ABS CBN LADDER OF FRIDAY

5

As the woman walked outside the ABS CBN ScreenPlay and into the mall lobby, I gathered every brave atom in my body, ran to the gate and slammed it down.

I was angry, man, I was vivid actually. I wanted to kill my manager, I wanted to get answers, but I did something stupid instead.

As I felt safe behind the metal gate, I yelled at the woman who was walking away.

“And don’t you ever come back here!” it was so satisfying to scream.

She stopped. The line of people stopped. She turned towards me.

Another wave of goosebumps overran my body. Sure, I was behind a gate, but why the fuck did I do that?

She ran towards me. She grabbed the gate and squeezed so hard, I could see blood dripping from her palms.

The crowd of people walked to the gates of other shops and grabbed them the same way she grabbed my gate. Her whizzing got more violent as her eyes pierced mine. I stepped back, scared that couple inches of metal wouldn’t hold me safe much longer.

Her eyes started looking up again and her head followed. I took another step back. She was now looking at the ceiling, her head pointing up. Behind her, I could see others doing the same.

“Set me free, why don’t you babe!” she yelled. Her voice, man, her voice makes me fucking cry even today.

I never saw a person dying, well, other than on Live leak and Reddit, but her voice sounded as if she were on her deathbed. She started shaking the gate violently, and the people behind her shook the gates of other stores, producing the most ear-piercing noise you can imagine.

There I was, standing in a locked theater, a crazy woman shaking my gate yelling incoherent things, and a crowd of several dozen people basically trying to rip other gates off. It was so surreal, I couldn’t grasp the situation, it was so loud.

All I knew is that I had to get the fuck out. To hell with cleaning and shutting the theater down, I grabbed my jacket off the counter and I ran to the back door exit.

As I opened the door, I heard the gates stop shaking, but I wasn’t going to look back. My car was parked right by the exit. I jumped into it and speed up my barefoots and fuck away.

I got home some time after midnight. My parents were asleep so my story had to wait, though honestly, I don’t know if they’d believe me.

After hours of analyzing, sending angry texts to my manager, and concluding that this was all some prank coworkers pulled on me, I fell asleep.

I woke up to my father asking where and why I bought a new ladder when we had a perfectly good working one in the shed. I was almost hangover from the lack of sleep so I just waved him off and rolled over.

You know how when something big happens the day before, you don’t remember it immediately as you wake up, but then it hits you and sobers you the fuck up right away?

That’s what happened to me. I remembered the whole creepy lady in black crawling and saying strange words at me thing