“MAN IN THE WINDOW!”
-Portland, Oregon, 7007 Kirby St, circa 1998
“Ok, dude—you ready? Here’s a flashlight.”
“Yeah, let’s roll.”
“Hey! Where are you guys going?”
“We’re gonna check out the abandoned reformatory school for girls across the street.”
“Oooooh, creepy! I want to go, too.”
“Ok.”
“Hold on, let me get Jen and Chris.”
“Ok.”
– – –
“So, there’s all sorts of fucking crazy stories about this place. It’s supposed to be crazy haunted and I heard a bunch of dudes are squatting it and have a meth lab set up inside.”
“Meth lab?!”
“Yeah, you think the five of us can take on a gang of tweakers?”
“Ha ha ha!”
“Is the gate always just open like this?”
“The city chains it shut but someone keeps cutting through it with a bolt cutters or something.”
“Hmmm.”
“Ok, here’s the first building. The door is chained shut, but someone kicked in the bottom so you can crawl through.”
“Ok. I’m going in.”
“Be careful on the floor, there’s some broken bottles.”
“Shine the flashlight over there—what is that?”
“It’s just garbage.”
“Why the fuck are we whispering?”
“Ha ha ha! Yeah, why the fuck are we whispering?”
“So this must have been like the office or administration building and the bigger building behind us was the reform school.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, you can see it here out this window.”
“Hey! Look up there!”
“What?”
“Up there, top floor. The room up there has a light on and there’s a man standing in the window.”
“What?! Where?!”
“Look where I’m pointing. There’s a silhouette of a man standing in the window. Maybe he heard us coming in here.”
“OH MY GOD!”
“WHAT?!”
“DUDE! There IS a man in the window!”
“RUN!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!”
“WHAT THE FUCK!”
“HEY!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
—
“Ok, why…no, why did you all freak out and start running? Did you think that dude was going to fucking fly down from the window and grab us?”
“I didn’t– everyone else started screaming and running, I had no idea why.”
“Christine is super pissed off at you guys. Her and Jen are on shrooms and she thinks you made that up about the guy in the window just to fuck with them.”
“Dude! No! There was a guy in the window, we saw him. I had no idea they were on shrooms!”
“But you shouted it. You were like ‘DUDE! MAN IN THE WINDOW!’ really loud.”
“I think she thought you were saying a guy jumped in front of the window on ground level, like in a horror movie.”
“No! He was up on the third floor of the other building. It was kind of creepy, but no need for a major fucking freak out!”
“I didn’t see it.”
“Tea?”
“There was a man standing in the window, hands on his hips, looking down toward us. That much is for sure.”
Posted on April 14, 2012, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
teakrulos.com 
Lol!! I wanted this one to go on and on!! Sounds like something I did (we ALL did), back in the day… 🙂
thank you, krulos, for immortalizing that obscure, yet monumental moment in that long-ago era. i love you dude!