I was tired. You might understand. But working day-to-day as a janitor in a highschool full of kids that constantly disrespect their elders simply because they don’t appreciate their positions wasn’t only draining mentally. It also affected my body. And quite harshly.

Most of the people that hear me say that, though, they laugh. They scoff at the thought that a janitor would have job-related health issues. But they also don’t know what I do all day. Sure, I empty trash. I sweep and mop. But I’m the big guy, the six-foot-five, two-hundred and eighty-pound guy. I’ve got a bit of a beer gut, and it doesn’t help that I’m only twenty-three (which is another reason the kids take me lightly). Oh, also, my facial hair won’t grow out (I’ve tried), so I’m super baby-faced. But that’s beside the point. So, like I was saying, I’m the big guy, the guy all the other janitors pass off the heavy lifting to.

“Heavy lifting?” you ask. “But what heavy lifting might you be doing?”

Suffice it to say, the school district I work for finds it… monetarily sophisticated to “mitigate expenses through consolidation of labor”. And by that, I mean “getting fucked by your job”.

So, here I was, climbing up a 60-foot-ladder as I attempted to take down Christmas lights from the district’s 80-foot tree. I was using a long pole, which I could extend to extra lengths like you might adjust a tripod leg. It was hooked on the end and--let me tell you--trying to get the hook around the strings of lights at seven o’clock at night was a pain in my tuckus.

Grant, another one of the “janitors” at Lakeside High, was standing at the bottom holding the ladder steady for me. He was the kind of guy that didn't really do much work. Standing at five-foot even, Grant was ridiculously short. With his long curly beard—which was probably against health regulations—he reminded me of a dwarf you might read about in a fantasy novel. Yet, somehow, he commanded the respect of those around him. The kids were scared of him, the teachers brought him homecooked meals, and the principal herself sought him out for conversation. The grizzled forty-two-year-old lived as a janitorial king.

I hated Grant. He was everything I wished I could be—minus the height—and yet, he was a lazy piece of crap.

Hey, by the way, if your coworker is deathly afraid of heights, and volunteers to “stabilize your ladder” instead of just climbing his own to get the job done on time, don’t accept. I’d been up on top of that ladder for at least an hour now, untangling the stupid strings of lights from the thick bristles on the branches.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Some people would think, “Oh, it’s so easy to take them down. You just have to unwrap the tree!” And that would be true. But again, the district is stupid. Stupid enough to demand we wrap each string of lights around a branch for each strand we connect. That’s about 60 strands minimum, and it certainly isn’t fun.

So Grant is down there, holding the ladder, and I’m doing my darndest to untie the strands. I leaned a bit too far forward, and the whole thing shook under me. When I glanced down, what did I see?

Not Grant.

Where he was? I wasn’t sure. But now that I’d swung forward, back, and turned to look down, the ladder was swaying.

“Shit!” I yelled as it wobbled under me. I banged into the tree, releasing the ladder and trying to grab the spiked branches.

Somehow, pain overtook fear, and I cursed again as I released my grip, my hands bleeding. The ladder had already swung back to center, and as I tried to reach out and grasp it, the single foot I had connected to it slipped.

I shot forwards, my head slamming into the side of the thick steel ladder, and my world went fuzzy. I rocketed toward the ground headfirst, and the last thing I remembered was just the sound of bone breaking and… a splash.

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I screamed, my eyes bursting wide open. I expected to find the light, or maybe if I was lucky, a hospital bed. See, I don’t believe in an afterlife. If I die, then I die. The things I wanted to do with my life just… gone. The things I’d actually done with my life? Pah. At twenty-three, I’d accomplished nothing.

But then again… with the hospital bills the fall would probably dish out… I’m not sure if I wanted to survive. My relationships with my family were… strained, to say the least, and it probably wasn’t worth trying to pay them back on my own.

Yeah… Maybe I didn’t want to live anymore.

Damn you, Grant.

Then I actually noticed the world around me. It was… blue. Extremely blue. If you’ve ever been to the Caribbean, which… I haven’t… It probably looked a lot like this.

Vibrant colors flooded the rocky ground around me, and I hovered above it all, observing. Suddenly, a long and thin shape shot across my vision, moving faster than I could track it… or, did it?

My eyes locked onto the curious object instinctually, and as I watched it fade into the distance-- flying through the air, I might add-- I realized that it was a creature. The cylindrical shape was slithering, and somehow… it was flying.

Okay, so… this is probably a coma dream, then.

Another creature, this one much smaller, dashed by. As I tracked it by instinct once more, I realized that what I was staring at was a fish. So I was underwater! But… I wasn’t having any trouble breathing? As I watched, the first fish was followed by a school that rapidly caught up to it, and they dove deeper down, disappearing amongst the colored rocks I’d first noticed, which must’ve actually been coral.

“Welcome to the world, my dearest creation,” a voice announced, somehow perfectly clear and seemingly penetrating my brain. The words rang through me, and I felt them as much as I heard them. “I am dungeon core Terynium, your maker.”

Ahh, so this is one of those stories.