The darkness

"Why is the title of this post so emo, Claudia?" I will tell you, invisible person who only exists in my head. Yesterday, a big chunk of downtown Toronto lost its power at about 11:30 am. According to Toronto Hydro Services it was due to a burst water mane. My place of work was lucky enough to be affected by this event, but me and my fellow employees were not allowed to actually leave work, incase the power came back on (I work at a movie theatre, and the idea of ever being closed is a travesty to the company's head office, who, by the way, get about 2 months off a year). So, we hung around, talking and fooling about, taking turns telling the confused customers to essentially fuck off, but in a nicer way. It's shocking how incredibly stupid some people are. We'd say, "I'm sorry, but we're closed for the time being because the power is out. We don't know how long it will be out, so you should probably go home," to which they'd reply "So I can't even see Avatar? Can I at least get a diet Coke?" No my friend, both those things would require a magical thing called ELECTRICITY. Hard to understand, I know, but you'll wrap your precious little head around it soon enough.

2:45 pm rolls around, and suddenly all light and power is restored. Everybody reluctantly rushes around trying to get things ready for the eager movie goers. Being the projectionist, my job is to go upstairs to the projection booth to thread the prints and start the movies. The booth is already a slightly scary place; a giant room full of big, loud machines that make strange sounds at random times, and a catwalk above your head also emitting sudden sounds and freaky shadows lurking about. I never thought about how blood-curdlingly frightening the booth would be when completely silent and pitch black. But no worries, I had the benefit of finding out. While threading the first projector, apparently the power said, "umm, no thank-you" and went out once again. Excuse the lame cliche, but it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. But you wouldn't be able to see it. You also wouldn't be able to see the Projectionist Killer (a serial killer invented by the mind of Claudia while in a state of sheer terror) coming for you while you frantically ran down the stairs, using your crappy cell phone as a flash light.

I'm guessing the power was out most of the evening, because it was still off when my shift was finished at 5 pm. My next shift is tomorrow, 4-10:30 pm, and I'm slightly nervous, I hope I didn't anger the Projectionist Killer by narrowly escaping his clutches. I hope the ghosts in the booth (the ones I blame when something inexplicably goes wrong) take care of him...