Writer on the Wall

Part II

*Warning* Gore up ahead. You've been warned....

I could hear him fiddling with more luggage outside at his car, the gravel underneath his feet gave his every movement away. I was mildly glad for the noisy gravel, because once he made his way inside the cotton mill, every sound was muffled by the dust. Excitement began to make my heart race. Who was this man, and why in the world was he at the same cotton mill as me at the same time? What was in all the storage boxes he was carrying in? Perhaps I had discovered the home base of a drug operation. I could only imagine the man pulling blue meth from the containers. Maybe I had watched Breaking Bad too many times.

He walked back in, carrying another storage bin. By now, he had brought in about five. He seemed to be quite strong because he hadn't struggled with any of the containers, except for this one. He waddled under its weight, and when he let it hit the ground, I heard it, whatever it was inside, rumble around.

He began examining the entirety of the first floor of the mill, I watched him walk the length of it, step by step, my head peering over the balcony. It was a small miracle he hadn't caught wind of my marijuana smoke or my staggered breathing. Colonies of ants had seemingly taken up residence in my skin as it crawled across my bones, trying to flee without me. I realized, my excitement had quickly transformed into anxiety. I clutched my own arms, scratching impatiently at the nonexistent ants marching one by one. The little one had just stopped to tie his shoe when the mystery man's face shot up at the balcony, as though he knew I was there. I shuffled back into my hiding place, comfortably nestled between two steel cotton gins, but I no longer felt comfortable being here. I know he hadn't seen me, but I saw him, or rather, I saw that he didn't want anyone to see him. He was hiding, too, behind a full face mask. I couldn't make out the fine details, but from what I saw in the split second that I was almost caught, it looked like something you could find in the BDSM section of any sex shop. It was completely black, with small slits for eyes and two more small circles cut out for his nostrils. The small amount of light below me glistened on his mask, reflecting back into the grunge. There was a zipper over the mouth that he currently had zipped shut. How I hoped that zipper would stay shut.

I could hear the small pop of containers being opened, and curiosity shook me free of the hold my anxiety had on me. I had to know what was going to come out. He had started with the box he brought in first, the seemingly lighter ones. He pulled an endless supply of clear plastic from the first container. He wrestled with it for a moment before being able to find the specific piece he had been looking for and carefully smoothed it onto the floor, pulling out the corners taut. Next to materialize were a series of metal rods that he quickly began to lock together, like rods for a tent. With a confident quickness, he assembled a large cube of the metallic cylinders.

Sweat began to drip down my forehead, warm against my frozen muscles. The scene unfolding in front of me was very quickly turning sinister. I continued to hope that I was witnessing the set up of a meth lab, though the nagging feeling that something much more commandment breaking was about to happen. The man in front of me was creating a sealed off room with metal rods and plastic sheeting. My mind immediately began jumping to the worst of conclusions. I shouldn't be here, is all I could say to myself, over and over. I shouldn't be here.

He left the roof to his cube completely open and exposed, a perfect window for me to gaze into his world. In the cube, he had only two containers left. He pried open the one on the right. I noticed that his fingers were clad in the same glistening fabric, his gloves ran the lengths of his arms, stopping just beneath his elbows. I almost didn't want to know what was going to come out next. Almost.

My heart skipped a beat when all my worst fears began to expose themselves to me. Everything seemed to be stuck in slow motion as he pulled a series of large knives, a hatchet, and then finally, some sort of handheld, electric saw from the depths of that blue container. My body began to sway there on the balcony and my stomach was revolting, churning beneath my flesh. I wanted to throw my hand to my mouth to barricade its contents, but I couldn't move. I didn't dare disturb the air around me. I refused to be the butterfly who rippled the wind and caused my own demise.