The 95th Floor Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Disclaimer

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Dedicated to all those who were lost or were affected either directly or indirectly on September 11th, 2001.

  For Aviana Skye.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  I wasn’t always a loser. Honestly, I really wasn’t. I can’t exactly remember when it all changed—wait, I lied. Yes, I do. That one day. I wouldn’t be lying when I told you I have relived that day more than once though.

  You know what? We got off to a bad start there with me lying to you. First impressions are everything, right? Let’s try this again.

  Hi, my name is Stan Lundberg, and I am from Canyon, Idaho, a relatively small community of roughly 20,000 people located in the south-central part of the state. I am an only child of two wonderful parents who sadly passed away far too young. I have no brothers or sisters and any family I might have has never bothered to contact me or let me know how I can reach them. I am alone in every sense of the word—you will see later that this is a recurring theme in my life. Sure, I have a few people I can call friends but none that I would consider a close friend. No one I could truly turn to and rely on if I needed to. Everything I do, I do myself.

  But, enough of that, let’s start from the beginning. I want us to develop a nice rapport with each other. Doing so will make what I have to tell you much easier in the end.

  I was born in the summer of ‘83 to James and Maxine Lundberg in Canyon, Idaho, the same little town I have lived my entire life. Like most people, I was raised in a very run-of-the-mill household; middle-class family, loving and nurturing but strict when necessary. I am around 5’10”, a bit stocky—some of it muscle, some of it fat from my inactive lifestyle. I have always been told that I came out a perfect fifty-fifty mix of my mom and my dad; thick dark hair like my dad, short simple nose and blue eyes from my mother. Most of the time I have a fairly dark five o’clock shadow simply due to the fact that I hate shaving.

  You would never know it by how I act now but supposedly I was a whirlwind of energy as a youngster. My parents always told me that I was an incredibly hyper child, always doing swan dives off the arms of the couch and scooting around with my forehead on the carpet until I was red with rug burn. Thankfully, I have no recollection of any of this.

  By the time my memory kicked in is around the same time I started experiencing the occasional migraine. These were no ordinary migraines. They would finish just as quickly as they started—wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Early on it would only occur once in a great while, but as I grew older, the frequency would gradually increase. These migraines appear out of nowhere coupled with intense nausea, vertigo, and horrible tinnitus in my right ear. On multiple occasions, we would visit a doctor, but as with everything else that seems to happen in my life, we had no luck. The doctors were completely baffled. Eventually we just gave up—actually, I was the one who gave up. My parents tried to convince me to seek further treatment but I had grown weary from all the tests and lack of results. By this point I had simply learned to accept the pain. No further symptoms ever appeared other than the usual nausea, dizziness, and ringing in my ear, so it obviously wasn’t too serious, right?

  As I grew older, I simply became accustomed to the frequent neural boxing matches inside my skull. However, that is not to say that I enjoyed or even welcomed them. No, I just accepted them as a part of my life since there clearly wasn’t anything I could do about it until medical science—or physician competence—progressed to the point the doctors could finally diagnose it. Plus, I figured they would toughen me up. Or as my dad would frequently tell me when I whined about something: It builds character.

  By early middle school, I became infatuated with the opposite sex. I guess you could say I hit puberty rather early. While most of the other boys my age still sounded feminine, my voice would regularly crack and squeak causing frequent gales of laughter from those around me. I just laughed along with them, squeaking away like a saxophone with a worn reed.

  Instead of shooting basketballs or trading cards at school, I would be alone between classes checking out the older girls, playing my own version of ball in my pockets. By eighth grade, I would occasionally masturbate in the boy’s restroom stalls during lunch period. I was even brave enough to occasionally do it while class was in session. No, not at my desk. This is where the migraines would come in handy. Whenever I got the urge to rub one out, I could always fake a migraine, and the teachers would excuse me from class until I felt I was back under control. It worked every time.

  Fortunately, by the time I enrolled in high school I had my urges under control. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t checking out the older girls, I simply was able to look and not touch. My freshman year would bless me with one of my fondest memories.

  That was the year I finally wrangled my first true love. Because I was always such a loner, I never could muster the courage to ask a girl out—the migraines would toughen me physically, but not mentally. But to my astonishment, one of the girls I had been fixated on who was two years my senior asked me out. Her name was Alexis, and to this day I never did figure out what she saw in me. I didn’t care, I was happy. Probably the happiest I had ever been or ever will be for a very long time.

  Alexis was absolutely gorgeous. She was tall for a girl, around 5’7”, long brunette hair, athletic build and perfectly proportioned all around. If anything stood out other than her angelic beauty, it was her long legs. She was never shy about showing them off in shorts either.

  The thing about Alexis was, despite how gorgeous she looked, she never made herself out to be a beauty queen. She was quite conservative for the most part. Most days she had her hair tied back in a high pony tail with a few thin tendrils of hair that could pass for bangs. Basically your standard 90s hairdo for those who wanted to spend the minimal amount of time in front of the mirror. It didn’t matter to me one bit. She was perfect in my eyes.

  Christmas of ‘98 stood out as the greatest memory of my life. Our gift to each other was our virginity. She took mine, and I took hers. To call it romantic would be a bit of a stretch as it happened in the back of her stationwagon, but as a kid of fifteen with the girl of his dreams completely naked in front of him, romance was the last thing on my mind.

  As much as I wanted to do it, I still never dared to bring it up or even ask her. Again, she was the one to take the initiative and suggest it as a gift to each other. She didn’t even giggle when I finished after twelve seconds. She fared no better as she was already climaxing by the third thrus
t. After the initial embarrassment of round one, we wrapped the night up with multiple subsequent rounds before finally driving back home. My parents were at a company Christmas party for the evening, so I basically had the whole night to do what I wanted. Her parents simply didn’t care what she did since she was nearly an adult. It was a good thing condoms came in packs—no pun intended. The box was empty when we returned home.

  As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And this was no different. Much to my chagrin, I would be the cause of that unfortunate end. I promptly came to the realization that I was the jealous type. Whenever Alexis was around another guy, a fury would burn inside me that I could usually keep contained until I simmered down back to normal. This wasn’t always the case though.

  On countless instances, I would explode and berate her with accusations of cheating on me, or in some cases, of being a whore. I obviously didn’t truly believe it—I was the only guy she had slept with—but anger can make a person say or do some incredibly hurtful things. It was a wonder how she put up with it even for the six months we were together. Regardless, this would also spell my downfall.

  Up until this point I had been a fairly good kid. I did whatever work I could to save up cash; usually mowing lawns, raking leaves, or miscellaneous tasks that others were too lazy to do but were willing to pay someone else for. When it came to money, I was incredibly economical. In two years I had nearly a thousand dollars stashed away. I had nothing in particular that I was saving up for; I just felt that saving money was far better than spending it. Who would have thought that a kid’s first break-up could change a personality so remarkably?

  My outbursts of jealous idiocy gradually became more frequent. By March of the following year, they became weekly occurrences. The pattern was always the same: I would see her with another male friend or acquaintance, I would succumb to rage and engage in an argument, I would eventually resort to name-calling and throwing accusations, she would be left in tears, I would feel guilty and apologize, everything would be back to normal. Unbeknown to me, every little outburst chipped away at whatever feelings of attachment she held. Then one day the cap finally popped and I blew it for good. I called her a whore for the final time, and she replied with an order to go fuck myself and walked off all without shedding a single tear. She never spoke to me again after that.

  From that point on I was never the same person. My grades plummeted, I never went anywhere, and I just kept to myself.

  Eventually, I just stopped going to school altogether. I didn’t care anymore; about anyone or anything. I never realized it until after it was all over, but the entire time I was with Alexis, I never had a single migraine. I had gotten so used to them that when they stopped coming, I never noticed. I think you know what I am going to say next though, and you would be right. From the point she walked away until now they are present again with an even greater force.

  Life didn’t want to stop kicking me in the balls right then and there. No, it just became shit piled on top of more shit.

  The day before my sixteenth birthday was when both of my parents were taken from me. You can probably guess why my hometown is named Canyon. You would be right as it is right next to a vast canyon. And spanning that canyon is an immense bridge.

  Winds can reach quite high speeds when one is traversing the bridge. Unfortunately, this happened at a time when my parents were driving home from out of town. As they were crossing, they just happened to be next to a large semi pulling two trailers. In what probably seemed like minutes to them really happened in a matter of only seconds. A formidable gust of wind blew across the bridge with enough force that it caused the truck trailers to tip over and crush my parents’ car. But it didn’t end there. Due to the speeds they were traveling at, both vehicles lost control and ended up driving off the bridge, plunging five hundred feet to the river below. There were no survivors.

  Needless to say, my 16th birthday was not a celebration—even though I later found out after the fact that my parents had purchased me a new (used) car as a birthday gift. Neither were any birthdays after that. I inherited my parents’ house which, to my surprise, was already paid off. While I lost my parents, I gained my own house, another car, and a substantial amount of money in the bank that is managed by an accountant that I rarely talk to. Don’t get me wrong, I would have given it all back to have my parents returned to me, but life just doesn’t work out that way. From then on I lived in my own house that my parents left for me, drove their other car that didn’t end up as a scrap heap at the bottom of the canyon, and worked various dead-end jobs with zero ambition and zero potential for anything extraordinary.

  And so here we are. Now you know the abridged version of my childhood story. I have shared with you some intimate details of my life and we are now much better acquainted. Yeah, I probably rushed through some of it, but that isn’t important. I simply wanted us to get to know each other because what I am going to tell you next may not sit well with you. You may even hate me after this. Or you may not, that will be your decision to make when my tale is finished. So go grab yourself a drink, turn on a light and relax because this might take a while.

  Chapter 1

  Swing shifts on Friday nights were the days that felt like soul-crushing weeks. This Friday night would be no different. Filthy men stopping into my store to buy their case of watered down cheap beer, kids coming in trying to buy cigarettes with no ID. It was the same every week. When you have worked at this job for as long as I have, you can do it in your sleep. Sometimes I actually did.

  The six o’clock rush was your normal ragtag of kids trying to impress their friends with smokes and middle-aged men frothing at the mouth for that first crisp can of filtered piss water. It feels like you are standing there for hours ringing up twelve packs of High Life and Twinkies, but in reality, it is only about a twenty-minute span when you are actually working. To keep from staring at the little digital clock at the bottom of my register screen, I stuck a post-it note to the corner to cover it up. It worked for the first few days to keep my mind off the time but after a while, like everything else, it loses its effectiveness and the time dragged on like it did before.

  Tonight would be unique in that my migraines were much more frequent than usual. This had no effect on time, but it did add an extra layer of annoyance to my evening. The last rush of people left about thirty minutes ago and so far the painful hammering and ringing of my head had come and go twice in that short span. While some days are worse than others, it is odd for it to be that frequent. I thought about maybe running to the ER after my shift was over but this wouldn’t be the first time it had crossed my mind—and definitely not the last time I would dismiss it.

  Lately, the after effects have been getting more serious. Just a week earlier, after a bout of migraines and dizziness, my nose suddenly began gushing blood. Luckily, this happened late in the evening when I was the only person in the store. Nobody was there to see the blood stains on the counter or the floor where I was working. If someone had seen it before I cleaned it up, they might have thought an animal had been butchered or someone had their throat slit. It was distressing, to say the least. It hasn’t happened since then, but I still keep a roll of paper towels nearby just in case.

  Ding-Ding.

  The dinging of a customer coming in the store woke me from an unexpected doze session, most likely the result of the increasing frequency of the migraines. When I stood up to walk to the register an intense wave of vertigo and nausea hit me like a ton of bricks. I then recognized the customer as a regular at this time of the evening, coming in to get his usual tall-boy of beer and a pack of cheap cigarettes.

  “Hey Ted, the usual?” I asked as he neared the counter.

  “You got it.” He said before staring at me with what looked like concern.

  I grabbed his pack of Marlboro Light 100s and set them on the counter next to the tallboy of beer he brought with him.

  “One pack of cancer sticks and a tallboy
of goat piss.” I said as I struggled to keep my balance.

  “Stan, you don’t look so good. Are you okay?” He asked seeming more concerned by the second.

  “Oh, you know. It’s Friday. Just trying to keep from hanging myself in the bathroom with my belt.” Just as I said that a tiny drop of blood ran down my upper lip only to land in my mouth. I always hated the coppery taste of blood.

  Ted took his hand and gestured to his upper lip. “You have a little something on your lip there. You sure you are feeling alright? That nosebleed says otherwise.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what is going on. This happened last week. Give me a second, I have some towels over here.” I said as I began walking over to the roll of paper towels I keep handy for situations like this. As soon as I turned to walk towards the roll of towels, the sudden jerking motion of turning my head caused my ear to pop and a loud ringing to immediately begin, rapidly enhancing the already present dizziness. This apparently was more intense than my hardened body could handle as the last thing I remember was more blood gushing from both nostrils and the checkered tile floor rapidly coming towards my face, but not before I could almost get one expletive out of my mouth. “Oh, shi—”

  When I came to, I didn’t have any recognition of my surroundings. All that I knew is that I was lying on a rather uncomfortable mattress with the flattest pillow I have ever laid my head on. I’ve had empty pillow cases with more padding than this thing. I sat up to try and get a better idea of where I was and what I was doing. The sound of heart monitors slowly began to fill my ears. I looked down at my arms to see an IV stuck in my vein. I must be in the hospital.

  “Hello Mr. Lundberg, I see you have finally come to.” Said the nurse who walked through the door into the tiny room where I was laying down. “How are you feeling?”

  “Weak…Thirsty…Where am I?” I managed to say despite feeling like I had just been leveled by a bulldozer.