The Rat

Rat
2015-09-24 18:11:02 (UTC)

bugs 1

General Outline:
-Guard sees bugs at work on overnights

-Bugs end up infesting apartment, lose apartment due to being accused of bringing infestation in by neighbor, neighbor claims it has been this way for a month, but only just started this week after the incident at work.

-Start mixing up time, say it is a week in the future, suddenly it is months in the past. Random days in the past. Not checking dates anymore. I found temp badge in the back lot, entered the warehouse and looked around for anyone, checking the roof last.

-See shadow man in hallway behind me opening doors and checking on rooms as if on duty.

-Go out to eat with friend, they say it is current date. Normal conversation, you'll find a new apartment, hows work, etc. Friend screams when I open up my sandwich and discover a bug inside.

-Back at work for overnight. Date says one day in the future. See shadow man in parking lot on camera fighting with another shadow. Suddenly another shadow bursts onto the camera coming from the building and runs into the other shadow man and flies swarm the lot and disappear.

-Try to tell friend what is happening over lunch, suddenly realize it's the same lunch the bug was discovered and she's responding to me as if I'm saying the same things I said that day. Give up.


Settings- research lab, apartment, out with friends

Part 1 is in the lab, etc already written

Bugs Part 1

I work security for a research lab. I'm not going to tell you what we research because it's pretty specific and it could easily be searched. I will tell you it's the North East coast of the US. I work a lot of overnight shifts. I'm not supposed to but we are pretty short staffed right now and we all have to do it. It's no big deal.
Lately, or all summer I guess, I've noticed in the middle of the night that there seemed to be weird amounts of bugs. I don't mean every so often I see a spider. I mean piles of ants and dozens of spiders every turn. Sometimes I see these beetles, I can't identify them. I assume they are native but I've just never seen them before. When they come they all come at once. I'll go a week, no bugs. Then one night I'll be on a walk through of the building and it's just bugs everywhere. I'm dodging spiders climbing down from the ceiling like a cheap haunted house.
I didn't think much of it. I just assume that the building is pretty large, we are surrounded by a national park, probably some sort of infestation. I've been reporting it in my duty log all summer but this building is being closed down so they probably don't care about pest control on a building they won't own in a week or so.
Sometimes our shifts run 3pm to 7am the next morning, a 16 hour shift. That's what I did last night.
So I was at my desk swatting away fruit flies and I knew it was going to be another night of this stupid infestation. I was mad because it was late and I'd been there for over 12 hours, making it a little after 3am.
We have ID scanners in order to enter the building. You tap your badge and the door unlocks and I get an alert on my computer in the main lobby of who has scanned in and what entrance. I see your name, your face, I can see what car you drive, your cell phone number. Whatever we have on file.
So an alert pops up on my computer. "9/24/15- 3:21am Warehouse Entrance- Temporary Badge #1". I look at the camera feed to that entrance and only see the door closing so whoever entered is now off camera and I can't figure out who is in the building.
Someone is in the building using a temp badge, so it could be anyone. I go through the temp badge sign out book and don't see temp badge #1 having been borrowed. I immediately think it's a break in and I try not to panic. I've been here a year, I've never had to deal with any actual emergency. I sit and watch Netflix and kick kids out of the parking lot. But now I'm alone at 3am and someone is in here with me.
Of course it's my job to investigate so I grab a mag lite, the giant industrial kind of flashlight that could really hurt someone if you got them good enough in the skull, and I scan myself into the building from the lobby and take a breath.
Bugs. There is a line of ants from outside the door leading all the way down the hallway towards the other end of the building. The way the building is laid out, there's this main hallway which stretches right through the middle of the building from the main lobby all the way to the warehouse. Then there are hallways that branch off this hallway and into other halls or labs/offices and etc.
So I'm walking down the giant hallway and the ants are single file line heading away from the warehouse. I tried not to step on them because I don't like bugs but I'm still not a monster.
I notice a spider running away from the warehouse. Looked like a normal brown house spider.
A little further I see a pile of ants all running over each other.
I get to the warehouse and listen for movement. You can't see everything because of machines and cubicles tightly packed so I begin quietly walking through the labyrinth.
Then I heard a weird sound that I don't know how to describe. Like writhing? I walked further and at the end of the aisle I see a man turn right and disappear down another aisle. I was shocked because part of me wasn't expecting it. I called out that I was security and got no response. So I kept walking in the direction I saw him and heard the writhing noise as I went.
I'm going to tell you right now. I'm not one of those people who says, "I'm logical and a skeptic." I'm a baby and I'm superstitious. The whole time I kept thinking about all the bugs. The writhing noise kind of like when maggots form in the trash and you can hear them moving around each other and in and out of whatever they've found in there. I started picturing this bug man made of writhing bugs.
But I tried to reel myself in beause I knew in reality and not in my head, my job needed me to make sure no one was breaking in. The labs biggest concern is their competitor stealing ideas. Not so much petty violent criminals stealing machinery and the like.
I turned down the aisle and saw him again turning around the corner but out of the warehouse and into the building. I quickened my pace to try to catch up.
i entered where he turned and was in the office area now, with cubicles everywhere. I saw him standing at the end near a door. The door was to the roof. He was standing there but it was a bit of a ways away, this hallway stretched almost as long as the main hallway. I tried to do as my job tells me, observe and report. I tried to make out what he was wearing but he just looked like a shadow. Suddenly he opened the door which should have been locked. I realized I leave it open so when I check the roof I don't have to unlock it all night. That's a dumb mistake and now my error is allowing this criminal access to the roof. Fuck. In he goes to the roof and the door closes.
I ran to the room and opened the door and climbed the ladder. The hatch was open so I climbed out and took a glance. No one.
I walked all over the roof and no one was out there. He jumped? I looked around the horizon and out into the trees surrounding the building and saw and heard nothing.
I climbed back in and did a tour of the building checking to see if things were disturbed or stolen. Nothing.
As I walked back down the main hallway I noticed the ants and spiders were gone. I'm freaking out.
I start reviewing the footage. First I check when the door was first accessed. Nothing. The door hadn't opened at all. So I start checking the videos from the warehouse and anywhere else I or he walked. Nothing. It's just me walking around with my flashlight looking like a scared little kid.
There was nothing except one thing. The feed from the roof showed a weird bug too close to the lens to focus in and identify crawl across the lens and stall for a moment and blocked the view of the hatch. When it moves the hatch is open already. A minute or so passes and I come up through it and it's just me circling the roof looking for whatever I had seen.
The alert on the scanner feed was gone. All it showed was my badge scan at 3:25am entering the building.
I sat there kind of stunned. I didn't report it. There was no proof and I didn't want to risk looking insane. I did however go through the temp badges and #1 is not there. So I know I'm not crazy. I saw the video of the hatch and the temp badge is out there somewhere in the world.
In order to download video I need to make a request to the admin of the account holder (my boss). So I couldn't save the weird bug and hatch video. We aren't supposed to bring our cell phones into the building because picture taking is illegal and we can be arrested. But I'm thinking my overnight next week I'm going to bring my cell phone just in case. I want proof of this.
Lastly though, when I got home early this morning around 7:15 I laid down in my bed exhausted and still kind of freaked out. I passed out and had a night terror I guess is what it is. I thought I was awake, and I looked up and saw spiders scurrying across my ceiling. Like just tons and tons of spiders. I screamed, "JESUS CHRIST" and I think my screaming woke me up because suddenly the spiders faded and I realized they weren't real. My heart was pounding. It was only 7:45am. I'd probably been asleep maybe 20 minutes. I looked over at my window and it was covered in flies. I jumped up and walked over. I was really awake now, this was real. This window was infested with flies. I started smacking at them with a shoe and they buzzed around my bedroom. I opened my door to let them take over my apartment, I just didn't want them on me while I slept.
So I went to bed and slept and just woke up maybe half an hour ago. I just think this was such a weird 24 hours and needed to vent. I'm dreading next week.




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