the wait
At first, they all wanted to get in, we all wanted. The line was huge but that didn’t put people off. In fact, it put them “on”. Numbers were being handed, atfer 200 no one bothers to count. Everybody wants a chance.
As I finished my test and looked up, many people were finishing as well and some had apparently been done for a while. The organizers would come in, pick some people based on their numbers and leave. Until, I finally got “picked”, I had no idea what were they picking us for. Turned out we were just being taken to another room downstairs to wait “more comfortably”. It started out as 36 people in that room. After a couple of hours in there, a few people gave up, some were called back upstairs. I was still there. Damn number 75. That went on for what seemed like forever. And then there were six.
It was getting late and the room was getting dark. The tiny windows weren’t enough anymore. Finally, the indian girl got up, walked to the door and it looked like she was going to get some answers to why this was taking so long. First she tried to turn the light on but it didn’t work. Then, she went for the door, placed her hand on the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it didn’t work. We were locked. Everyone got up and went to the door, tried it, banged on it, kicked it, nothing worked. No one came. Some of the girls went to the “windows” but they were locked too. They started screaming and crying which didn’t help at all.
All I could think about was I should have eaten something today. The guy from chile and the girl from mexico seem to be calmer than the rest so I started talking to them and we came up with a plan to break the door. We had been clearly forgotten or so we hoped. So, we grabbed whatever we could find that seemed strong enough to hit the door. Useless. Then, we grabbed anything sharp we could find and begin to scrape the door. It would take forever but is not like we had much choice.
The other three were too desperate to help and our arms were getting tired. The indian girl had some energy bars and chocolate, they shared amongst them selfs without even offering us. I confronted her but they ignored me. I was about to pass out. The chilean found some food in his bag and we shared.
The sun was coming up and I guess the hope was someone would come and rescue us but that never happened. So we went back to scraping that damn door. As the whole grew bigger, a smoke was coming through. Finally we managed to make a whole big enough to fit a person. Well, a tiny person. Guess who? Yep. The indian girl went through and ran off. She didn’t even try to open the door from the outside, she just ran. She freaked out as the black smoke was now covering the whole ceiling. We were so pissed off and desperate that we started kicking the door like crazy. One of the “others” passed out. I went back for her and with the chilean’s help we were able to get out of the building. The girl wasn’t outside. Firefighters arrived, went in and manage to get her out, severely hurt but alive. The building didn’t make it though. The organization disappeared. No one really understands what happened or how a fire like that started by it self.
