The Bum of Padelford

I had laid out my mise en place next to the kitchenette in Padelford, or so it seemed to me, having worked out many things to the nth degree accounting for some contingencies that I predicted might could unfold. During my spare time, I would look through the Classifieds section of the Daily, perusing residential listings that were close and under my skinflint budget. Sooner than expected, I would find myself with no choice but to buckle down and hasten my agenda. Once or twice, I would hear the click of the card reader on the Treehouse door, or even that belonging to the kitchenette door, indicating that I should be soon expecting a visitor to darken my humble Treehouse doorstep. Since I often kept the lab bathed in darkness, save when I was working on the dry-erase board or on paper, such as when I was doing LING 566 homework related to head-driven (more like, “head-scratching”) phrase-structure grammar, the solicitors – each of which was just as entitled to be there as I, let me restate – was always surprised to be welcomed by a random friendly greeting beckoning him/her out of the corner of the darkened room, before the newcomer even had a chance to flick on the light switch to the right side of the door and identify the mysterious voice calling out in welcome. Fortunately, each of these kind and confused entrants already knew me beforehand, though he or she might have been understandably perplexed by my visual accommodations, but the initial shock nonetheless made for a jump scare covetable in horror games and movies. My prescribed routine for this impromptu intrusion into my quiet study, at which I would be forced to lower the volume of the speakers or doff my headphones, customarily unfolded as follows: First of all, I would be naturally surprised by the external sounds that signaled either a newcomer or anomaly. At this point, I would quiet the music to which I was listening in order to pay full attention to the foreign din. Secondly, assuming that the clamor was a student or staff member entering the Treehouse, I prepared for said person noticing an unexpected person in the unlit computer room, carefully taking a deep breath and calming myself so that I did not risk spooking him or her. When this person entered, inevitably flicking on the lights, I would raise myself from my chair and make a mild greeting to both mitigate the abrupt jolt prompted by my appearance and reinforcing my initial purpose for stationing myself in the computer room. Finally, I would exchange pleasantries with whoever assuredly recognized me by this point, so that we could banter about coursework and other trivial matters. Within minutes, this person, who always chanced to be a student, would be relaxed enough to complete whatever tasks he or she came to the Lab to complete, during which I would excuse myself so as not to interfere with this progress. Rare as it was, this candid scenario unfolded so few times that I had memorized the classmates with whom these random encounters were rolled. Typically, they fell during the first couple days of the week, when a big project for LING 570 course loomed upon us, because this course required hardened programming and not simple bookwork. Saturday and Sunday were safe days, as students and profs alike were busied at home with their own affairs, be they related with school, church, or otherwise. The wildcard was Thursday, the end of the graduate school week, as Friday was a free day for all of us, its nights routinely seeing me scurrying from the ADP showing in Gowen to Padelford in order to arrive on time to reach Padelford’s closing deadline. This might also explain why I was befuddled when I heard the percussive metal rapping through the classic rock playing through my headphones. I took off my DJ headphones, resting them around my neck as I turned my uncovered ear to focus in upon the noise. When the sound repeated itself, I removed the headphones from around my neck and stood up, pushing back my wheeled desk chair as I walked cautiously towards the Treehouse door. Who would be knocking on the door? I asked myself, pondering a similar trope in horror movies. Nevertheless, as I neared the beige door whose glass doorlight had been strategically shaded with plain paper, I reasoned one thing, given the shadowy figure looming before me: Whoever this is, he somehow managed to get past the lock outside the kitchenette, so he must not be someone I need to worry about; it’s probably just the custodian that I hear emptying the garbage bin every morning, or something like that. So, I suddenly questioned as I placed my hand upon the door handle, why is he bothering me at this hour? Little did I guess that the trash to be thrown out was me. I opened the door with the same carelessness that preceded my other encounters, supposing that I would be greeted with a classmate who managed his or her way into the small kitchen by dint of a propped door or socially engineered exchange with someone in the building, or maybe the janitor wanting the liner from the wastebasket in the lab to toss out with the rest of the rubbish, either of whom had been thwarted from entering the Treehouse due to a lack of available credentials and hoped for assistance from the other side of the locked door. What I did not expect was to be met with the sight of a husky gentleman, silhouetted in the meager stove light behind him, wearing the navy blue uniform of the police department of the University of Washington. “Excuse me,” he began, his deep voice echoing in the tiny chamber behind me. “I noticed someone moving around from downstairs,” he explained, “and wondered what business you have in here so late at night.”