Mr. Mundy's Electric Toasters

BRRRRRRRRRING!

TW: suicide

I jolt upright from my slumped position at my desk. I must have slept through the rest of chemistry class again. A shame, really. I’m sure Ms. Kaminsky’s lecture on the nomenclature of organic compounds was riveting as per usual. Honestly, I’m having a hard time staying awake for any of my classes lately. I can tell you now that I will never be a scientist, a lawyer, an engineer, and DEFINITELY not someone who sits behind a desk 9-5. All I can really see myself being is an artist, my photography is the only thing I’m passionate about these days, but I don’t exactly have many people begging to get their hands on my work. Well, nobody, actually.

Halloween is approaching and it seems to be all people are talking about in the halls. I think I’ve heard 4 girls say they are going to be “sexy cats” in the time it has taken me to walk from class to the front door of the school. My only plan for Halloween is locking myself in my room and avoiding the guests at my parent’s annual costume party.

I leave the front door and take a left towards home. I hear from behind me “Hey LOSER! Why are you dressed like that? You know Halloween isn’t until next week, right? Why don’t you take off that ugly mask?” Ignore them. Keep walking. Three blocks later and they are still following me. I could just walk home; they would never dare beat me up in front of my house… but I don’t think that I can handle the rage that burns inside me when my mom is so nice to them. Adam is the worst of the trio, but his mom has been friends with my mom since high school and she would never believe Adam could be so cruel when raised by a “saint” like Cathy. In a split-second decision I turn down an alleyway that leads to an older, more industrial part of town. I can lose them back here. I start running and know exactly where I’m headed. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this. A quick right at the lumber yard and a left between two buildings takes me down a darker path where there is a hole in the fence any of those brutes couldn’t imagine slipping through. I settle down behind my usual pile of bricks to wait them out. They still haven’t found my hiding spot after all these years of chasing me back here.

The lot I’m hiding in belongs to a building that was abandoned in the 30’s. The sign on the front of the brown brick is dilapidated, but through the peeling paint and fading colours you can just make out “Mr. Mundy’s Electric Toasters.” I’ve always been drawn to this building. I guess everyone has considering the mystery that surrounds it. After the stock market crash of 1929 this place, like much of everything else at the time, struggled. I guess people just didn’t need the future of toasters at the time when times got tough. The story goes that Mr. Mundy held out for a few years, slowly laying off employees, until one day he just disappeared. No body was ever found, and nobody knows what happened. His wife was widowed and after a fruitless investigation I guess nobody else wanted to move into the building. While that story is interesting enough (and it’s spread amongst the children of every generation in town since), what has always drawn me to this place was how run down it was. In a bustling town where everyone seems to be running somewhere, this place has always had a sense of stability. Not stable in the structural sense (bricks were falling off the thing daily now, most of the windows were broken, I think it even started leaning last year) but in the way it seems to stand uninfluenced by modern life around it. I’m going to have to find a new hiding spot though. The town council decided this building couldn’t withstand another winter and has become a threat to the safety of the infrastructure around it. It’s set to be torn down in a few days. I’ll be sad to see it go.

I take my camera out of my backpack to check for any damages that may have happened during my quick escape. It seems to be in working order, but I take a picture to test it. Through the viewfinder I frame the corner of the falling sign, using my selective focus to blur anything in the background to really bring out the peeling paint. I’ve never actually entered the factory, but I suppose since it’s set for demolition it’s kind of now or never. I wonder if I can somehow capture the devastation and mystery of the place in my photos. Of course, even if I do pull off something artistic and profound, being in here is illegal so nobody will ever see them. It’s immediately apparent upon crawling in a ground-floor window that I am not the only person who frequents this lot. Crushed beer cans litter the floor, the walls are plastered with graffiti, and it smells like cigarette smoke is seeping out of the walls. This section of the building is dark and musty because the windows this low actually get re-boarded to try and prevent trespassing. It’s probably not the smartest idea to go onto the upper floors of a building that is literally falling apart, but I want better lighting for my photos. There are two staircases in the building, and one of them seems sturdier than the other so that’s the one I take. The factory is three floors in total, and I go straight to the top. The door at the top of the stairwell is heavy but with a little force it gives, and my eyes take a second to adjust to all the light. I thought in the almost 90 years since this place has ceased production it would have been cleaned out, but I was surprised to see that there were still employee lockers, and offices largely intact. You could sense much more life here than I was anticipating. A once-bustling center and highlight of this small town reduced to rubble and offices blanketed with years of dust and abandonment. As I was focusing my camera on some office furniture in front of a partially broken window, there were footsteps in the stairwell. Damn, I thought Adam had called off the search party by now. I silently ducked behind a desk that was barely standing. A man came into view, but he certainly was not Adam. He was much older, with an odd curly moustache and clothing that looked like something out of a black and white detective movie. I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or if I should be afraid. I could get in a lot of trouble for being here. The man walked across the floor towards a window near the office where I was hiding. He walked with a purpose and an almost tangible sense of trepidation like he was late for an important meeting. He swiftly hopped up into one of the windows where the majority of the glass was missing, and he jumped. I felt my muscles stiffen and my blood run cold. I couldn’t even let out a gasp. I sat there for what felt like an eternity listening and trying to get a handle on what I just witnessed. When I finally felt that I could stand I walked slowly up to the window. I firmly grasped the sill and sort of half looked out the window towards the ground wholly afraid of what I was going to see… but I didn’t see anything. I looked farther out the window and there was no evidence of someone on the ground. There was no blood, no mangled-looking man three floors below me. In a fit of panic, I ran down the three flights of stairs and burst onto the overgrown grass in front of the building. There was nothing there. Was I hallucinating?

I don’t remember how I got home. My mind was elsewhere, and I only came to when I recognized I was at my front door. I was grateful that when I went in my mom was busy reading “Women’s Magazine – how to lose 30 pounds in a week and here’s a recipe for cupcakes” and my dad was on a heated business call as he usually was at seemingly all hours. I don’t think any conversation I had would have been coherent at the moment. I walked directly up to my room and I think I passed out. When I opened my eyes my bedside alarm clock read 4:06AM. I immediately pulled out my phone and checked every local news outlet I could think of regarding a missing person or a body in my area. There was nothing. Could you imagine something like that?

I think I floated through the next day at school. My body may have been present but my mind was not. The first thing I did when the final bell rang was run at full speed to Mr. Mundy’s Electric Toasters. There was no crime scene tape, just the pink demolition notice on the fence. I peered through the chain link and there was nothing below that third story window, just like the day before. I didn’t go inside and instead, I went home and sat at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice recounting the previous day. Nobody could have fallen from that height and walked away. That means the whole thing must not have happened. It felt so vivid, the fear I felt was real, but there is no evidence to support it. My mom walked into the kitchen and grabbed a protein bar. She probably would have left without noticing me if I hadn’t said “Is there a history of mental illness in the family?” She stopped, and without missing a beat or wondering why I would ask such a thing barked back “This family has always been healthy as horses,” and left the kitchen checking her Fitbit step count.

I couldn’t endure another day of school. I decided that I would stake out the third floor of Mr. Mundy’s Electric Toasters with my camera. If I captured anything, it would be proof. I said goodbye as if I were going to school and shot off directly to the factory. I set up in the same office I had originally been in when the incident occurred. It was an oddly hot day for being so close to Halloween. The heat, lack of packed snacks and absolutely nothing to document made me want to fall asleep after a few hours. Just as I felt myself slipping into dreamland there was humming. The adrenaline rush instantly woke me up and I grabbed my camera making as little noise as possible. It was a girl. She was maybe around the same height as me, but her translucent white skin almost glowed, and her flowing curly blonde hair made her beautiful in an almost otherworldly sort of way. She wore an odd powder blue chiffon dress with tights that were striped black and white. It was an odd choice of outfit, but it didn’t take away from the draw I felt towards her. In the moment I almost forgot about my camera. I silently snapped a picture of her as she made her way to the same window the man jumped out of the day before. I wanted to stop her, to say something but my curiosity made me silent. With ease, she hopped up into the window and leapt out the other side without hesitation. This time I ran to the window and hung my head out to see what had happened. Again, there was nobody there…

This was too much. There she was in my camera. Proof on a screen that she was just here. I felt like screaming. Like pulling out my hair. Part of me wished she wasn’t going to show up on my camera. That way the reasonable explanation would be that I was going insane. But now there is concrete evidence of something happening right in front of me that I can’t even begin to explain. Is this what happened to Mr. Mundy? When his business collapsed, he jumped out of that same window somehow leaving this plane and widowing his wife? I’m going to be sick.

I must have passed out again because I awake under a layer of moonlight and dust on the floor of the abandoned office. It must not be good for someone to faint this often. I check my camera again and there is the girl in blue. Damn, it wasn’t a dream. I’d better get home, not that my parents would even notice I’m gone. I stand up to leave and what I see stops me directly in my tracks. I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I no longer have the sense to hide. A hand is reaching in the window. A moment later the rest of the man from two days ago appears. He is once again on a mission and thankfully doesn’t see me, but this time stops at the door leading to the stairwell. There is a moment of silence and the door bursts open. It is a mother with two children all toting suitcases in hand. The mother ushers her children along and is guided to the window by the man with the curly moustache. They throw their luggage out the window and are soon followed by their respective owners. The man stays behind, continually checking his watch. I stayed in that office paralyzed by fear and the consequences of being seen by any of these people who clearly knew something I didn’t. I didn’t dare try and take any photos for fear of the flash going off. In clear intervals, more families were welcomed and ushered through the window until finally, sometime when the moon was making its last appearance in sky making room for the glow of morning, the man leapt through the window leaving me alone in the abandoned factory.

Back home in my own bed a single thought keeps going through my mind. That man came back. He appeared out of the sky and came into that window. Wherever these people are going, there is a way to come back. If that is in fact how Mr. Mundy disappeared, why didn’t he come back? Was it so much better where he was now? And then I realized another thing. Those people going through the window at planned intervals in the night were leaving for good. They were carrying all the possessions they could because there was no intent on returning. The factory was being demolished and they were choosing which side they wanted to be on when the concrete and steel comes crashing down. I keep these thoughts until sleep takes me away.

My dreams were vivid that night. Dreams of what world could be on the other side of that window. All those people leaving because what’s here isn’t worth staying for. I dream of a world where screens are not an extension of our bodies and people live in a way that doesn’t break down and corrupt the very reasons there are to be alive. I dream I can be an artist there. A place where true art is celebrated, and a banana duct-taped to a wall is not revolutionary. I dream of a place where there are no Adams and people can exist in their truest form. Even in my dreams, I know this is too good to be true, but hope is a wonderful thing.

The next day at school the conversation has momentarily changed from Halloween plans to the demolition of Mr. Mundy’s Electric Toasters. Oh god, that’s today. I try to put it out of my mind and comfort myself with the fact that after the demolition, the nightmare that has been the last few days will be over. On the way home I find myself drawn towards the factory. There are many spectators today. Who doesn’t want to see a wrecking ball go through something? Humans seem to love destruction. As the crowd grows, so does my anxiety. Does anybody else here know about the window? With some short words from the mayor, the wrecking ball raises into the air and sets up for the first blow. An intense feeling of loss overtakes me as the first concrete falls. I feel myself starting to panic, and before I know it, I am running around the back of the building. I can’t crawl into my usual hole in the fence because of all the people but the fence isn’t exactly secure. It doesn’t take long until I am under the fence and lunging into a building that is literally crumbling around me. What am I doing? I make my way to the staircase like my legs are making my decisions for me. BANG! The wrecking ball hits the right side of the factory and I am knocked onto my face from the reverberations to the other side. I can’t stop now. The dust burns my lungs and clouds my vision, but I know exactly where I’m headed. I burst onto the third floor and the sky is opening up above me as the roof is torn off. I race across the floor and go to the third window from the left of the building. My heart is racing and as the wrecking ball comes in behind me to obliterate where I’m standing, I step up into the window.

With a deep breath I close my eyes, and I jump.