"The Tenth Floor"

Challenge #1 Heat 4:
Genre - Ghost Story
Location - Lawyer's Office
Object - Crowbar
Limit: 1,000 words, 48 hours

The Tenth Floor

On a typical day, Jason Morton did not mind the walk to work. But during the past week, a 100-degree heat wave had all but melted the tar on the streets. Eighty-degree mornings left businessmen drenched in their suits, desperately bringing extra clothes with them to change into at work. Droplets pooled on all visible inches of skin, following creases down foreheads to drip off noses and chins, each salty orb nearly evaporating before hitting the ground. Seven blocks seemed like a sweaty half-marathon; and after stepping out the door, a stream of New York's finest cuss words followed Jason down the street.

Entering the front doors of their office building, he smiled at the cool wave of air conditioning. Although Art-Deco interior failed to match the musky shag carpets, and the bellman-janitor of the building was a not a young, failed actor in search of a job but a sunken-faced man who always wore suspenders and a tidy, if well-loved, bowler hat, the building was all he and Paul could afford after they left their cushy jobs at The Gray Firm, and started McKinney and Morton, LLC.

At the tenth floor, the elevator doors creaked open. Humid, smothering heat flooded into the space.

"Don't look so happy to see me," Paul said, watching his partner trudge into the office.

Jason slapped his briefcase onto his desk. “It must be a hundred degrees in here!"

"Air conditioning's out on our floor. " Paul pointed at a box fan in the window behind him. "This is all we've got."

"On the hottest week we've had all summer?"

"When it rains, it pours..." Paul looked up from his stack of papers. "Or rather, when it's sunny...um...it's hot as hell?"

Jason wiped his forehead with his pocket square.

Paul sighed and gestured at the window behind Jason's desk. "I tried yours, but it wouldn't budge. Looks like it's painted shut."

Jason took off his gray suit jacket and black tie, and walked to the sill. Sure enough, the aged white paint was so thick that it filled in the cracks between the latch and the track. He pulled. Nothing. The will of the dusty pane seemed stronger than his.

"This is just ridiculous," he said, fingers red from curling around the metal handles.

“You could try these.” He tossed a pair of gritty deadbolt keys to Jason.

Jason rolled up his sleeves and headed to the end of the hall that housed the office's bathrooms, a small conference room, and a small door that neither he nor Paul had bothered to enter. He clicked the lock open, and the heavy door slid wide without a sound. A wave of humid air filtered across Jason's cheeks as he stepped inside.

Although stuffy from the heat, the room was immaculate. Scrubbed floors, a bright halogen light, and a whitewashed wall of empty shelves. The only items in the small space were an unopened white paint can and a crowbar on a high hook in the opposite corner.

Head spinning in the heat, Jason reached up. In contrast to the room, the metal bar was cool in his fingers. The light flickered. He tried to stand up, but the weight of crowbar increased tenfold, and he felt himself falling; falling into the swirling black of weightless anxiety.

---

“You scared the shit out of me,” Paul said. “You didn’t come back after an hour, and when I came down the hall, I saw your body face down.” He looked away. “We can’t afford to lose half of our employees, you know?”

Jason’s eyes darted around the floor as he stood up. Where was it? On the top hook, the crowbar swung slightly from side to side. He turned to Paul.

“Why’d you put it back?”

Paul shrugged. “Put what back? I just got here. I saw you. You woke up. That’s it.”

Jason reached for the top hook. The handle was warm and damp.

When they got to the office, Paul said, “It’s too hot. I’m going to go grab a Coke. Want some?”

Jason moved toward the window.

“Guess not. Good luck with that.”

Jason pitted the crowbar in the paint-saturated wood, and with two hands, pulled against the window. Pieces of wood exploded across the room, exposing termite trails that wove their way like thin, grasping fingernail scratches from one edge of the sill to the other.

Jason freed the other half of the window and latched the glass upward. Weight shifting, he jerked forward, halfway out the window. His adrenaline jolted as he scrambled to stay inside.

A cool hand on his shoulder pulled him back into the room.

“Whoa, Paul…” Before he could say thank you, Jason turned to find the bowler-hat wearing janitor. “I mean, sorry…”

“Mr. McKinney sent me to check on the temperature,” He said. “Air will be circulating soon. Want me to paint up the damage?”

“No thanks,” Jason said as he shimmied the cracked window frame closed, its rusty tracks screeching and screaming until it settled back into the ruts.

The janitor tipped his hat, and turned to the elevator.

---

“It was a good thing you asked the janitor to come up here and check the air conditioning,” Jason said, as Paul walked in the door.

“The who?”

“You know, the guy in the bowler’s cap. You Probably didn’t trust me to do my own handiwork.”

“Well I don’t. See—your window’s still closed, you made a mess, you’re bleeding and it’s hotter than it was before. But I didn’t ask anyone to come up here. Told you it was broken.”

“I just had it open,” Jason said, pulling up on the pane. It didn’t budge.

“Sure…”

Jason picked up the crowbar and hacked at the window. Sweaty in his palm, its sharp edge cut through the thick paint like a knife against skin.

The glass pane fell out of the frame and he lurched forward, weighted, falling, scraping down.

****************************

I ran out of time at the end. I had written about 1700 words and had to cut it down quite a bit, sacrificing some important details. But, since this is my first time, I know I'll be better prepared for the next prompt!

-AB