Ever since I can remember I have been sensitive. So it should've been no surprise to me the events that would take place in my early twenties.
I am in the military and so, because of this, cannot identify specific locations since this particular incident took place on a military installation.
I was 21, fresh out of boot camp and well into my final stages of technical training. I was training to be an avionics specialist, a primarily male-dominated field of maintenance and therefore I was always on guard trying to be the best and not be any less than that. So I was naturally distracted by my goals and not in touch with my normal sense of intuition.
We had just been assigned a class on the midnight shift when it started happening. At first I chalked it up to nerves and my body trying to adjust itself to sleeping during the day and going to school at night. About two weeks in I was finally acclimated2 and comfortable. Well, not exactly comfortable. You see, the base we were at was an older one as most Air Force bases usually are. But our schoolhouse was in what used to be the old training hospital during WWII, the Korean War, and then Vietnam. It wasn't until those two weeks of adaptation had passed that one of my guys made the observation that the building was shaped like an H.
It made sense. The floors were all concrete linoleum3 and instead of stairs in the building there were two gurney ramps5 per floor, at 180 degree angles from each other that traversed you through the levels. It was not until one night, we were doing our clean up details (the military saves money on janitorial6 services by farming out its students to indentured7 servitude) that I got curious. I wanted to see what was on the top floor. From the outside it looked like there were three stories, not including the basement where our break room was located. So I,
