Saturday, May 17, 2003

<Pagan> 

("Girl" assessing damage)

Fire Starter



A couple of days ago, I came into work and the guy working the front desk stopped me and said, "Just wanted to let you know that you guys can't burn anything back there anymore . . . you know, like candles, incense, etc." I asked him what happened. He told me that a chair caught fire in the dressing room last night and the fire department had to come and everything. He went on to say that the firemen couldn't tell how the fire started and the girls working at the time said, "the chair just caught on fire by itself." He rolled his eyes and I walked back to the dressing room to assess the damage myself.



I walked in and the dressing room looked totally normal. There was no smoke smell lingering and there was no smoke residue whatsoever. "Girl" was already in the dressing room getting ready. I asked her what happened and she motioned me to follow her into the bathroom. She pointed to a burnt outline of a square. She told me that the chair was in the bathroom when it caught fire and left that mark. I wondered what the chair was doing in the bathroom, anyways. I worked the day of the fire and left at 6:00 p.m. There was no chair in the bathroom at that time. The fire occurred at 9:30 p.m. I thought this was a little suspicious. I imagined one of the girls dropping a cigarette on the chair and catching it on fire. I thought maybe they carried the chair into the bathroom to try to put the fire out with water.



All of a sudden, the lady that works downstairs came into the dressing room with a spray bottle in her hand. She started spraying what appeared to be water into the air. She was moving the bottle as she sprayed in a line up-down and then a line left-right, making a cross in the air. She walked all over the dressing room and up onto the stage, making these crosses with the spray bottle. We finally asked her what was in the bottle. She said, "Holy water."

"Are you serious?" I laughed.

"Yeah," she said.



She went on to tell us that she was there the night the fire started and talked to the girls afterward and believed their story. She said they were really scared and swore the chair "just caught on fire" and even the firefighters had no explanation as to what happened. She told us that this place is haunted and weird things happen all the time. When she's downstairs (in the retail store) by herself, she sometimes hears someone calling her name. When she looks to see who's there, no one's around. She also has to go down into the basement to get supplies once in a while and swears there's something down there, too. She hears noises (thumps and footsteps) and a cold chill always comes over her. She dreads going down there.



"Well, I better get back downstairs," she said. We thanked her for blessing the dressing room (although I don't believe in that) and she left. Girl joked that her skin was burning/tingling from the holy water. She claims she was part of a vampire cult in high school. Nothing serious . . . I think they just bit each other on the neck when they were fucking or something.



We both jumped in our booths and didn't talk anymore about the fire. I didn't really care what happened, anyways. I was just disappointed that I missed out on seeing the firemen come into the dressing room. It would have made a nice picture.
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