Getting into the maintenance stairway was the easy part. Actually seeing anything should have been the hard part. And it would have been too, if I didn't have the box, which was now shooting beams of dark gold light out of almost all sides of its blistering surface, as the box itself continued to heat up to an almost unbearable temperature. The door to the maintenance shaft is heavy. I was able to close it and, out of sheer adrenaline, bend the handle so that the lock mechanism connected to it moved about a half an inch, jamming the door temporarily. At this point, even a few seconds is worth its weight in gold.
I had a split second to catch my breath before I ran downstairs. I was hunched over, heaving air in and out of my lungs. There was too much air getting into my blood, and I was feeling tingly from the oxygen poisoning my blood cells. What lies below me, at the bottom of the stairs crossed my mind. "I'm on the 3rd floor", I thought, "the ground level is going to suck…I know it."
The brief few seconds that I was attempting to control my breathing to avoid passing out, I made the connection between the light that emitted from the box and the LSD-inspired shit I have been seeing. Everything looks different under this fantastical light. That HAD to be why everyone on the opposite end of the hallway was so fucked up looking. The box had opened and flooded the ENTIRE hall with its radiant blood, that's why even the walls were alive. Or were they? FUCK, if I only had that Genie again, I'd wish for a little more time to think and put things together. Instead, I have darkness. And stairs. And no time. Why would anyone want this fucking box if its just going to make you think that eveyone's a monster?! "Shit", I thought. Then I spoke out loud, which I never do if I'm alone, unless I'm speaking to Patrick or the TV, "You want this precious…THING?!" I was speaking basically to no one and everyone at the same time. I was looking downward, over the railing, into the darkness that overtook the light beams a few stories down. "The you can fucking HAVE IT!"
With complete disregard to the pain that it was no doubt going to cause, I raised my arm above my head to throw it down the stairwell into the darkness. "I know it's just going to come back", I thought. "I know the pain in my head will probably even kill me at this point. But I can't…do this. This is just some type of fucking responsibility that I can't possibly fulfill because I simply don't know what the HELL I'm supposed to DO!"
For the first time in my entire life, I screamed. It was the combination of frustration, fear, physical pain, and mental exhaustion that seemed to erupt the volcano in my throat. I always wondered how I would scream if I ever had to. Would I scream like a girl? Would it be a heroic, victory scream, or would it just be a generic war-cry like the canned Wilhelm Scream used in so many movies? Well, it was none of those. It was just…the sound of pain, I guess. Toward the end of my scream I swept my arm downward harder and faster than ever, even faster than when I used to want to be a pitcher in Little League and I would literally rip my adolescent arm out of its socket because I would try so hard.
With the pain escalating at the rate it had been every time I'm away from the box, I came to terms with the fact that my head will just probably explode like that sweaty mustachioed man from Scanners the moment the box passes the second floor on its way through the air. I'm fine with that. If I'm gonna die, an exploding head would be a fucking awesome way to go.
It's amazing, the things that go through your head the second before you are sure of your death. A few little things popped into my head, like the time my parents hid my Christmas presents in out neighbors house to keep me from finding them before Christmas Day, and the time I got chased for over 2 miles on my bike by a stray Great Dane who hunted me down during my paper route when I was 12, only to just tackle me and lick me profusely like fucking Marmaduke. God Damn, I hate Marmaduke. I never understood the humor in that comic. A few other random memories that I have never thought about blended together in a quick, hazy montage, but I mostly thought about the girlfriend I never had…she was short, half-Japanese, I think, but she looked mostly white. She rode the same bus as me for years. She was quiet, like me, and read a lot. She was a fast reader, too, because she had a different book in her hand each time she rode. Over time, you can really tell a person's personality by their habits. She never littered. Her purse was full of garbage, but she would never leave it on the bus, and she would pick up trash on the way off of the bus and throw it in the garbage can after she exited. I liked that. The times I got enough confidence to sit behind her, the scent of her hair would blow downwind into my deviated septum and linger there the rest of my day, making those days the easiest to get through, despite the headaches and the sadness. Her eyes were beautiful. There's nothing more fitting than that word. There is no reason to attempt to compare them to some random thing in nature or some other bullshit, because beautiful is a commonly understood word. And that's what her eyes were. It's funny that the moment before I'm about to die, the only thing that I am thinking about is the fact that I will never be able to tell a girl that I have never met that her eyes are perfect and that I love that she loves the Earth. And that my name is Chadam, and I would love to find out her name, and maybe go to the movies sometime. "Well," I thought, "there's always the next life, isn't there, Buddha?"
I closed my eyes and finished my pitching motion, opening my hand to let the box fly down and face whatever painful doom is in store for me. I let go of the box and kept my eyes closed for a few seconds. But nothing happened. My head didn't even PULSE with pain. Not even a little.
I opened my eyes and peered down the shaft, which was just black. Not even the light from the box had lit it up on its way down. But my waist was glowing, like a small light was hitting the lower half of my body. I pulled my arms up and looked to my left. There was no pain because the box had never left.
Instead, the box was now grafted to the skin of my left arm like a pile of plastic army men that you put in a microwave to see what happens….