Photo: Istiaque Hossain @ Pexels

Across the street from where I work is a neglected building  whose greenish gray cement and plaster facade is cracking and crumbling with age and neglect.

The pale, gray weather beaten door, I think it was once painted blue, is still in place. It is still locked and during the dead of winter,  when the wind comes roaring down from the hills above the town and slams into the building ( 222 McDowell Way ) the doors groan in it’s frame and a second, maybe two seconds after the door groans you can hear the rattle of chains.

My bus stop is to the left of the doors, so during the winter nights when the wind hits the doors and the chains rattle I try not to look at the doors, I try to not listen to them. I do my very best to pretend that they are only doors and that the building behind them is just an abandoned warehouses with dull gray gritty dust on the floor and mold staining the walls and ceilings and dark and dank fetid air.

I tell myself  those simple and real facts about the building behind me and most of the times that thought calms my brittle nerves and just as I am about to take a nice and easy relaxed breath, I can hear the chains rattling from behind the door and I hope against hope that the door stays locked at that my bus isn’t late.