Chandra looked frantically about the small windowless room she’d just entered, fleeing from Teddy, her abusive boyfriend. She locked the door she’d just entered through and saw there were two more doors, one opposite where she’d entered and another to her left. Opening the opposite one, she was facing a compact but full utility room of mops, buckets, cleaners and chemicals. Without closing that door, she opened the other, finding it opened onto a corridor of numerous doors, turning a corner at either end.
Remembering what Teddy said the first time he brought her up to the twentieth floor where he patrolled as a security guard, that first time he’d taken her to one of the offices into a conference room where they’d had sex on the big table in the center of the room. He told her that night, there wasn’t a room except the CEO and V-P offices he didn’t have keys to, and he had the key that switched the elevators to that floor on and off, controlling access, so no surprise visitors.
The fire stairs were the only way out except the freight elevator they rode up, which was never switched off. The fire stairs only let people in, not out, except at the lobby and parking garage. He’d jangled the keys in front of her to show that he had the power, controlled access and could allow or deny people who worked there access to their own offices, computers, files and property any time he felt like it.
It made Teddy feel big having control or power. It made Chandra nervous thinking of Teddy with either... He was taller, stronger and faster than her, and dressed like she was, he’d easily overtake her on the stairs heading downwards. Tonight she’d come in a short skirt and heels when he demanded she drop by the office building about ten, after the cleaners left.
He made her accompany him up in the freight elevator to the other wing of the office building, where he’d told her to strip. He wanted sex then and there... She’d refused and he grabbed her, pushed inside one of the offices and tried to rape her. Chandra waited ‘til the panties were off from under her skirt and Teddy was fumbling with his pants around his knees trying to get his shorts down, when she kicked him and ran.
Even pausing this split second, she knew he’d be coming through the door any moment. A sudden thought overtook her. She left the door to the corridor ajar, entering the utility room, switched on the single bare light bulb there, making sure the door wouldn’t lock and trap her, drawing it softly shut. She looked at the shelves and stacked supplies in the dim light. Trash bags, toilet tissue, deodorizers, paper towels, cleanser, furniture polish, wax, glass cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, industrial drain cleaner, stain remover, boxes of rags and sponges, maxi-pads for filling dispensers in the ladies’ room, more materiel to keep an office complex functioning and looking presentable.
Either side of the door hung a dry chemical fire extinguisher.
Grabbing an extinguisher from its’ bracket, she pulled the safety pin, so it was ready to spray. Holding the nozzle at the ready, her hand near the trigger in case Teddy checked the utility closet when he came chasing after her in a moment or two. Glancing about once more, her eyes lit on two jugs of drain cleaner with warning labels “danger” “poison” “corrosive,” “avoid contact with skin or eyes” and grabbed one, opening the cap.
She held her breath as she heard a key unlock the entry door and Teddy moving through the room toward the open one. A few seconds after she heard the door to the other office swing, bang, as she eased open the utility room door, heading for the door that would get her back to the freight elevator, extinguisher clutched under one arm and the drain cleaner in her other hand.
As she reached the elevator, a door banged open behind her, heard Teddy come towards her, cursing, screaming profanity at her as he charged around the corner. The elevator door was opening for her as he came around the edge of the alcove.
His eyes were wide with rage and his nostrils flared like a wild horse, as he headed at her, out of control like a runaway train. Chandra gripped the nozzle and squeezed the trigger. The lime green chemical spray hit Teddy full in the face, squarely in his open mouth, blinding his wide-open eyes. He faltered as he surged forward so she stepped aside as he came at the spot where she’d been a second before, kept spraying the chemical at him as he flailed and tripped, falling to his knees.
Without thinking, Chandra raised the now nearly empty cylinder, striking Teddy on the head. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it stunned him and he fell, rolling onto his back. Quickly she lodged the extinguisher in the open door of the elevator to keep it from leaving without her. She lunged for Teddy’s big key ring, pulling her hand free as he tried to grab her by the wrist, and threw the keys into the elevator. She was about to dive in after them and make her escape when she saw the big jug of drain cleaner she’d seized in the utility room.
Teddy was lying on the floor, half-conscious, gasping like a trout out of water, zipper still open from the rape attempt. Chandra uncapped the bottle, pouring half in the gap in the front of his trousers and splashed the rest in his face, including his open mouth, where some ran down his chemical caked throat.
Teddy was screaming as she pushed the ‘door close’ button of the elevator. The last thing she saw was him writhing on the floor, clutching his throat, clawing at his eyes...
She ran the elevator down to the parking garage before she remembered the video surveillance camera there and pushed the button for the loading dock, two levels lower. She had her face hidden as a precaution when the door opened into the darkened loading dock, but couldn’t see any cameras. Switching the elevator off with Teddy’s key, she left it locked at loading dock level, walking briskly along the canopied lane where trucks backed in to offload cargo.
She used the keys to let herself out through the door beside the chain-link gates that barred the way in the night-time. Walking to the end of the block, she turned to pass the front of the building. Instead of passing by, she opened the front door and went to the security desk where Teddy sat when not in another area of the building.
Switching the security cameras to the twentieth floor, she saw Teddy at a drinking fountain, splashing water on his face frantically, trying to make himself urge to throw up the chemicals that entered his mouth. He looked up at the camera for a moment and she saw his burned face, blistered eyes and torn bleeding mouth.
All of a sudden he grasped his crotch and pulled his pants down, followed by his boxer shorts, which caused him to collapse to the floor in agony as the waistband tore his blistered and burned genitals which were stuck to the materiel. Even with the small, grainy image from the security camera, she could see part of his penis was almost dissolved by the powerful corrosive. She left the camera focused on him as he fainted, face distorted in terror and pain. She locked the image onscreen and with the empty drain cleaner bottle and fire extinguisher, she left by the main door. She left the building open and unlocked, used the keys from his ring to put them in the trunk of Teddy’s car which she drove to a back alley in the very nasty part of town where she’d grown up, taking Teddy’s .38 police special and the ammo clips for it with her.
Chandra hailed a cab that was passing and returned for her little Toyota near the office tower and drove home to finish packing. 8 a.m. the next morning the movers arrived on schedule. Chandra had planned her relocation for months, finished her job two days previously with no forwarding street address, other than a mail redirection service that would send forms to her at tax time, etc. Her final pay was in her bank account, which she’d cleaned out, mail redirection done weeks previously.
She’d already gotten a new position with another company across the border in the U.S. and with no living relatives, she was on her way to losing herself in a new world. The movers had left as she had a last look over her old apartment. All that remained was a chair she hated, Teddy’s clothes in a heap, some dishes and cookware that she didn’t want and a few of Teddy’s belongings. Some of the stuff she’d sent down the trash chute out of spite.
She saw a cop car pulling up in front of the apartment building as she was ready to leave. By the time the police could reach the apartment, if they were there to see her, she’d be in her car and heading out of the city. As she crossed the bridge heading south toward the border and her new life, she switched on the radio to catch the morning news.
The announcer was saying something about a security guard in serious condition after an unexplained attack in the office building where he was working over-night. Police were on the lookout for a young woman in a grey Toyota with B.C. plates, wanted for questioning in the case.
Chandra passed the American customs agent her new U.S. green card, her new Washington State driver’s license matching the U.S. plates on her car, which she’d gotten the Friday before when she went to sign the lease on her new apartment. He passed back her ID and waved her through to her new life without Teddy. Along with Teddy’s penis, Chandra had now totally changed herself into a new entity.
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