It’s the 30’s, 1936 to be exact, and let me tell you, it’s no walk in the park. Me? I’m Jay, 26 years of age, I used to work at that washed up steel yard down on Vine, you know, before this whole depression thing happened, I couldn’t tell you what happened to the yard, never said nothing about it. We all lost our jobs, I’m just glad I don’t have family because it’d be hard as hell to support one. But I’m heading down to the yard today, theres been some rumors going around, saying they’re gonna try and get the mill up and runnin again, If they did open this thing back up imma try for a job. So you know I’ll throw on my best, white button down, red suspenders hair slicked back and my black slacks, you always gotta look slick, like you know what you’re doing, and you never know when the ladies might be passin’ through.
The place is still a dump so I dunno who started those rumors, but there is some noise coming from inside, so naturally I figured eh, why not? What’s the worst that could be hiding out in there, a cat? The noise is echoing like you wouldn’t believe, since the place was gutted you could hear a pin drop but I could tell the chattering was coming from above me. There’s twenty-four floors in this wretched place, and only stairs, I just hope there’s nothing dangerous up there because it won’t make for a speedy get-away.
I could hear them talking, maybe three of them, they were talkin like they just killed someone, I was intrigued, ya know? So I leaned in real close to the door, ear almost touching it when the floor board squeaked. I figured I was doomed because I could hear the footsteps coming and I didn’t have no idea what to do--the door opened, and I was right, three guys, very big guys. I don’t remember their names but man were they intimidating. They sat me down, asked me what I heard--“nothin”. They didn’t believe me. The guy in the back was fidgeting with something, kinda made me nervous, when I saw it was a knife. They said I knew too much and I ran, but like I said, the stairs weren’t doing me no good, so I jumped. There was a window on the far side of the building and I remembered it opened out into the bay and my only thought was, “if this jump doesn’t kill me, they will” What can I say it was a leap of faith. But after that jump it went black, that’s all I remember.
“Are you sure that’s all you remember Jay?”
Yeah officer, im tellin ya, I don’t know what happened, the water is plenty deep, we used to go swimming on our breaks, I just blacked out after the jump, I don’t even know how I got back home.