Factory Story – Part 5

The hail pound­ed on the fac­to­ry’s tin roof, fill­ing the emp­ty fac­to­ry floor with a deaf­en­ing roar. The offices were bet­ter pro­tect­ed, but the noise was still oppres­sive­ly loud.

The lack of pow­er was a big­ger prob­lem.

Nate went down stairs and walked through the unused machin­ery, leav­ing foot­prints in the dust. He unlocked and opened the door to the pow­er room and went in and checked the fus­es. Every­thing was in full work­ing order. The build­ing was sim­ply not get­ting any pow­er.

The black­out must be out­side some­where. He head­ed over to the front door of the fac­to­ry and opened it. The lit­tle design­er swimwear shop across the road was in dark­ness too. He leaned out the door and looked up and down the street. Every­thing was out.

Well at least it was­n’t some­thing he would be expect­ed to fix. He went back up to the offices and found Jock.

“Looks like pow­er is out for the whole block at least.”

Jock nod­ded.

Nate went on. “The web­site is down, and even if some­one rings to place an order by phone, with the com­put­ers down we can’t do any­thing.”

Jock was clear­ly not thrilled about this. “So we’re screwed?”

Nate shrugged. “Until the pow­er comes back on yeah.” He paused. “Even if we had that gen­er­a­tor you want­ed, that would only give us an hour of pow­er.”

Nate looked at his watch. It was 3.14pm. The chance that he would get out of here before five today were almost non-exis­tent.

Jock shock his head. “Mains will prob­a­bly be back on in an hour.”

“Wan­na bet?” Nate asked as he walked over to the door.

Jock­’s reply was drowned out but deaf­en­ing boom of thun­der.

This sort of thing had hap­pened to Jock before. 29 times before. He only remem­bered three. The human mem­o­ry is a fick­le thing, and he did­n’t even remem­ber that he did­n’t remem­ber.

On the occa­sions he did­n’t remem­ber he had sim­ple repeat­ed what­ev­er he had been say­ing that got drowned out by the back­ground noise. Some­times this had been the right thing to say, some­times it had­n’t.

How­ev­er three times in his life he had stopped, recon­sid­ered and changed his mind. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly all three times this had turned out to be the best thing to do. These were the only three occa­sions that Jock remem­bered.

To Jock this was proof pos­i­tive. Every sin­gle time he had had to repeat him­self due to loud noise, chang­ing what he said had been the right thing to do. It was the only option. His poor mem­o­ry was proof of that.

So as Nate polite­ly wait­ed for the thun­der to pass and asked the seem­ing­ly sim­ple ques­tion. “What was that?” There was noth­ing sim­ple or accu­rate about the thoughts that bounced through Jock­’s brain.

“Err, noth­ing. Just let me know when every­thing is back online.” Jock answered.

Nate went back to his office, stop­ping at the front desk and the lit­tle wait­ing vestibule to pick up an old news­pa­per. He fold­ed the paper open to the cross­word sec­tion and realise Scar­let had already fin­ished the cross­word. Per­haps ‘fin­ished’ was­n’t the right word, filled-in was more accu­rate. She always wrote ran­dom colours and num­bers into the cross­words.

One hour and four min­utes lat­er the lights came back on. Time to get to work. Nate head­ed to the broom clos­et he mock­ing­ly called the ‘serv­er room’, and start­ed the process of bring­ing the web­site back online.

Jock opened the door as Nate was down on his hands and knees reset­ting the pow­er suply. The over­ly tight yel­low shirt rid­ing up and lit­tle, and Nate’s jeans rid­ing down, reveal­ing his plumbers-crack.

Jock, just like any­one else in this posi­tion could­n’t help but look. As he did he noticed a large mole above Nate’s left but­tock.

He point­ed at the mole. “You should get that looked at, it looks can­cer­ous.”

Nate yelped in sur­prise at Jock being there, and at the com­ment Jock had made. He tried to twist around to see what Jock was point­ing at.

“Are you seri­ous?”

Jock nodes. “I nev­er jock about can­cer. Just got your doc­tor to have a look at it.”

Nate stood up and dust­ed his knees off as the sev­ers start­ed to hum back to life.

“Great, just what I need­ed.” Nate checked the com­put­er screen and nod­ded. “The web­site will be back online in about 10 min­utes.”

Jock wound­ed off, sat­is­fied that his super­vi­sion had fixed the prob­lem, and went to find some­thing else that need­ed his man­age­ment.

Nate twist­ed around, try­ing to look at the spot on his low­er back, but it was in just the wrong place. He went to the men’s room to check it in the mir­ror. Small, black, irreg­u­lar shaped mole. Had it always been there? Had it always been that shape? He would have to get it looked at.

5.29pm and Nate was still at his desk, the web­site up and run­ning smooth­ly, every­thing going as it should. He could final­ly go home and relax after the strange day.

He looked out the win­dow. It was still rain­ing. He pulled on his damp shirt over the top of the bright yel­low t‑shirt, picked up his shoul­der bag and his rain­bow umbrel­la and head­ed out into the rain.

A 5 minute to the sta­tion, a 10 minute wait for the train, a 12 minute train ride into town, change train, 6 minute more wait­ing, a 18 minute train ride home, and final­ly a 4 minute walk to his flat.

He climbed the three flights of stair to the top floor apart­ment, side the key into the lock and turned it, and stopped.

“Ah crap.” He shout­ed to him­self, sud­den­ly remem­ber­ing his date plans for the evening. He had planned to stop in the city and get a new shirt. He looked at his watch. 6.27 not enough time. He pushed the apart­ment door open and went inside.

Before he got three steps in the door he was stopped by his flat­mate. Glen.

Glen was a nice guy, a real­ly nice guy, a bit of a flake, but a nice guy. With­out a doubt the best flat­mate Nate had ever had. And Nate had had a few in the past few years. But Glen was camp­i­est lit­tle queen Nate had ever meet.

“Okay, before you freak out, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Nate frowned and raised an eye­brow. “What’s not as bad as it looks?”

“The dam­age.”

Nate’s frown deep­ened. “What dam­age.”

Glen point­ed towards the kitchen. “From that super scary hail storm.”

Nate dumped his bag and umbrel­la in the hall­way and stepped into the kitchen. The win­dow had been smashed, and sev­er­al plates and cups were shat­tered on the floor among the win­dow glass.

Glen walked into the kitchen too, pulling on a pair of kitchen gloves.

“Bro­ken stuff.” Glen said, as if that was some­how help­ful.

Nate nod­ded.

“Do I, just put all the bits in the bin?”

Nate nod­ded again.

“And then… mop or some­thing?”

Nate nod­ded. “Yeah… and I’ll find some­thing to put over the bro­ken win­dow.”

Half an hour lat­er, the mess all cleaned up and Nate had tapped a large piece of card­board over the win­dow. It was­n’t a good solu­tion, but it would see the night through.

Nate slumped down on the couch and Glen turned on the tel­ly.

“So… what you up to tonight Nate?”

Nate shrugged and then yelled. “Oh crap.” He got back to his feet and rushed to his room. “I’ve got a date tonight.”

Glen frowned and turned the tel­ly off again. “Did you just say ‘date’.”

Nate’s dashed across the small apart­ment, unbut­ton­ing his still damp work shirt as he walked into the bath­room. “Yeah, and I’ve got noth­ing to wear.”

Glen smirked. “OMG, you are gay after all.”

Nate stuck his head out of the bath­room door. “Why does every­one always think I’m straight?”

Glen shrugged. “That does­n’t mat­ter right now. Right now you have to tell me every­thing, about this date, about this guy… it is a guy right?”

Nate grum­bled from the bath­room. “Yes it’s a guy. Fine. I’ll tell you, but you have to lend me a shirt to wear.”

—
Sto­ry con­tin­ues in part 6.

Part of my cre­ative writ­ing class. Week­ly Assign­ment 6.