Fiction, Adventure

Tina loved her job! As a software consultant, she got to travel to many cities and meet many people. Today, the job had taken her to Bensalem Pennsylvania. An equipment firm had needed to integrate their management and accounting software. What should have been an easy afternoon had turned into a very long night. Except for a small dinner break at a local fast food joint, she had been stuck in the basement of the company trying to reconfigure their server. It was now 1:00 a.m. Tina's glasses were starting to hurt her nose. No surprise, when things aren't going right, everything becomes an annoyance! She slipped them off and rubbed her eyes. As she put them back on the left temple piece fell off. "Great! This just figures!", she moaned, "Now where did that little screw get to.." Holding her glasses in place, her eyes scanned the desk.. "There you are!" Tina picked up the tiny screw and tried to align the temple piece with the front, not an easy task when your vision is 20/1400, but one she had gotten used to. With all parts aligned, she fumbled for her watch screwdriver in her purse. With her typical precision, she threaded back into place and tried to tighten it. "Humm.. Stripped! No wonder it's come out twice today! Guess these specs are getting old." Popping the specs back on her nose, she hunted through her purse for her spare pair, figuring it was time to switch over. To her disappointment, she opened the case and found it was empty. "What the.... Oh.. That's right, they're broken too." Tina remembered how about a month ago, she had fallen asleep with her glasses on and bent the frames. She had laid them on the desk at home meaning to take them to the local specs shop, but with her schedule being so full, had never got around to it. What made her mad was that she had still put the empty case back in her purse!

2:00 a.m. and things were finally coming together. One last reboot and she would know if the system would fly. Bingo! She pulled up their inventory on one screen and their accounting program in another. She entered a sale on the inventory and watched the accounting numbers change. "I'm out of here!", she screamed with glee! It was only then that she noticed how dark the building was and how alone she was. The floor manager had told her to let herself out when she was done, but that had been at 5:00 p.m. A long time ago! She packed her stuff into the briefcase and headed for where she remembered the stairs were. When she rounded the corner, she was met by a wall! Tina wished she had paid more attention to the place when she came in. It was so dark and disorienting now. She retraced her steps and tried another path. This one led her to the dark stairwell and she headed up toward the ground floor. The only light came from a dim exit sign and she tripped on her way up, skinning her knee. For the first time, Tina felt a little afraid. Where was this night guard that was suppose to be on duty? She made her way out of the stairwell and into the dark hallway. Again, only a dim exit sign in the distance provided light. Again, Tina fell to her knees, but this time because she had tripped over something. She groped around.... It felt like a body. Slowly, she let her eyes adjust to the light.... Her hand felt something warm and wet... Tina Screamed in horror! It was the dead body of the security guard! His throat had been cut!

"Never, never, never again am I going to stay after one of these places closes!", she thought to herself. A second chill went down her spine. Where was her purse and briefcase? If they found them, they would know who she was and maybe hunt her down. That was assuming she made it out alive tonight... She retraced her steps in her mind. She fell over the guard.. Yea, that's when she dropped everything. Ok, what was in the briefcase? Just software and manuals, nothing personal. The purse however, had to be retrieved. The man had been gone for a while so it should be safe to get out. She slowly worked her way out of the equipment cabinet. She removed her high heels, her bracelets, and even her earrings, anything that might make noise. She carefully crept down the hallway toward the stairs, ready to make a run for the cabinet at any second. "What could I do to give myself the upper hand?", she contemplated. She spied a telephone on the desk and quietly picked it up. Dead.. They had cut the lines. Again, she started toward the stairs. Right before the stairwell, there was another equipment room. She peeked in. Tina worked her way into the room and inspected it's contents. "Maybe I can level the playing field a bit.", she thought. On the wall there was a battery backup system for the emergency lights, as well as a main circuit disconnect. She removed the connector from the battery pack and then carefully counted the steps from the main cutoff switch to the hallway and then back to the equipment cabinet. She felt the latch on the cabinet and memorized how it worked. Tina then headed back to the stairwell. Slowly, she crept up the stairs toward the main floor. "Where were they?", she wondered. Quietly, she pushed on the door and looked down the hall. Her eyes were becoming adjusted to the dim light and she could see the body of the guard and was pretty sure the dark object behind his head was her purse. She stayed frozen for a couple of seconds before proceeding down the hallway. The hard floor was cold on her feet. She worked her way up to the guard. It was her purse! She grabbed it and slipped it under the desk that was in a cubicle next to the guard. "Out of sight, out of mind.", she thought. Tina moved back out to the guard and looked down the hall. There was a noise at the other end of the hallway. Tina spun her head around to see.... T-Klink! Tina could not believe it! Her luck just went from bad to worse! Her glasses had picked the worst time to come apart! Somewhere, in that blurry hallway they were lying!!

"What was that?", a voice boomed out. Tina couldn't believe it. Dead was even worse then "Worse", and she would have to move fast if she was going to stay alive. She scrambled down the hall, trying to judge by distance how far the stairs were away. She felt the wall change and knew it was the doorway to the stairwell, and quickly slipped inside. "How many stairs?", she thought to her self as she felt for them with her feet. One thing about growing up near blind was that you got a good handle on how to get around using your other four senses. At the base of the stairs, she headed for the equipment room and felt her way to the main cut-off switch. She heard a voice in the distance yell, "Look! It's the bitch's glasses! She's still here somewhere!" Tina grabbed the switch and yanked it down, cutting off the building's power. "No point in them seeing anything more then I can. Now If I could just kill those flashlights!" She paced out the steps back to the equipment rack in total darkness. Feeling the latch, she opened it up and got in. Moments later, she saw the flashlight beams coming down the hall. She wondered if they knew about power systems, or if they were just big, dumb hunks. "What's with the lights in this place?", the one yelled to the other. "Don't know", the other one answered. Tina smiled to herself, "Yep, big, dumb hunks!"

As they rounded the corner, Tina watched the color of the light coming from the flashlights. It was dull yellow. She knew this meant that the batteries were already low, and that soon they would have no light to see by. She felt something in her hair and she grasped it. It was the remaining temple piece to her glasses. She was about to toss it aside but then decided it might come in handy somehow. In her mind, she tried to assemble a map of the building. The hall with the guard was the main hall leading to lobby and the door. If she could make it upstairs while these guys were downstairs, she could escape. She figured it was about 3:30 by now, and the sun would start rising in about an hour which would provide them with enough light to see her. If she was going to get out, it would have to be soon. The flashlights were now orange. She would need a distraction to keep them busy while she made her break. Something was digging into her leg. She felt down and recognized it was a main power feed for the machines, dead at the moment because the power was off. Only the main server had a local backup, and that was in another room. She worked the plug loose and felt the prongs. "30 amps, 220 volts. That would make a big bang if I could find something to short it with..." Tina remembered the temple piece in her pocket and got it out. It was made from a base metal and would do well if she could use it to shore the power feed. She pulled the earpiece off and began flexing the side near the hinge. It took quite a while but finally broke. She bent it into a U shape and inserted it in the power outlet. She could tell that the goons were in the far room hunting for her with the all-but-dead flashlights.

CRASH! She heard the windows and doors shattering in front of her! Suddenly there were bright lights everywhere! "Get Down!" someone shouted! Tina dove for the floor. BANG! BANG! BANG! More shots! What was happening?? Suddenly a hand grabbed her and pulled her through the broken door. There was a blurr of colored lights in front of her... A good blur! Red and Blue lights! The Police were here!

At the station house, the story was assembled for her. She held what was left of her mangled glasses to her nose so she could see everyone's faces. Officer Brian had been nice enough to retrieve them from the building and she was happy to be able to see, even though they had been stepped on several times.

"Often, this company received cash payments for sales. One of the employees had known about a particular big sale that happened, and he and his friend planned out this robbery.", Brian explained, "They hadn't counted on you being in there and when you startled them, they took a shot. Neighbors in the area heard the shot and called us. When we got to the scene, we found the phone lines were cut and knew something was going on. We were waiting outside when all hell started breaking loose. The front lighting came on then went off then we heard shots and decided to break the door down and enter. And there you were!"

Tina sat back on the sofa. It was good to be home again! She liked her new glasses and was never going to be caught without a spare pair again. She reached in her purse and pulled out a case. Clicking it open, she looked at her mangled old pair. She had given thought to just throwing them out. The bridge was broken, the one remaining temple was twisted, and both lenses were quite scratched up. Still.. The glasses had been with her on an adventure she would remember the rest of her life! No way! They were, kind of, her friend! She gave them a light kiss and put them back in the case. "If glasses could talk!", she said, then let out a little laugh. "I think I'm going to let someone else handle the Bensalem account!"

The End !

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