by Aaron Cohen
She thanked him for a great talk, turned and walked away before he had a chance to ask for her number. She was shallow, she knew it, and it bugged her, but what the fuck? Was this guy a junior in high school? And what was up with that pony tail? Was he bringing the 60s back one lost cause at a time?
One thing she did like about the Pre-Law Club was the mock trial, the big event of the year for wannabe attorneys who would finally get to act out their TV fantasy of arguing in front of a judge and jury.
She was the lead attorney defending a corporation who made plastic tubing used on building sites for refuse disposal. In the real case, the company lost the suit brought by a construction worker who had, after drinking a six pack of beer and eating a ham sandwich, decided to bypass the elevator by sliding down the tube workers were supposed to throw trash down. He said he thought it would be quicker and perfectly safe because it looked just like one of those waterslides at WetLand Waterslide FunTown.
He lived, but his spine was crushed, making him a paraplegic. He sued the maker of the tube for $100 million dollars. The guy cried on the stand, and spoke eloquently of how much he wanted to have kids but would never be able to. His life was over because that tube looked just like a big playground slide. How was he supposed to know it wasn’t safe?
He won, but the judge knocked the reward down to $10 million.
In the mock case, Leanne won because she did what the real lawyer on the case didn’t do. She took the jury to a real construction site, took them up the elevator to the 28th floor and showed them exactly what that plastic hole in the wall looks like.
Then she said, “Would you jump down that hole? How drunk would you have to be to do that? If you plan on voting to give the defendant a bunch of money, then I double dog dare you. Take the leap.”
She learned that people have a hard time feeling sorry for someone when forced to examine the stupidity of that someone first hand. Standing 300 feet in the air in a room without walls, on a floor of creaky planks and the wind whistling by was more than enough context.
What she also learned was that the company, after losing the suit, started lining their waste tubes with a rubber coating designed to slow down dumbasses who decided to use them as giant slides. In theory, you could drop about 30 stories in one their tubes and live.
It’s amazing how the trivial can sometimes become important, lifesaving even.
Chapter Forty
Luke falls. And falls. And falls. Through blackness, through the regrets for all the things he’d never experience, through the deep, searing fear that comes from knowing you are about to die.
He would never be married, never have kids, never raise them the way he would have liked to have been raised. He thinks he’d have been a good dad. He thinks lacking a real dad of his own would have made him a better dad, no bad parental habits to unlearn, no emotional baggage to hand off to the kid.
That makes no sense, now that he thinks about it. Of course I’d be a better dad if I had a dad.
He regrets spending even a second of his last few thinking such a stupid thought.
He would never fuck two lesbians at the same time. He’s pretty sure he has fucked two of them separately. His ex-bedfriend Amy switched teams a few years ago, and Lisa went over the lipstick line last month when she banged a chick DJ named Joey who had arms like Hulk Hogan in his prime. But two lesbians at the same time, Luke had never had that.
That would have been fun, he thinks. And he had had a shot. Of all the men in the world with that exact same fantasy, he could have pulled it off. He has a super power, and it is the ability to get laid. Getting laid by two super-hot lesbians would have been quite an accomplishment, a formidable but achievable test of his prowess.
He regrets spending a few more of his final seconds thinking such stupid, sexist, horny thoughts. Dying thoughts should be noble, worthy of being inscribed onto a tombstone. His last thoughts should lend themselves to a movie montage filled with scenes of self-sacrifice, hope and courage in the face of inevitable death. Preferably, the director would leave out the part where a bullet whizzed by Luke’s head and startled him backward, when he tripped and fell into the plastic hole. That is something he’d like left out of the movie of his life (and death), the fact that he did not really jump bravely into blackness, just kind of fell into a dark hole by accident.
Wow this is a long drop. How long will this last? Did time slow down? Do thoughts speed up as you get closer to death?
Fear fades. Peace comes. He is going to die. He doesn’t like it. But he can accept it. He has given this stupid quest his best shot. He overplayed his hand, went too far, got a little greedy. What choice did he have really? He will fall and fall, until splat. A life lost, one of millions who would die that day on a planet called Earth, a life cut short, but a life not lived badly, a few good times, a few good fucks.
He wishes for another chance, a chance to do some good. If there is one thing he learned today, it’s that evil really exists. Before now, evil had been more of an intellectual concept, something he philosophized about. He could see evil in how the world worked, saw it in the way the poor were treated, the way the disadvantaged and powerless always got a raw deal. He always suspected that the rich were either criminals who didn’t break the law or who broke the law but no one gave a shit. That’s why he liked gangsters, the classic Mafiosos, the guys who were honest about being dishonest.
But to experience true evil, to see it destroy people you love for no good reason, that was a tough bit of learning.
Ah Ben, he thinks. Sorry for fucking this up. Hope you’re okay. I hope you make it back to your apartment and comfy chair and your collection of velveteen track suits.
That’s something else he wishes for, to live to see Ben again, for just an hour or so to hear the stories of an old man who truly lived a life.
Live. That is his decision. He is going to live. He doesn’t know how. He just is. He points his toes, stiffens his back, his body sinking into the rubberized tubing as it curves gently underneath him, his clothes making a loud SHHHHHH sound as he soars downward, the friction building up a heat that bakes his back and ass. He is sliding like on a playground slide. It would almost be fun if he wasn’t still pretty sure he was about to die.
SHHHHHHHHHH, fills his ears, getting louder. Blackness, the acrid smell of rubber, a hot breeze flowing past his face.
His decent violently changes direction. His head bounces off the rubber tube. Now he’s on his back, still moving like a missile.
Bright white light. Silence. He’s floating. Falling. The world is spinning. And spinning. Falling.
Hit in the face, hit in the back, tumbling, rolling. The world slows down. Stops spinning.
He’s on his back, starring into a painfully bright white light. He’s surrounded by, and lying on top of, a mound of cardboard, broken dry wall, wires and scraps of wood. Everything seems to hurt. But that might mean he’s alive.
He’s sees Hank’s smiling face. No, it’s more of a smirk.
“You need to get the fuck out of the way,” Hank says.
Hank pulls Luke to his feet and off of the pile of garbage.
The howl of a wounded animal fills the little metal room they are in, a room that doesn’t seem to have a door. The howl sounds far away. But it is getting closer.
Leanne stands in a corner, her arms crossed, annoyance on her face.
“This is some rescue,” she says.
“It was your idea to jump down the tube, Princess” Hank says.
“You’d have preferred to get shot, jackass?”
That animal sound, the howl of rage and fear is getting closer, louder. It’s Charlie. He’s in the tunnel.
“Everyone stand back!” Hank shouts.
Charlie shoots through the tube and floats for a second like a whale suddenly gone weightless, experiencing flight for the first time.
Luke watches the massive human dangle in the air, the weight of him full of the desire to drop. Charlie’s fa
ce is filled with panic, his mouth wide open, like a man about to eat a 6-foot sub as quickly as possible.
Charlie hits the rubble hard, causing an explosion of plaster, cardboard and wood. The piles of trash part for him like the Red Sea, waves of it tossed at Luke, Hank and Leanne, who looks even more annoyed, something Luke didn’t think was possible.
Charlie slides along the floor of the metal room, hits the wall hard with his feet — BONG! — twists to the side and finally comes to rest.
“Owwwwww,” Charlie says and rolls over onto his back, his T-shirt rolled up to his chest, his heaving stomach looking like a giant, fleshy volcano about to erupt. He looks up, looks around, looks surprised to be alive.
“Princess, whatever made you think of jumping down that tube?” Hank asks.
“There was a time, a long time ago, when I wasn’t a whore,” She says. “I wanted to be a lawyer…”
“Alright! Whatever. You’re boring me already. How are we going to get out of here?”
Luke looks around, traipses through the garbage, walks over and on crushed and cracked pieces of dry wall. He runs his hands over the metal walls, painted white, glossy, no seams or cracks. This metal room doesn’t seem to have a door. They are trapped, sealed in a tomb.
Hank does the same, searches the walls for a door, for a crack, for some clue as to how to escape. He steps over a hurting Charlie, who shakes his head, trying to get the cobwebs out.
“You aren’t going to find a door,” Leanne says.
“That makes no sense,” Hank says. “How do people get in?”
“Idiot,” Leanne says. “People don’t get in. Garbage does. This is a dumpster, a fancy dumpster.”
Luke almost preferred the hallway with people shooting at him. This is the second time in a few hours he’s been enclosed in a tight space. The claustrophobia squeezes him like a python around his chest. He can’t breathe, can’t get his chest to expand far enough to take in more than a shallow breath.
He gets dizzy, the world wobbling. He drops to his knees, leans against the wall, works to get air in his lungs. He gulps in spasms, sounding like a bullfrog with the hiccups.
“Kid!” Hank shouts and goes to his side. “You okay! Come on, shake it off!”
Luke can’t shake it off. He is getting dizzier. He can feel the blackness of unconsciousness just a step behind him, about to take him. Christ, he feels so pathetically useless.
He lies on the ground, on his side, his cheek on the cool metal floor, pushes back the vomit that wants to spring out of his throat. Passing out would be better than throwing up. Maybe if he just closes his eyes for a few seconds, snuggles up to the tentacles of fear that are paralyzing him, they might ease up a little.
Luke sees Charlie roll over and slowly stand, lifting his bulk into the air. It’s like watching a skyscraper being built in 10 seconds. Where once there was empty space there is now massive amounts of swaying, weary human.
“If this is a dumpster then where is lid?” Hank asks Leanne, who does seem, for some reason, as if she knows a lot about disposal systems.
“It’s operated manually, but it can also be weight triggered,” she says.
“What can be weight triggered?” Hank asks, concern edging into his voice.
“Dumpster is the wrong word for what this is. It’s more of a trash compactor.”
Charlie stumbles forward, tripping over a piece of wood and crashes into the ground. He howls.
There is a hissing sound, like an angry snake, then a buzzing.
“Oh shit,” Leanne says.
“Oh shit what?” Hanks asks. “Why are you so full of bad news?”
“That’s the sound of hydraulics,” she says. “And why can’t you be nicer to me?”
The hydraulic sound gets loud, is joined by the whirring sound of a big electric motor. Whhrrrrrrrr…
Luke looks to the hole they flew out of. Maybe they could climb back up.
CLANG! Two metal doors slide closed over the hole.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Hank says.
The hissing sound gets louder, and a vibration rattles the room, sending up dust into the air.
I am not going to die like this, Luke thinks. I am going to live. And when this is done I’m going to fuck somebody, hopefully Leanne.
Luke feels his chest expand again, the python uncoiling from around his chest, leaving him as oxygen rushes into his brain.
He springs to his feet, feeling awake, refreshed even.
“What was that, kid?” Hank asks. “What brought you back from the dead?”
“I don’t know,” Luke says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
SCreeeeeeee… The walls scream as they move.
“Trash compactor!” Leanne yells. “This is a trash compactor!”
Luke, his brain feeling refreshed and operating at peak capacity, has a thought.
While Hank and Charlie push against a moving metal wall being driven by hydraulics strong enough to crush construction material, Luke pulls out his cell phone and dials. In a second he hears the gruff little voice of Artie…
“Hey! Where are you guys?” Artie asks.
“We’re in a trash compactor, and it’s about to crush us! Turn it off! Turn it off now!”
Chapter Forty-One
10 minutes earlier…
Artie and Cecil stare at the computer monitors and watch goons chase Leanne, Luke, Hank and Charlie. Shots are fired at their friends. Giant bullet holes appear in the walls and doors.
“They are terribly bad shots aren’t they?” Cecil says.
“They aren’t shooting to kill, you idiots,” says the Eggman. “If anything happens to Leanne, nuts will be cut off. That’s a direct quote from David.”
“He’s no Shakespeare, but that is a powerful bit of prose,” Cecil says. “And what if Leanne wasn’t with them?”
“They would be dead already, probably buried in the cement of the swimming pool that is being poured tomorrow.”
“Artie, my good fellow, what say we retire to the RV, maybe start it up, and get ready to drive away before anyone has a chance to make us a permanent part of the swimming facilities?”
“Not without Leanne,” Artie says. “We aren’t moving an inch.”
The gun fight involving his friends unfolds on a monitor to his left. On the monitor to his right, he’s been watching the mysterious black SUVs, which haven’t done anything so far other than park and look ominous.
All at once, the doors to the SUVs open. Men in black SWAT-team uniforms pile out. They are armed with M-16s, grenades, and side arms. Artie counts ten of them, and they are ready for war. The men, who all look indistinguishable in their black jump suits, Kevlar vests and helmets, gather around a guy who must be their leader because as he speaks the rest listen with rapt attention.
“What the flying fuckety fuck?” Artie asks.
He looks back at the monitor on his left and no one is there. No goons, no Leanne, no Luke, no anyone.
“What the hell? Where did they go?”
“Did you lose them?” Cecil asks. “Perhaps we should leave then. All’s well that ends well.”
Artie frantically clacks away on the keyboard, switching from camera to camera, hallway to hallway, and nothing. They disappeared.
Artie’s phone rings.
“Hello,” he says into the phone.
Luke screams: “We’re in a trash compactor, and it’s about to crush us! Turn it off! Turn it off now!”
“Holy shit! On it!”
Leanne’s in a trash compactor? What the fuck? How did…never mind….just figure out something. There has to be something. Everything in this place is controlled by the computer, but this construction disposal unit isn’t permanent, so why would it be part of main system?
He can turn any light in the building on or off, but he has no way to shut off this machine that is about to crush the life out of the woman he loves.
Wait a second…I can’t turn off the thing dire
ctly…but I can turn off the power to that section of the building, assuming the thing is plugged into the hotel grid and not a source outside of the system.
His fingers dance over the keyboard, sorting through menu after menu, getting to power, getting to power options, getting to shut-down commands, identifying the right section of the building, then going through the confirmation menus, one of which asks…
“Are you sure you want to shut down power in Sub Section C, Floor 1, East Wing?”
He clicks yes.
“Note: Shutting down power without warning guests could be alarming and even dangerous. Have you contacted security to confirm that guests have been notified about the power outage?”
He clicks yes so hard it hurts his finger.
“Would you like a 15-minute countdown to this power off event?”
His finger comes less than a micron away from hitting yes, sending the instruction that would have resulted in a crushed group of friends and 15 minutes of waiting time before their smashed, lifeless corpses would be dumped into a dumpster.
He hits “no.”
“Confirmed. Power is now off in Sub Section C, Floor 1, East Wing.”
He breathes a sigh of relief. He picks up his phone.
“Did that work?” he asks into it.
***
Seconds earlier…
The walls close in slowly, steadily, mercilessly.
Luke knows it’s stupid, but he doesn’t have any other options. He pushes the wall with all his might, hands on the cold metal, his arms tensed, his toned biceps and triceps, which he worked on religiously so he’d look good at the beach, do nothing for him. He wants his gym dues back.
“Leanne, stand on top of those crates!” Hank yells.
Leanne climbs up on a set of plastic crates, an action even more stupid than what Luke is doing.
Stand on the crates? Luke thinks. How is being higher better in his particular situation? Christ, Hank is a tool.
The walls are three feet away from each other and moving. Dry wall is crushed and powder fills the air. Wood splinters with a nauseating crunch.