Bamatick

It was unnerving to see a Congregation of Praying Mantids (Swarm would be a dumb name for a group of Praying Mantids).  I’d only ever seen one at a time, but working where we did, there were an untold number of them.  They were EVERYWHERE.  Being cannibals, that was weird.  We were convinced there was some sort of nuclear testing being conducted in the desert and these alien insectoids were the beginning of something much more sinister.  Have I said too much?  Do you hear helicopters?

The area around our work site was an unforgiving landscape, seemingly the source material for the Dungeons and Dragons Dark Sun campaign.  The sun going down didn’t really help any.  So many times we had heat strokes.  Thankfully, they had us work inside primarily.  Fence-building day was a bad one.  Stop-Sign-Holding day was a close second, adding blacktop to the mix.  We got cooked from above and below!  But the worst was Parking-Speed-Bump-Moving day.

I wouldn’t say that I have claustrophobia, but I don’t like it when I can’t move.  Too bad; they shoved me in the air shaft, like some sort of heist movie plot, and I rolled along it, wiping every surface with acetone-soaked rags.  I’m fairly certain the fumes went right on through the respirator.  Later, they asked us to just use water, as the pollutant detector was registering Acetone in parts per billion or something.

It never occured to me to be afraid of falling through the sheet metal to the lab floor, 50 feet below with a pronounced “Padooka.”  Mostly, I just disliked the screws that dug into my flesh as I rolled over the seams.  There was just enough room for me to roll, maybe 2 feet?  And it was just wide enough for me to fit into length-wise.