June, 2021

BLACK TOWER – Chapter One

Sunday, June 13th, 2021

John was sitting in the electrical room having his usual lunch break. It was an odd shaped room. Sort of an irregular triangle attached to the rest of the boiler room by a long narrow hallway near the single freight elevator which serviced the east side of the basement. Another elevator servicing the west side, emptied out on the far end of the boiler room only accessible after a long walk through several rooms and down another corridor.

He had been employed here now as a handyman for nearly two and a half months, only a few days after the opening of the skyscraper, and it sure beat his last job as superintendent of a fourteen story office building near city hall. No more problems or worries and the tips and overtime were better too. “By a long shot”. He thought.

The room became the local hangout for the workmen and had a long table, plenty of chairs, and a small refrigerator and closet to keep the hastily packed lunches that their wives prepared. There was even an automatic coffee machine on top of the small closet to help kill the hours or warm up your insides if you were put on the snow removal detail in winter.

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