an islamic man walked into the building and shot the security guard with a silenced pistol. he cleaned up the blood with rags from the janitors closet, dragging the body in there afterward, and locking the door behind him. he went to the front door of the building and summoned eight more men, dressed in suits, who walked into the building and followed him to the elevator where they went strait to the top floor. they exited the elevator, and walked through the workplace room, where four of the men went on the roof. they handed the other four ak-47s, and then went back up the stairs. the four armed men rounded up the workers on the floor which consisted of about 20 cubicles with computers, printers, etc. people screamed, knocked shit over as they were rounded up like cattle and handcuffed, forced forward. one of these people was named dave. they were lead handcuffed up the stairs, to the roof, the stench of smoke, icy cold, snow, and the image of the apparatus. it was wooden, a long three foot tall fifteen feet wide board, with ten half circles carved in three inch intervals at the top. it was supported by squares of protruding boards at its base. tubs sat in front of the carved half circles. rusty, crude, tubs, unwashed, with trashbags spread out in them. hacksaws lay around it, tossed haphazardly around. the sight of this caused the hostages to cringe, weep, scream, try to run. gunshots rang out, a hostage fell to the floor in a hail of bullets, sparks, smoke. one of the hostages, a rail thin man, broke from the mob, ran to the edge of the building and dove off head first executing a swan dive into the street below. he smashed the top of a taxi, and about five minutes later, the authorities were called. the terrorists swarmed around the hostages, roping cloth bags around their heads, beating them if they resisted. there was a pregnant lady in the group, and when she resisted with cries of "IM PREGNANT" she was beaten in her stomach with the butt of one of the guns, fell to the floor in labor, having a miscarriage. one of the terrorists grabbed her by the hair and dragged her screaming to the apparatus, threw her head into one of the half circles, grabbed a hacksaw and began to saw through her neck violently. blood sprayed into his face as he cut, and noticing the scalp of a babies head coming out of her vagina he began to saw faster, and faster, her screams were shrill, muffled, inhuman. the rest of the terrorists grabbed a hostage and threw him into the half circle and began to saw. violent, malevolent screams erupted in erratic chorus from the rooftop of the building. when the pregnant woman's head was cut off, the terrorist flung it from where he was standing by the hair off the building where it put a fat dent in a mailbox and burst like a cantaloupe on the pavement. he then dragged the pregnant body with half a baby oozing out from in between her legs and heaved it off the building. it broke a few windows on the way down, terrifying cubicle dwellers who immediately phoned the police. it landed halfway on the sidewalk, halfway on the street. pedestrians cringed and ran. traffic stopped and people got out of their cars to look up at the roof of the building that headless pregnant women were plummeting from. as the other terrorists finished beheading their hostages, they would fling the heads off the building, then drag the bodies to the edge of the roof and heave them over. windshields were smashed, a body landed on someone breaking their leg and scaring the shit out of them, but most of them just splattered mangled or bursting, the heads severed, on the pavement. by now the terrorists were working on their second batch, and just two men stood left, waiting. the national guard and the police had arrived and were traveling up the elevator, armed to the teeth. it was then that one of the hostages fainted. the national guard arrived on the rooftop as the terrorists were throwing the last of the human remains off the rooftop. they opened fire right away, cutting bullets through the body of the last standing hostage, and ripping to shreds the helpless terrorists with their weapons laying on the rooftop like children's discarded toys. their bodies flailed around helplessly in the irrefutable lead wall of gunfire. a few of them fell bullet ridded off the roof onto the pavement below.
dave came back to work in two weeks, and by then all the old cubicles had been emptied of the former occupants' personal effects. temps had taken over all the positions, but i got my old desk back and was welcomed by management with open arms. i sat down and got to work. all the temps were different than the previous full time workers, one of them wore a wife beater, one of them was drinking listerine out of a huge bottle in her cubicle, a couple of them smoked cigarettes, and they were all dirty unshaven unshowered with filthy habits. they would eat sandwiches and food would fall out of them onto the floor which they didn't pick up, belching, farting, spending hours in the bathroom. from the looks of the situation it seemed like none of them were really doing any work at all. i made an attempt to be indifferent and mind my own business, getting to work. i was having bad dreams and back on the booze, jack daniels and miller light, boilermakers, i would pour a 12 ounce beer into a frosty mug and then drop in a shot of jd. i drank about twelve of these a night, while watching baseball in the summer, basketball when winter came, i thought. but i was depressed, suicidal and traumatized. id go into strange episodes where i was place handcuffed in the apparatus and someone was sawing my head off with a hacksaw, but the saw was to dull to split through the spine, so they just kept sawing, and sawing, and sawing. i would snap out of it, it seemed like hours had passed, but it had only been about ten minutes. when i started having these severely at work, a particularly bad one where my head was sawed off but for some reason i was still alive and thrashing around, my severed head telling the terrorists not to throw me off the building. but they did, and i watched the heavens, the windows, and the earth below as i plummeted to the earth. when i hit, darkness. i finally quit, around three PM on a monday, walked down the street taking off my tie, walked into a bar and ordered a beer. i sat there drinking it, lit a marlboro, and exhaled a stream of smoke across the bar.
"i just quit my job," i said to the patron next to me.
"no shame in that. i worked as a clerk in a gas station for fifteen years. was robbed over 20 times and survived. after i got shot i just quit and got a job as night stock in a grocery store. locked in all night. still have dreams about that crackhead that put a bullet in my shoulder though. he was never caught by the way, that's what really gets me. these violent crimes happen around us all the time and they're just swept under the rug and forgotten about. i've known about people getting murdered and the cops just take a few notes, throw them in a file and forget it ever happened. then they go out drinking that night with their buddies, play darts and crack jokes about niggers and faggots. fuckin' pigs"
"i worked this desk job, i was the guy that survived the massacre atop the charles windham building, was having flashbacks at work, got sick of all the temp workers coming in drunk or stoned and not doing anything, so i just quit. you must have been getting good pay at that gas station."
"it wasn't bad, 12 dollars an hour, but i had seniority. wasn't worth it though. this is my day off, i'm going to a ballgame tonight."
"texas rangers and cleveland indians?"
"yeah, that's the one."
"ill see ya around."
i ordered another beer, drained it with three or four gulps, and set the glass on the bar, paying then leaving. i went to my car, started it up. went to the grocery store and bought three cases of beer and three fifths of jack daniels. carton of cigarettes. a couple frozen pizzas, three steaks, a roll of sausage and buns, sliced cheese, bacon, lettuce tomato, red onion, mayo, ketchup, grey poupon. paid for it all and went home. i decided to take a brief vacation, then apply for a job at the nearby citgo. i didn't have the balls to kill myself, but maybe somebody else did, to kill me. i would work and wait.
