#weird experience

he must've been on some good stuff because he kept saying things like "guys say hi to jack the grey planet" and me him and two other users on the live made up this whole thing called "the Johnson System" consisting of:

• Johnson (the star) who is afraid of the colour blue. I made up his name

• Jack (grey rocky planet) kind of the main character since he was talked about the most

• Alex (red rocky planet) I picture them being Jack's best friend

• Steven (rocky planet) may have been green but I cannot quite recall

• Sneak (the gas giant) only brought up once but remained a staple character

• Uranus who is there for some unknown reason??

and nearby special guest: Umar the supermassive black hole.

Okay, so, first off I’m not too tech savvy, I understand how to create a google account, and how to send an email, but making a blog is like throwing me into the deep end knowing I can’t swim. I don’t know how any of this shit works, but I’ve been given the basic idea that I just need to type it all out. Can’t be too hard if everyone else does it.

So, at the edge of town there is this odd convenient store that’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That includes the holidays, since money is fucking time, and it’s not like I have anything else better to do.

The store itself is quite sizable for a convenience store selling aisles fulls of off-brand everything, with even the meat products that we sell looking suspiciously similar to rotten tree bark and dried up shit. Though that never stopped anyone from buying it. Food is food I guess.

Then you had the eerie smell that the store seemed to spritz on itself the second the clock turned 8PM. A mixture of chemicals and iron, as if blood had a signature cheap cologne. Doesn’t matter where you are in the store, even the parking lot, it still seems to follow you all the fuck around the place, till you get out onto the road, and even then, it’s like a bad memory. Doesn’t smell too bad after a few months of getting use to it, or by getting use to it, I mean bearing with it to the point where its existence is just fucking neutrally present.

You might think to yourself, what’s worse than smelling blood all day, well good question, probably the fuck ton of other abnormal, and down right weird shit that happens at the edge of town. Though thinking about it now, that can be put up into interpretation. Not many folk even in town experience the oddities the night shift has to offer. Even then, most either ignore or forget such, in the process we all call denial.

Anyways, I've never been able to find the source of that god awful odor, and I probably never will, even though I want to. Finding a needle in a hay stack in its most literal sense.

The store itself you’d think would be the definition of crap. Being at the very edge of town where civilization meets nature and the unknown. The thoughts and images of a run down one story building belonging to a low budget horror film come to mind, but that statement would be wrong. The place is genuinely decent. Now it won’t win an award for cleanliness, but it’s close enough to being the opposite of what most people imagine such a place to look like.

You’d still find stains of varying types from old to recent events scattered around, hiding in the crevices of the store. Along with the occasional cat sized rat or cockroach. Those little fuckers seem to only really be active during the night shift. Who can blame them? Unlike me, they love the night shift.

Moving on, it was a few nights ago, the time was around 1AM while I sat behind 1 of the 4 registers in the front of the store. Slightly leaning back on my wooden stool, leading to the front 2 legs to be about an inch off the ground, slowly and slightly teetering forwards and backwards on the stool as I did. The mixture of disinterest and just utter boredom smothered on my face being the first thing many people may see once they walk in the front doors.

The reason for the jaded exterior I carried with me today was the same reason that I carried it with me every shift till some calamitous event chooses to smack me in the face that week, the fact that I had nothing to do other than to count my own thoughts. Understand the store is quite sizable in terms of comparing it to the generic corner store or gas station, to the point where it generally needs around or more than half a dozen people to man the certain mundane duties that come with this particular job.

Though the night shift when it comes to the number of staff being present at all times, it can be summed up to a single low digit. A digit so low in fact that it’s next to nothing. There was me, and the night shift janitor. That was about it. Which begs the question: why was I so bored and disinterested? After all, if this place was so big, I should be feeling a plethora of emotions that are far from boredom, right? They should be more akin to how a business man in a dead end job feels, overworked and hating oneself. Well that can be answered in the simplest way possible. I did everything already. Whatever else I had planned was already done by the day shift. You’d assume that’s a good thing, less work and all that.

Well, you’d be 100% wrong on all fucking fronts.

Boredom in terms of feeling is like an overly dramatic fake death. Purgatory is the word, I believe. You're not dying but it certainly feels like a slow mental falling out with yourself. The idea of having nothing to do, and having free time but everything you do seems to just further pull you away from any interest you have with reality, plopping itself infinitely downward like shit into quick sand as you step ever so closely into insanity. Feeding into the disinterest more. A weird trip of sorts that just seems to not have a proper end, just tiresome reprieves.

Once, I was in deep thought on the matter of what boredom is, so I can stave off from the cocktail of actual boredom and madness currently affecting me. Again counting my thoughts. I felt a hand wrap around my shoulder, as I would hear someone say in a happy but interested voice, ”Hey There!”.

I jumped out of my seat, in the literal sense of things, as I lost my balance, toppling over backwards alongside my favorite stool. I was sent crashing down back first onto the polished concrete floor like a fort made out of dominos.

The next thing I know, there was a stinging sensation across the entirety of my back, like having a severe sunburn smacked with a shovel. I groaned from the pain; my eyes slowly creeping open. My vision was blurry, as I could barely make out a distinct humanoid figure looming over me. I could tell due to the lights of the store that were above me, having been covered by something in front of me. A shadowy silhouette. It did not take long for my sight to clear. My immediate thoughts were, “oh great, I’m being robbed again”, as I was met face to face with my…..coworker?

“Hey, you ok? Ya didn’t stick the landing, then again, you seem pretty comfortable”

A few seconds would pass with annoying silence. Within that time frame, the thought of asking why he kept looking at me, with a facial expression that bordered on curiosity and maybe childlike wonder without a word said came to mind, but I was still in a certain daze. The sort you may acquire from general shock after falling back first on fucking concrete.

“Well?” he asked while looking down at me with that stupid signature smile of his.

Looking up at him, to throw my own question out there, “Well What?”.

“Is it comfortable? I’m aware cream polished concrete isn’t rigid like normal concrete, along with being super decorative, like jeez Louisiana, premium concrete right here but it’s still a pretty hard surface. You know I like to take my naps over in the closet, but if this floor is the next best thing you gotta tell me. Come on, Abarino. Don’t hold off on your BFF now.”

“Shut up, and help me up Rosco”. I said in an annoyed tone

“Okie dokie Ma’am!”

Rosco the night shift janitor; a veteran of the night shift, and I say that due to most newly hired employees with two brain cells and the will to live, usually hand in their resignations within the month. Some just end up as a face on one of the two bulletin boards mounted upon the inner and outer front walls. So far from my limited knowledge, Rosco has been working here for years now, sometime before I started the job. He was..just as odd as the store itself, because you either had to be severely desperate or just down right insane to work the night shift as long as Rosco has. He fell under the latter.

Rosco slid his hands under my armpits, roughly and with little effort, picking me up as if I was made of nothing. I often forget that Rosco is strangely strong, then again I can't really compare myself to something that is heavy, but that doesn’t mean I’m light either.

He dropped me down onto my feet, in such a way that I almost lost my balance once again, barely catching myself as I almost toppled over. I also keep forgetting this guy has no comprehension of gentleness whatsoever. Regaining my footing upon the concrete floor, my eyes fell upon what used to be the stool I had been sitting on. The seat of the stool had snapped off from the rest of its crippled body once it collided with the floor. I’m gonna miss that thing. Though, how much do you want to bet that I’ll be the one to have to pay the owners back for the minor property damage? Later thoughts to ponder I guess.

I could feel a particular soreness form on my back, probably a bruise. While I silently mourned the stool that is only a splintered set of legs now, I could see a visible shallow crack streaked across the body of the wooden seat.

It was a useless piece of crap now. I could try using duct tape, and super glue, but the chances of that working would be like slapping a bandaid on a decapitation with a thumbs up. The need to just have it thrown out was there and I knew just the numb skull to do it. His punishment for breaking my favorite stool, along with my new bruises. “Guess who’s gonna— ”.

I would be interrupted mid sentence by the feeling of Rosco roughly planting the tip of his index finger on my nose. The smell of beef jerky and whiskey flooded my nostrils the second he did. Was it unpleasant? Definitely. Have I smelled worse things in the last few days? Unfortunately, yes. His dried meat alcohol finger doesn’t even make it to the top 10 of the most horrid smells from the last 7 days. Loudly whispering to me, with a playful tone, “Boop, shhhhh, not it”.

Slapping his finger off my nose, as I said in an annoyed tone. “You're the janitor, and well oh yeah, you caused it!”.

“Nope, you’re the clutz who fell on the chair.”

“First off, I fell off the chair, and second, YOU ARE THE ONE WHO SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME IN THE FIRST PLACE!”

Oh, I said that last part slightly louder than I should have in this face to face conversation. Though that seemed to silence Rosco for a good half minute as he held a stoic look on his face. It made me hold my tongue, not with bitter realization that I may have been too harsh to someone who was clearly playing around. Then again it was Rosco, so it was more of a 50/50 chance whether or not that was true, but the real reason why I didn’t speak was my slight and also fleeting curiosity in why he was.

A serious moment for Rosco even in a dangerous and life threatening situation was rarer than seeing big foot, or tips in a retail job.

After another 15 seconds passed, he spoke in a calm voice. “Ok, so we’re in agreement that it was no one’s fault?”. Rosco took the joint out from behind his left ear, and a silver zippo lighter with a slight dent on the bottom right corner from his right pocket.

Rosco, for a janitor, didn’t dress like any other janitor; sure he did own overalls and a jumpsuit but those were for anything but cleaning. The one constant to Rosco’s “uniform” was that he would always wear a t-shirt with some sort of joke, comedic weird slogan or a form of profanity plastered on it. Today’s t-shirt said “These Hands Are Unisex”, with two semi-realistic fists under them. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

“You know you aren’t allowed to smoke in the building; go outside or to your little man cave in the closet.”

Rosco looked at me with those apathetic eyes of his, as he placed the joint between his lips and flicked the zippo lighter open, lighting the end with an anticipated set of fluid motions where at the end he was exhaling smoke up into the air above me and the zippo back in his pocket. Leaving the joint hanging from his grinning mouth. “Live life Abbington.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Pffft, ya can’t even smell it; the air is full of Violent Zest tonight!”. Rosco enthusiastically put his hands up in the air in front of himself to gesture to the incorporeal existence that was Violent Zest. The name Rosco gave to the shit iron chemical blend that was in the very air of the convenient store. It had the inherent side effect where smells such as weed or in this case marijuana, didn't permeate the air, but for other palatable or unpalatable aromas? Well, apparently they don’t count. At least it didn’t affect my ability to differentiate between the crazies and the drunks.

I’d stare at him for a good minute. Those misplaced excited eyes of his dancing on my soul, to try to get me to dance along with him in his world of mellowness. I was annoyed and the likelihood that he’d actually notice my current mood towards his shenanigans would be on the lower end of his unnaturally high but particular perception scale.

Wait? Why was he excited again? He’d usually have a demeanor that leaned towards being carefree or curious with hints of mischief and probable indulgence but that was his happy going grin. That may seem normal to anyone else, because he smiles like an idiot a lot, but I’ve been working with Rosco for years now. The only reason why he’d have that specific childish ass grin on his face, is if he really wanted to say something important, which can be either weird and or bad when it comes to Rosco. Would it be good to ask him first before he steam rolls me with whatever he wants to say? Yeah probably.

“So why did you want to talk to me?”

Rosco placed a hand on his chest while resting the back of his other hand on his forehead in an overly dramatic manner, saying in an impressively somber tone with little to no sarcasm.

“Oh, can’t you’re old pal Rosco just say hello without strings attached?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re right this time Abster!”

Rosco dropped the dramatic facade as swiftly as he put it up. I would applaud his theatrical talent if it weren’t for the fact that it annoys the fuck out of me at times.

“Don’t call me that, and what is it? Did Karen come by again?”

“Oh yeah, Karen showed up when I was taking out the trash; we had the best scream off, but that’s not the thing I wanted to tell you.”

Rosco had the habit of naming every weird and or supernatural thing that we came into contact with. Karen, a recent name to our list of weird crap, was a screaming doe. For those who aren’t aware what a doe is, well, look it up. Anyways, it’s been coming by the convenience store about every 2 to 3 weeks for the last 3 months. Now for the people who don’t know, a doe technically has more of a high pitched shriek or cry than an actual scream that can be described as alarming and in distress coming from a bullhorn. It may sound weird, but it’s pretty normal for a doe to sound like such. Karen, on the other hand, has a stereotypical horror movie damsel about to be horribly murdered scream. The sort of scream that can only come from a human being. Fact is, it’s a weird thing of nature that I have had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting.

For Rosco, he finds their interactions with Karen to be, in his words, “A TOTAL BLAST! Worth the blown ear drums and the sobering up”, and that was the first time.

Rosco leaned towards me, crouching slightly, being that there was a bit of a significant height difference between me and him. Then in a hush tone, like a child telling the favorite parent a mischievous secret.

“SO, when I was in the storage room, and mind you I was doing some extra lifting before George comes by later this week and totally not trying to stack boxes and crates to see how tall I could stack them, I found something MAJESTIC!”

“Did you find the door to Narnia?”

“HA, no. I wish I did. It would have been cool to meet a talking lion. Thooougghh, I did find a door.”

My interest was slightly piqued, but Rosco stopped talking as the grin on his face grew somehow without dropping the joint resting between his lips. He was definitely excited.

“Well? Did you open the door?” I asked with a bit of actual curiosity lingering in my voice.

“Of course not. I tried prying it open with a crowbar, but sadly, it lost its life doing what it did best.”

“Should I even ask where you got a crowbar from?”

“Those are the wrong questions, Nabby! The question is, did I get it open?”

“Don’t call me that, and did you?”

Rosco would look down for a good minute, looking like a disappointed child as he said.

“Noo.”

Rosco perked up to say.

“Buuuttt, I know a gal who can help their be— “

“No.”

My near instantaneous rejection of his proposal in helping him get the door open had an equally instantaneous verbal and physical response from him. Rosco leaned the upper portion of his body backwards with his arms limply falling to his sides, in a dramatic manner that is similar to how a teen girl may stereotypically react to not getting what they want. In this case, it was a grown ass man acting like a child, who was probably high and maybe drunk. In a whiny somewhat loud tone, Rosco would say with his head slumped back.

“WHHHYYYY NOOOOTTT?!”

“Have you not questioned why the owners would have a locked door probably hidden in the storage room from employees like us?”

Rosco would stand straight up, place a hand on his own chin as he started to rub the old scar on the left corner of his bottom lip with his index finger. He tends to rub one of his scars while thinking. One of his many habits I guess he picked up while working here.

“Not really, more like hmmm what’s behind the secret door?”

“How long have you been at it?”

“Since uh, 2300 hours.”

“So about 2 hours? Ok, what makes you think that you can open it with my help after 2 hours of trying? What was the thought process that led to this revelation that your coworker who's half your size and has little to no experience in breaking into what I can assume is a fucking vault door if you have been at it since 11. Seriously, explain to me where this idea of yours came from. Knowing you, and I mean you! Out of all the people in this shitty town, you would be the one to have gotten a fucking door open. Open wide enough for your 6 foot ass to just walk through. What? Didn’t use enough looney toons magic? Not enough dynamite, Bugs?”

I asked, crossing my arms, giving him my glare that he should be more than buddy buddy with at this point, with how many times I’ve done so. While giving him my signature glare, I would notice a few things. The first thing I noticed was that he looked nervous, like he was guilty of something. It was obvious from how he was scratching the side of his head through the black beanie he was wearing. His eyes tried not to make any sort of contact with mine as I kept glaring at him. The second thing was him nipping the end of the half smoked joint still cradled between his lips. Why was he nervous? I’ve scolded him plenty of times without his signature carefree, relaxed nature straining under my words, and he’s done way worse to have earned my certain verbal wrath. This is the man that regularly does dumb shit without a general care in the world, mainly for his own entertainment when he’s not working. That, plus him being drunk and or high nearly all the time. Now though he’s, well, not a nervous wreck…but, he’s acting off.

“Rosco, did you—”

“No.”

“Ok, I'm going to ignore that response, and ask again. Did you do something fucking dumb?”

“Weeellllll.”

“Weelllll?”

“Just used like a little bit of C4.”

Gesturing with his hand the little amount he used by pinching his fingers tips between the air, leaving a small gap between them.

“Oh for fucks sake, ok. Just show me the damage, Rosco. At least then I'll know what to blame you for when I make my report to the owners"

Closing my eyes as I rubbed them for a few seconds in pure…annoyance? Is that the word? Probably not the exact word to describe my feelings at the moment, but it was close enough. I opened them again to see Rosco smiling again. At least someone was happy, as he would place his hand on the joint still in his mouth, inhaling so deeply the one half of the blunt that was left was almost nothing but ash.

Leaving the rest to fall to the ground. A mess I hope he'll clean up later. Watching him exhale, as a large cloud of smoke spilled from his mouth. Luckily exhaling the smoke up above me instead of in my face.

Joyous that he managed to get me to at least follow him along to see this mysterious door. If my curiosity wasn’t piqued, I wouldn’t have cared much to indulge him. He started to skip his way there, exclaiming.

“LET’S GET GOIN ABBERS!”

Was I getting tired of his attempts at creating a permanent nickname for me? Yes, but at this point he wasn’t going to listen if he didn’t the last 4 times. I followed him to the back of the store, as I looked behind myself to look out the front door windows to see whether or not there were any people in the parking lot. Didn’t want any potential customers simply walking into an empty store. There weren’t. I turned my head back to see that Rosco had already reached the storage room door, waiting for me, hollering.

“COME ON SLOW POKE, YA WAITING FOR ME TO CARRY YOU THERE?!”

Rolling my eyes, as I kept the same pace, getting there less than a minute later. The bright fluorescent lights of the expansive storage room on, cascading over the many half open or closed cardboard boxes and wooden crates full of cheap junk food, alcohol of all kinds, toiletries and whatever else we sold that didn’t need to be refrigerated.

My eyes next landed on a tower of small cardboard boxes stacked neatly on the one spot of the storage room floor where there was actual space to play his game of reverse jenga without hindrance. The tower of cardboard nearly reached the ceiling, lacking the last few layers it needed. I wasn’t too impressed.

“Over here!”

Looking over to a corner of the room that was once stacked high with our boxes, now there lies a trap door. Rosco stood over it, as he tapped it with his foot, like you would with an aggressive colony of ants.

“I thought you said it was a door?”

“Technically a trapdoor is a door. It’s just a door for a floor.”

He had me there.

“Well I thought you meant a door..that’s on a wall.”

“Course not, that would be way less interesting.”

After walking over to his side, I got a better view of the object in question. There’s no mistaking the details of a trap door alright, although the years have not been kind to it, the rust has gotten so thick that just touching it might have required a tetanus shot.

I could see an outline of cracked and shattered concrete around the trapdoor, though the door itself looked to be untouched by everything but age.

“I thought you said you used C4?”

“I did! That did jack squat. Look at this thing! Mocking me! With its old age.”

“Oookkk?”

Kneeling down on my good knee, I could see there was minor damage done to the concrete, even with the use of C4. My assumption is that the trapdoor had absorbed most of the destructive force of the C4, explaining why the cracks and broken concrete did not stray far at all from the trapdoor.

“I assume you can fix the cracks, right?”

I looked up at Rosco, who now stood on my left.

“Pffffttt, ya think I would have done this if I couldn’t?”

I gave Rosco a look that I thought would let him know that I fully agreed with his statement, which in turn, made him smile, thinking that I agreed about how capable he is. He got the wrong idea, or simply wouldn't acknowledge my lack of faith.

Looking back at the trapdoor, I noticed something I hadn’t before; a subtle outline of a keyhole next to the pull handle. Covered in a gentle layer of rust.

“Hey, Mitts?”

“Yeah, Abs?”

“Have you tried to pick this lock?”

I pointed to the layer of rust that covered the keyhole with its dirty red hue. Rosco crossed his arms, and with an annoyed expression he said, “Of course! But the rust won’t even budge, so I tried all the things. Even the basics of things, and GUESS WHAT!”

“It didn’t fuckin work.”

“IT DIDN’T WORK!”, Rosco said loudly.

I looked back at him for a second to see him pointing with his index finger to an open tool box to the side; out of view of the trapdoor. Tools strewn around, some half chipped or broken, others somewhat intact. My eyes slowly walked across the sight, till I saw two pieces of metal sitting in a neat pile on the far end of the handyman’s nightmare.

It took me a solid minute to piece together that the pieces of metal were the remains of the infamous crowbar, snapped into two pieces with the hook end bent nearly straight.

“It was like a son to me.”, he said mournfully.

I would question how that was even possible, but then again, it was Rosco. There may be rhyme and reason to most things in life, but Rosco was not one of those things.

“So, you interested in helping me get this thing open now, boss woman?”

“Not really.”

I could hear a groan in response, something along the lines of disappointment filling the air for an impressive minute of non-stop verbal dismay.

Though with Rosco being more importunate than usual, due to the trapdoor including the plethora of bullshit that has occurred just this past week and out of my previous sheer boredom…I was tempted to just get it over with.

I could feel a pair of eyes staring at me while contemplating. I turned towards Rosco, to see him staring at me with a smirk on his face that told me, he knew I was thinking about it. Saying in that playful voice of his, “Yeah you are.”

Rolling my eyes at him, I turned my head back to the trapdoor. Not saying a word to let him know he wasn’t winning, though I also believe he knew he was winning.

He'd planted a seed of curiosity in my boredom- ridden mind, and it was indeed blooming into one annoying as hell flower. A fucking ugly flower that I want to just stomp on and walk away from, but I'm simply too curious in why it’s just there, existing. Why did I feel like I was going to regret this?

“O—“

“HEY, maybe there's a basement down there, Abs! OH, OH! Maybe I could move all my shit down there.”

“I don’t thin—“

“Wonder if I could claim I'm working 24 hours a day if I live on property?”

“Well, I don’t th-“

“It'll be my own little apartment, El Casa Del Rosco!”

“Wai-“

“Think about it! Anyways, we should really be thinking about how we open this thing up, yeah?”

You know I would be incredibly annoyed at the moment, but it was just how ambitious Rosco was about this that made me ever so slightly less irritated by his constant interruptions while I was trying to say that I had agreed to aid him. Though it seemed that he had no need for an answer at this point. No matter what I would have said, I would have probably ended up helping him anyway, since he kept talking.

Though something clicked in my head. Something that he had said put the last piece of this stupid puzzle together, but I simply couldn’t make sense of this feeling. My eyes were fixated on the keyhole like I knew where the key was.

It was odd, not because a trapdoor older than me by a lifetime had spontaneously appeared out of nowhere, but for how modern the keyhole was. To me, this was a stupid thought; a dumb and weird idea, if I could call it anything else.

I fished in my back pocket to pull out a small keyring, instantly flipping to one of them, holding it near the keyhole. To me, this was again stupid. Then again, the key looked like it could fit; it looked the right shape. Though I don’t know how I was going to get through the rust if Rosco wasn’t able to. I mumbled to myself, “Worth a shot”, as I inserted the key into the trapdoor. The rust caved into the keyway as I placed the key further in.

Hearing Rosco to my side say, “well shit on a bun, you could’ve opened it the entire time?”.

With an irritated tone I said, “How the fuck was I post to know that, I just learned this thing existed?”.

“You had a key?” I turned to look at him as he stared at me inquisitively, waiting for a response. “Well, do you want to keep asking me questions or do you want that apartment?”. It appeared that did the trick, as Rosco quickly stepped closer to me, impatiently waiting for me to open the trapdoor for him to see as a grin spread across his face.

I turned back to the trapdoor while I twisted the key. The key, not struggling at all to turn while in the keyhole, I heard the rusted over door’s internal locking mechanism coming to life for a moment and dying once again. Before I could even let go of the key, Rosco’s hand pounced forward to the trapdoor’s handle, then I swiftly shoved my palm into the side of his face as his hand was inches away from gripping the handle.

Rosco said in a muffled but coherent voice, “wht nw?”, his body stuck in my mid-motion. “Let’s take a minute dumbass, the door is rusted to hell; let’s at least take the basic precaution to use a glove or even a rag to grip the handle, and maybe get a weapon before we jump into imminent danger.” I said while I gave him the -Are you this much of a fucking idiot- stare.

Rosco gave me the “oh” look, as he stood up straight, pulling a pair of green latex gloves from the back pocket of his work pants, then lifted his shirt up to pull a sizable hunting knife out from the waist of his pants. He gestured for me to move out of the way while he put on the gloves, standing up to move to the side as he crouched in front of the trapdoor. In an instant, he grabbed the handle and pulled; his other hand held the knife up, ready to swing if something were to pop up.

The loud groan of the rusted hinges moving for the first time in possibly decades filled the room, as there was…nothing. Like there was something, but whatever was beyond the trapdoor was absolutely shrouded in darkness. “Hm, darker than a demon’s anus”, Rosco said leaning over to see if he could get a better view. His words echoed in the vast empty space.

There were two questions that entered my mind at that moment.

1. What was actually down there?

2. How does Rosco know what a demon’s anus looks like?

Asking the latter in all honesty didn’t matter to the current situation, but the former? The former was probably a shared inquiry between us.

I asked, “You know what I’m thinking?”

“Depends, does it involve a penny, a glow stick, 50 feet of fishing wire, and a mirror?”

“No.”

“Then probably not.”

Before I could have said anything else, he had pushed the trapdoor forward, leaving it wide open as he pulled out an angle headed flashlight from his thigh pocket, shining it down the hole to reveal almost nothing but a ladder and more fucking darkness. The light only reached about a foot or so down the hole.

I didn’t have to say this was a horror movie cliche;, it was right in front of our faces, loud and clear, at least to me.

Rosco huffed as he positioned himself to climb down the ladder, for me to have simply asked

“The fuck are you doing?”

“Climbing down a ladder?” Rosco said while looking at me like I had asked a dumb question.

“Ok, why are you climbing down the ominous trapdoor, Rosco? Do I need to spell out how fucking– not even reckless, stupid that is?”

“Hey, you know I can’t spell; your words have no power over me.”

I tried grabbing him to stop him, but he had already started to climb down the ladder like there was no tomorrow, and by the time I looked down, I could vaguely see his beanie, till I couldn’t.

“Rosco?”

No response.

“Hey Rosco, this isn’t funny.”

No response again

It felt like Rosco was trying to mess with me by staying quiet; the idea of him crawling back up the ladder at any moment, screaming to the very heavens to just scare me, was present in my mind. The only sound that came out of the trapdoor was the echo of my voice every time I spoke. I couldn’t even hear him climbing down the louder anymore. Like if light and sound ceased to exist the very moment that it crossed the physical boundaries of this mysterious trapdoor.

“Rosco, if you don’t climb your ass back up here right the fuck now–”

Rosco would interrupt me, flying back up out of the trapdoor as if he had been launched up by a cannon to next land on me like a sack of rocks, and god he was heavy. If you have had a 210+ pound man thrown on top of you all of a sudden, not even suddenly, at any moment in time, understand it feels like your entire body is just crushed. Not in the sense that I was a fine paste now, or I wouldn’t be telling this story, but it was a certain type of pain that I wish most of you will never experience.

The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back a foot away from the trapdoor, with my blurry vision returning to see Rosco slamming the door shut, fiddling with the key I had left in the lock. He almost looked fearful, maybe horrified, which was a stretch, but it was something I wasn’t familiar with when it came to Rosco. For him to be serious is one thing, for him to be scared is entirely something different.

“FUCK YOU!”

Rosco yelled at the trapdoor once he had locked it and removed the key. I would have asked what was going on, if I didn’t have to stop him from swallowing my entire ring of keys. Nearly slugged him in the face in the process of re-acquiring it.

Rosco, for the next 3 or so minutes, would try to grab the key from me, yelling.

“I need to get rid of it...”

“You don't understand, it needs to go!"

and

“Abs!!"

I tried my best as I held it as far as I could away from him, till his hand smack pressed against the side of my face. If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have noticed the elephant in the room.

“Where’s the trapdoor?”

Rosco stopped his attempts to grab the keys from me to search for it, but it was just a blank spot on the floor now. The only remnants of its memory was an intact floor tile surrounded by cracks.

In our moment of confusion, I stuffed my ring of keys back in my pocket; it’d be safer there.

Rosco didn’t say anything; his panic had clearly vanished, now replaced with a nervous smile. He took a few steps forward, then stomped on the ground where the trapdoor used to be. I could only assume that he was testing whether or not this was some sort of trick, but it was definitely concrete.

“Hmmm, interesting.”

He said as he turned towards me to say

“Well that was embarrassing.”

“Yeah, sure. You gonna tell me what the fuck was that all about?”

“Oh, yeah, that was a weird trip.”

“Weirder than your usual trips?”

“HA! Yeah, way weirder…”

“So?”

“Sooo? Oh, yeah, right. I should probably get back to work. Clean up and stuff; I’ll be right back with some cement patcher.”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant!”

Though by the time I finished saying that, Rosco had already ran out of the storage room. I wouldn’t ponder too much on what happened to him in the little time he had been down there, or how or what threw him back up. Asking questions isn’t always a good thing, curiosity killing the cat and all. Rosco also looked physically healthy, so I’d leave it at that.

I didn’t see the remains of the stool anywhere once I got back to the registers. The assumption was Rosco actually threw it out somehow within the little time it took me to walk to the front. An explanation that I would have to accept as the others that came to mind didn’t have much reliability invested into them.

I’d get back to my thoughts, though 10 minutes in my brain was piled up high with them at this point. An abundance of questions, theories and other ideas, mainly about the trapdoor and Rosco. Another migraine I didn’t want to deal with. In the meantime till the end of my shift, I would try to find things to do then. The conundrum is that I have done everything that is important making every other task that I make up inconsequential.

Time would pass slower than well, staring at a fucking clock while doing these meaningless tasks. An hour passed by and I’d see Rosco come in through the front doors. I was slightly surprised, as I thought he was in the janitor’s closet. Though like he said he would, he came back with a large white plastic container with the words “Fast Setting Cement Patcher” on the side cradled in one arm.

Giving me a wave and a smile while there was another lit blunt hanging from his mouth. Disappearing into the back of the store towards the storage room.

Wasn’t going to ask why it took an hour to grab cement patcher, since at least he was getting it done before the end of the shift. I wouldn’t see him for the rest of the night, not till the day shift manager took over.

When The Day Manager walked in through the front doors, Rosco sped past him out the door. He looked at Rosco over his shoulder then looked back at me. He took a minute to look at me while I was waiting at one of the registers. He gave that look, like he knew me and Rosco had been through some shit during our shift.

“Weird night?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded, then walked to the register to count my till before I left. I watched Rosco drive off in that ridiculous van of his while I waited.

I guess that’s where I leave the story off at, not too interesting, though one thing bothers me about it all. It wasn’t the trapdoor or Rosco’s reaction after he was thrown out, it was just how the key I used was my apartment key. Weirder has happened here, but I can’t really explain it, but trying to explain a probable paranormal event can be like that, and I don’t think asking how or why will do any good in the first place.

Question of the day: What's the scariest thing you've ever experienced?

Good morninggggg Misty!!! I hope you had a good day!!! ☀️☀️🌊🌸💗

Weird experience I had while on the literal other side of the world ^^'