I’m a college senior from Wisconsin and to be honest, I’m barely holding it together long enough to graduate. As if finishing my degree and dealing with the all-consuming dread of finding a place to live and work weren’t enough to deal with, a year ago I also decided that working a part time job would be a fantastic idea. I hope you can tell by now that not only do I stress about most things, but also that I cope with said stress via self depreciation and sarcasm. I have been told that these are signs of intelligence (by people on the internet), but given that I’m pursuing a bachelor of arts, the jury might still be out on that.
Anyways, in my pursuit to attain some sort of income so that I might be able to eat without digging myself further in debt, I decided to reach out and apply to a handful of part time jobs. None of them were fanciful or interesting, not that I was looking for anything that was of course. They were just menial jobs like dishwashing, tutoring, really anything that required the minimum requirements, within walking distance, and that I could do on the weekends. To my surprise, one had reached out to me almost immediately. It was a front desk job at a luxury apartment building (emphasis on the luxury) and they were looking for someone to cover a shift or two on the weekends. It seemed too perfect of an opportunity, but to be honest, the next steps were completely normal so I didn’t really suspect anything. I called the number back immediately and scheduled a phone interview. Before I knew what was really happening, I had been hired, given orientation, and trained in a new (albeit boring) job at the Fortune Apartments (trust me, I know it’s tacky). My official job title is “Part-Time Concierge,” a fancy french way of saying “the rent here is expensive but we still hire college students.” Believe me, it is expensive, but not for nothing. The building has 14 floors, a rooftop patio, a gym, a pool and hot tub and many more amenities that are just down right superfluous. I’m not normally the jealous type but after working here for a year now I have definitely gotten a few glimpses into the life of luxury.
When I first got the job, I was only hired to work one shift a week, Sunday mornings. The front desk itself is a 24 hour service (just another one of the luxuries afforded to the residents) which is broken up into three, 8 hour shifts. That means that besides the few minutes before and after my shift where I see my coworkers, I’m pretty much alone at the desk for my whole shift. Don’t get me wrong, an apartment building that consists almost exclusively of college students can get quite exciting, especially on the weekends, but the Sunday morning shift would have you believe you were in a ghost town. Besides the occasional hungover resident or disgruntled delivery worker, I really didn’t have to deal with much. I could pretty much get by every shift without ever having to talk to anybody except for the people I came in to replace, and the people replacing me. With roughly eight hours of unsupervised, boring, and lonely time at a desk I would do pretty much anything to stave off boredom. I was watching youtube, doing homework, reading… Basically, as long as I was looking at the security cameras every so often to make sure nothing out of the ordinary was happening, it really didn’t matter.
For the most part, the job actually seemed to be going well and working there had become a part of my routine. My regular work day would begin with the sound of my alarm reminding me to get up around 6:00 AM for my 7:00 AM shift. This was far and away the worst part of my job. Let’s just say waking up this early isn’t exactly my, or many college students’, forte. After groggily forcing myself out of my comforter and into the shower I would head to work. I could easily walk to work in about 5 minutes but I would leave a couple minutes early so that I had some overlap with the last person on shift. I probably could show up right when I needed to, but I liked getting there early in case my coworker had anything to let me know or just wanted to chat after a long night. They would leave a few minutes later and I’d have the morning and desk to myself, the lobby was my oyster, as they say (I think). For a while this is how it went, but eventually I started to notice more and more oddities that I had been completely ignorant of until quite recently.
The earliest quirks that I can recall really came from the general vibe and aesthetic of the building itself. It seemed as though, at least to me, that the owners of the building went way too hard into the whole “Fortune” thing. Of course, the name of the building itself is “Fortune Apartments,” that is the first tip off. To be honest though I didn’t really raise any flags at the name itself, it seemed like just the thing to attract naive college students with well off parents. Even the address of the building begins with the numbers 777 as if it wasn’t already clear what the gimmick was.The building also had 14 floors but they skipped number 13 like they used to do in old hotels and stuff like that. I actually had never seen that before in real life and assumed it was just something that made the building appear more hotel-like or fancy, but I don’t really know enough about it other than 13 is unlucky.
That’s what I thought it all was anyway, just a gimmick to make the building stand out against the competition. Candidly, I actually did think the building was lucky, or at least getting the job had somehow balanced out my karma in a way to turn my luck around. I had started getting better grades in class, meeting new people (including my current girlfriend), and other things of that nature. You can probably see how I didn’t really attribute these to luck, I guess I just wanted to believe I was bettering myself. However, a month or so into my job, more weirdly lucky things started happening, things that weren’t so explainable but still flew under my radar as inconspicuous bouts of fortune. Some instances, that I can recall, were that I’d won a merchandise giveaway from one of my favorite content creators, I’d received two semi-expensive electronics when I only ordered one, and I’d even found a $100 bill in the street on my way home from work. Again, all of these things completely flew under my radar until about 2 months ago. Until now, these little moments had been spread few and far enough between that I never even thought about them. In fact I’m sure there’s probably been hundreds of these little moments that I don’t even remember or that I didn’t even notice in the first place.
I finally started to detect a pattern about 2 months ago. I had been driving back to my apartment from visiting family from upstate, and I was about two hours into a drive that would take about 5 hours to complete. I had trouble sleeping the night before, but I liked getting on the open road fairly early. I’d be back before dark and could have some time to unwind before work the next day. Needless to say that driving alone while tired for any amount of time is a very bad idea, but I thought that after a coffee and a few hours of solo car karaoke, I’d be awake enough to make the drive like I usually do. I quite literally could not have been more wrong. I’ve made this same exact drive countless times. Sure, sometimes I can feel my eyelids get heavier and heavier as they struggle and squint against the reflection of the morning sun on the road, but this time was different. No matter how loud I sang (although at this point it was screaming) the endless highway in front of me just didn’t seem to end and I couldn’t keep up the battle against my sleep deprived brain.
Before I could even think to continue the war against sleep, my head and neck snapped to attention and my eyes shot open. For a moment I thought I had just had a burst of energy to finally overcome the struggle. The feeling of triumph was short winded in wake of the realization that I could feel the coolness of drool evaporating from the corner of my mouth. I knew that I had fallen asleep. I could not believe that I had fallen asleep at all, let alone that I hadn’t crashed when doing so. From what I could gauge off of the mile markers, I think I was asleep for about 2 miles. That means for 2 to 3 minutes, at least, I was not in control of my car, and yet somehow I ended up fine, no crashes, no ditches, not even any cops trying to pull me over. To hell with luck this was a goddamn miracle. Suffice to say that for the rest of the day I was wide awake and thoroughly terrified at the prospect that I had escaped any sort of consequences for falling asleep on a highway.
Ironically, that night I had a really tough time sleeping and ended up doing so with only a couple of hours before I had to get ready for work. However, to my surprise, I had been awoken by the sound of tapping on my window, not the alarm on my phone. I quickly glanced at the time to see how long I had before my alarm would go off. Alarmingly (get it?), I saw that it was 6:40 AM. After my stomach had dropped, I unlocked my phone to see the alarm app open, but I had set it for 6:00 PM (bachelor of arts, what can I say?). As I skipped most of my morning routine to hastily get dressed and head to work, I counted my lucky stars that whatever noise I heard from the window had woken me up. In my haste I didn’t even think about what had made that sound. Things like this have been happening too frequently and it’s been starting to freak me out. A group of vandals, more likely burglars, broke and stole from every car in the parking lot except mine. One of my professors suddenly fell ill and decided to bump everyone’s grade up to at least passing (this seemed like the most outlandish thing to me, even compared to my naptime drive). My boss gave me a raise even though I only work one day a week. Normally, I probably would’ve thought little into it and would blindly accept the streak of luck but something about the “Fortune Apartments” is just burying itself into the back of my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it. There had to be some reason these things were happening, the chances any one of them would occur had to be too low on their own, let alone all of them consecutively.
This morning I was determined to use my time at work to document and find out if what was happening to me had happened to others. I have plenty of time to write and research during my shift and could spend a good few hours browsing forums and posting my experience online. I got to work a bit early and luckily found that the sidewalk had already been cleared of snow and that there was exactly one of my favorite vending machine coffees left. When I got here I noticed that the overnight person, usually Brandon, wasn’t there. No worries, usually there’s nothing important for me to know anyways, I’m sure he just had to leave early or was tied up doing some last minute thing. I pulled out my laptop and began documenting my experience. I looked at the clock and saw that it was just a few minutes shy of 7:00 AM. I guessed that Brandon was probably just gone already and hadn’t bothered to let me know, until I finally noticed the post-it on the desk beside me. It read my name on the top and held a message from Brandon, the person confirming my guess that it was indeed him who I was replacing.
Below my name it read:
I had to help a lost delivery driver, I’ll be back soon. If you are here before 7, leave the building and come back in after. MAKE SURE TO WAIT UNTIL AFTER 7. This is not a joke, I’ll see you soon.
Brandon’s name was hastily signed at the bottom. Upon reading his name my first reaction was to smile. Even though I was already worked up about whatever was going on with me and that I knew something about the building was off, I had just assumed it was some sort of prank to freak me out. After I grinned at the note, I would be lying if I didn’t feel the slightest twinge of frigidity throughout my body. I could sense the goosebumps begin to form along my arms. For fun I looked at the clock in the bottom right of my laptop, it read 6:59 AM. To be honest if I wanted to, I still probably could have gotten out right then. The desk is about 5 feet from the front door, it would’ve taken ten seconds, probably less. It would have been no effort for me to get up and walk outside for a minute and come back in, even if it meant I looked like a slightly gullible person to Brandon. Yet, for some reason, maybe it was luck, I decided not to. Instead I sat there and looked at the clock, waiting for it to turn over to the new hour. Instead, after what seemed like longer than a minute, it did turn. It read 6:60 AM. My slight grin turned into a grimace almost immediately. Admittedly, my initial reaction was to question how Brandon had pulled this off. Somehow I tried to rationalize it as part of the joke even though I was looking at my own laptop. I looked at my phone as well, 6:60 AM.
I instantly began to panic. The cold feeling I had moments ago shifted violently into panicked sweat. My bangs already began to stick to my forehead and I was having trouble controlling my breath. I felt a pit in my stomach and my throat knotted into that feeling you get when you’re about to throw up. I got up and tried to open the door, if only I had done it a minute prior. It wouldn’t budge. For some reason I began to cry uncontrollably and I could barely keep myself from gagging in panic. I didn’t understand what was happening and I somehow knew it was out of my control. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. I tried everything I could to break down the door. Not only couldn’t I break it, I felt as though I had no impact on it at all. With every smack and charge into the door I didn’t even feel it flex, It was like I wasn’t interacting with it at all.
One thoroughly sore shoulder later, I hurriedly went back to the desk, hoping to God that there might be anything, literally anything I could do. I glanced at my phone; 6:62 AM. Without thinking I began to scan the security cameras, hoping to find Brandon or really any early riser who I could ground myself to. I saw no one. At the moment, I couldn’t think of what else to do so I went back to my laptop and tried to quickly add on the documentation I had been writing and post it wherever I could in hopes that someone could get back to me. I think I’m pretty much caught up and will send this out shortly, if things go wrong, maybe it can act as a warning, I really don’t know. I feel like time is slowing down, or maybe speeding up, I can’t really tell. I typed the latter half of this just now, and it’s only 6:66 AM.
I glanced through the security cameras one more time and prayed for just one more bout of luck. I actually just saw someone. They had just gotten out of their apartment. The hallways are a little dark and this camera definitely needs an upgrade so I can’t make out their details just yet, but it looks like they’re headed to the elevators. They’re on the 13th floor so I’ll have to wait a bit before they get down here. I’ll post this as it is and hopefully check on any information later today when I’ve sorted it out. Luckily I’ll have someone to talk to shortly, looks like I got one more miracle.