Fan Fiction ❯ Fade to Black ❯ Just Another Day ( Chapter 1 )

Fade to Black

Chapter 1: Just Another Day

The rain hit the cracked and broken pavement as I pulled off of the road and drove my truck over an embankment and across the remnants of the fence that used to surround my factory. I pulled into the parking space in front of the double doors leading into the multi-level, dilapidated structure. I shut my truck off and grabbed my black backpack from the passenger seat before opening the door and running to the back of my truck and grabbing a bunch of boxes and hurrying to the door. A yellowing federal seal, which had been cut months ago, stuck wetly to the door as I pulled it open and hurried inside. I tend to ignore anything the government puts out into the world. Most of it is just bullshit anyway.

I discovered this place a few months back, when I had been out for a drive and had gotten tired of the constraints roads put on your freedom. I veered off the road and found this place. It must have been abandoned for, like, ten or fifteen years when I got there. I got the idea from a movie I saw once. In the movie, the kid hung out in an abandoned mall. I figured an abandoned factory would be pretty awesome. So I gathered a few useful items and brought them to the factory. I set up a nice little place on the third floor executive office area. That's where I headed now.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I'm a 18-year-old senior from East Bumblefuck, PA. Actually, I live in a town called Western Heights in northeastern Pennsylvania. Pretty generic name, I know, but hey, it's a place to live. My name is Josiah and I may very well be the anti-thesis of pop-culture and society. I dress in black, listen to heavy music, curse like a drunken sailor, and I do not wear Abercrombie and Fitch. Like I said, the anti-thesis of pop-culture. I am a man of short temperament and I frequently get angry and beat shit up. But that's me.

I followed the main corridor and turned right at a T-junction. To the left was just a bunch of storage rooms. I strode across the empty main production floor and went immediately for a steel staircase in the lefthand corner of the room. I took the steps two at a time, pausing on the third landing to shift the weight in my arms and to adjust my shouldered backpack before I pushed open to door to the third level of the five floor factory. This office area had carpeting and my black boots made that carpety-scuffy noise as I strode through the darkened halls. I passed a few doors which were already kicked open from my doings throughout the building. I had found some useful stuff in there. A nice, overstuffed sofa, a long-ass conference table, some filing cabinets for all my shit, chairs which accompanied the conference table to the main office, and other assorted goodies left behind when the time to move out came. Lamps and such...I turned right at another T-junction and continued for a short time before turning left, down a bare hallway to double glass doors that I spray-painted black. I juggled the boxes and opened the doors to a moderate size reception room. In the center of the room sat the conference table and chairs. I took yet another right and opened two doors to my office. There were no windows in my office, only candle to provide the light....up until today. I set the boxes by my big hardwood desk in the back of the room and removed the items. A CD-player/radio. A small television. A Mr. Coffee. And the coupe de gras was a small Frigidaire refrigerator which I placed ever so gently on the table to the right of my desk next to my dear friend Mr. Coffee. I positioned the CD-player on my desk next to my backpack and carried the television to the rack near the ceiling I constructed myself over in the left-hand corner. I slide the TV up onto the shelf and adjusted it so I would be able to look up and see it from my desk. I plugged the extension cord into a nearby wall outlet and set the remote on my desk, next to the Algebra note and schoolbooks I had brought earlier. I opened my black military surplus bag and pulled out a Maglite and the blueprints to the former Western Heights Electronics, Inc. I also removed a military Ka-Bar knife and clipped it to my belt.

It took me nearly a month to locate the blueprints of this place in all the rooms on all the floors of this old building. But I finally found them and that meant I could turn on the lights, get electricity, have some real fun. Due to a little research into the history of this place at the local library and nursing home(both very nice sources of past information), I came to find out that the factory still had a hot line running into it from the main electrical lines near the main road. All that had to happen was for a switch to be flicked and Josiah Corp. would be in business. Well, not business but I wouldn't have to trip over shit I can't even see. And it was common knowledge that our local electricity supplier was run by a bunch of half-assed, dope fiend high school dropouts that probably wouldn't notice a new source was sapping electricity. All I needed were the blueprints and I had those.

So I grabbed my flashlight and checked its batteries and snatched up the blueprints and returned to the shop floor. I click on my flashlight and located the door under the staircase which led to the staircase that would take me through the two sublevels down to the bottom floor to the electrical controls. I opened the door and adjusted the collar of my black leather trenchcoat. I stepped into the darkness and went slowly down the staircase, hearing my footsteps echo. The blueprints showed that the majority of the factory's maintenance equipment was on the first sublevel and that the second sublevel was mostly open space, except for the control panel on the back wall. I reached the bottom and cut a path in the darkness with my Maglite, locating the control panel. It was just like a big circuit breaker box with levers instead of switches. I looked over the labels and read the yellowing print. Let's see....perimeter lighting...nope, don't need to be a well lit spot in the darkness for everyone to see. Machinery.....not there anymore, so no, I don't want that. I turned off the all other minor systems and made sure only the third floor had electricity, along with the first level. I rarely ever went on the second, fourth, or fifth floors and didn't think them important. I had already looted those floors anyway. I looked towards the top of the control panel and pulled down on the main switch. The hum of electricity filled the sublevels and echoed softly. It was a quiet sound and wouldn't be heard from the road. Green lightbulbs burned to life next to the switches I had turned on and red for the ones turned off. Kickass, I thought to myself as I climbed back up to the main floor. I then returned to my office and tested the TV, lights, and other appliances I had set up. Everything was in the green. I even somehow got cable. Fuckin A....