Keaton built up her office as
the ultimate taboo place with her predator effect, to where just thinking about
her office made my mouth dry and my palms sweat. I didn’t understand how she
had managed to attach her predator effect to her office, but she managed to do
so anyway.
I had noted many things about her and her office over
the months. First, she preferred to work in her office during specific times
of the day. One was an ill-defined time after breakfast, another just after
early lunch, and another after evening workouts. The second time was the most
fixed time of the lot. If Keaton stayed in the warehouse, she stayed in her
office during the hour before noon.
Second, her office turned out to be the one place in the
warehouse that Keaton herself kept clean. I had seen into her office, from a
distance, and the place was immaculate. About half of an executive’s desk was
visible from the outside, polished to a high sheen and neat as a pin.
Third, her office didn’t have a normal door. The door
was steel, with bricks of some obscure sort on the inside. The door opened
out, not in, and over time the bricks left a fine powder residue on the floor.
I got curious about the bricks several months ago, and with a little work I
managed to track down the powdered residue. They were firebricks, commonly
used on the insides of factory furnaces for insulation. For whatever reason,
Keaton had made her office fireproof, or at least tried to.
I meditated until I quieted my nerves enough to face my
worst nightmares, braved her predator effect and tried the door. Locked!
Keaton would have been proud: I didn’t stop running
until I retreated into my closet. Damn! Nearly six months, and I had never
noticed Keaton kept her office locked. I had certainly never seen her use a
key.
She had been playing with my mind, of course, using her
sleight of hand tricks. After several hours of self-recrimination, I got my
courage back up and went to examine the door again. The lock turned out to be junk,
standard office building office-lock quality, and trivial to pick.
So I did. However, I kept dropping the picks. I
meditated some more and picked the lock, and paused to gather myself once again
before I slowly opened the door toward me. The hinges creaked, which they never
did when Keaton opened the damned thing. Once in, I slowly moused my way
around the room, and practically jumped out of my shadow in fear every time a
car rumbled by a half mile away. I took the risk. My freedom might be here.
I studied the office for several minutes, before I understood
what I saw.
Keaton had her entire office lined with firebrick. The
firebrick on the inside and the standard brick on the outside were not enough
to explain the thickness of the walls, and I deduced additional fire retardant
material lay between them. Enough to make the room soundproof even to my ears.
Keaton’s executive desk stayed clean and shiny because
she likely used it only occasionally (and because she kept the room dusted and
vacuumed, it appeared). Her primary work area was a drafting table not visible
from the doorway, and this drafting table showed ample wear. I found several
maps of New York City on the drafting table. Not Mobile gas station maps, but
official-looking City of New York road maintenance maps and Army Corp of
Engineers maps of the boroughs.
New York City was Keaton’s primary hunting territory. She
hunted Philadelphia as well, but, despite Philly’s size, not enough
transformations occurred here to keep her close to satisfied.
Next to her drafting table was a large – no, huge – safe
of a kind and shape I had never seen before, bolted to the concrete floor with
two inch wide steel bolts. Years later, I would finally identify this as a
surveyor’s safe, common to land developers, land offices of oil companies, and
architects. I didn’t have the know-how or tools to crack a safe of this
the ultimate taboo place with her predator effect, to where just thinking about
her office made my mouth dry and my palms sweat. I didn’t understand how she
had managed to attach her predator effect to her office, but she managed to do
so anyway.
I had noted many things about her and her office over
the months. First, she preferred to work in her office during specific times
of the day. One was an ill-defined time after breakfast, another just after
early lunch, and another after evening workouts. The second time was the most
fixed time of the lot. If Keaton stayed in the warehouse, she stayed in her
office during the hour before noon.
Second, her office turned out to be the one place in the
warehouse that Keaton herself kept clean. I had seen into her office, from a
distance, and the place was immaculate. About half of an executive’s desk was
visible from the outside, polished to a high sheen and neat as a pin.
Third, her office didn’t have a normal door. The door
was steel, with bricks of some obscure sort on the inside. The door opened
out, not in, and over time the bricks left a fine powder residue on the floor.
I got curious about the bricks several months ago, and with a little work I
managed to track down the powdered residue. They were firebricks, commonly
used on the insides of factory furnaces for insulation. For whatever reason,
Keaton had made her office fireproof, or at least tried to.
I meditated until I quieted my nerves enough to face my
worst nightmares, braved her predator effect and tried the door. Locked!
Keaton would have been proud: I didn’t stop running
until I retreated into my closet. Damn! Nearly six months, and I had never
noticed Keaton kept her office locked. I had certainly never seen her use a
key.
She had been playing with my mind, of course, using her
sleight of hand tricks. After several hours of self-recrimination, I got my
courage back up and went to examine the door again. The lock turned out to be junk,
standard office building office-lock quality, and trivial to pick.
So I did. However, I kept dropping the picks. I
meditated some more and picked the lock, and paused to gather myself once again
before I slowly opened the door toward me. The hinges creaked, which they never
did when Keaton opened the damned thing. Once in, I slowly moused my way
around the room, and practically jumped out of my shadow in fear every time a
car rumbled by a half mile away. I took the risk. My freedom might be here.
I studied the office for several minutes, before I understood
what I saw.
Keaton had her entire office lined with firebrick. The
firebrick on the inside and the standard brick on the outside were not enough
to explain the thickness of the walls, and I deduced additional fire retardant
material lay between them. Enough to make the room soundproof even to my ears.
Keaton’s executive desk stayed clean and shiny because
she likely used it only occasionally (and because she kept the room dusted and
vacuumed, it appeared). Her primary work area was a drafting table not visible
from the doorway, and this drafting table showed ample wear. I found several
maps of New York City on the drafting table. Not Mobile gas station maps, but
official-looking City of New York road maintenance maps and Army Corp of
Engineers maps of the boroughs.
New York City was Keaton’s primary hunting territory. She
hunted Philadelphia as well, but, despite Philly’s size, not enough
transformations occurred here to keep her close to satisfied.
Next to her drafting table was a large – no, huge – safe
of a kind and shape I had never seen before, bolted to the concrete floor with
two inch wide steel bolts. Years later, I would finally identify this as a
surveyor’s safe, common to land developers, land offices of oil companies, and
architects. I didn’t have the know-how or tools to crack a safe of this
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