit it, but I’m really hungry as well. Scrambled eggs were for breakfast this morning-ew-so I had to settle for dry Mini Wheats. I say dry, because our cabin had already finished our two containers of milk. Not a fun way to start the morning. Anyways, they found a small outlet right behind the large storage container-wait, you person who’s reading this after I die, you know nothing about this place, do you? It would be helpful to describe this hellhole, wouldn’t it….

            We entered through a trapdoor in the ceiling, over in the right corner of the room diagonal from me. You hit the ground with a thud and grumble for a minute after jumping through that thing (trust me-personal experience.) There’s a huge first aid kit hanging on the wall to the left of the drop zone, plus a large, rectangular box no one’s bothered to look in yet. To your right, there’s the only door in the whole room, the only separate space-that would be the bathroom. Haven’t really explored it yet.

            The corner to my right is where the giant storage container used to be before the boys pushed it out the way. It’s filled with most every thing you need to comfortably  survive a terrorist attack-I saw toothbrushes, a portable radio, and the notorious hot plate all in there. It kind of scared me how prepared an innocent sleepaway camp was for a full-blown infiltration.  Then to the left of that, there’s my corner-the only empty one. It’s already my favorite place in the whole concrete suite. If you close your eyes and press up against the grainy walls, you can almost pretend that you’re feeling warm.

            Finally, directly across from me is a stack of about fifteen mattresses-the weird ones covered in blue plastic we have to sleep on in our cabins as well. Come on,  Camp Cobalt, we’re about to die and I have to die on one of those scratchy things? Fine. See if I care. Anyways, there’s also a pile of thick padded blanket and plastic covered pillows on top of the Leaning Tower of Mattress.