It started out like a normal enough day. I was only a few days away from the three month mark. Perhaps this time I would stay in the same job long enough to get a pay raise. After all, most of the time I get fired within a month of starting a job. My record is three and a half hours.-Fast food, not the best place to have an observant guy around I suppose. There were so many health violations in that fast food place, they'd already lost a half of their customers because of me pointing out things that were wrong within hearing of them, to my boss, by the time he told me to leave.
Well, I was in the middle of once again, observing the different animals to see what changes had happened over night. It was just me and Howard in at that point, I'd been given an early morning shift and no one else was due to come in for a couple of hours. Considering that I'd worked a night shift six hours before, I was a bit sleep deprived.
I'd just finished my rounds, when Howard called me over to one of the testing chambers in a panic.
"MARTIN! GET OVER HERE QUICK!"
Howard never yells. He's a cool one. Or was a cool one. Not one for dramatics even though the corner of his eye would twitch whenever I opened my mouth. He kept quiet. Like a spider waiting for a fly to strike the web.
I struck the web. I actually believed his panic.
In retrospect, it was incredibly fake sounding.
But like a lemming, I ran over to the chamber and at his panicked direction went inside to look for a leak.
There was no leak.
The door slammed shut behind me, and locked.
Not good.
I didn't even make it back to the door to bang on the glass before some odd gas poured into the chamber and choked me.
I'd never seen this chamber in use before. The gas was unfamiliar to me. Though I found out later it effects you by both inhaling it and by skin exposure.
Well, I did both.
And that exposure wasn't good.
My muscles seized up, sending me to the ground.
Then, for the first time in a long time...I lost focus.
My mind literally disconnected itself from my consciousness, and I drifted, no longer aware of the world around me.

~Martin Elek