Remember

It was black, save for the early morning streetlights, lights in people's homes, and signs in stores. Well, in reality, it wasn't black, but a more darkish blue that is closer to black than the blue one would expect to see midday, or early day, or late day for that matter. In any case, it was dark, and the sun was just beginning its slow, tedious rise over the landscape of the rather bleak, boring town of Fairfax, Virginia. The sky slowly turned a purple-like color. It was more of a violet honestly, but that's not the point. The color slowly shifted to a red, then a pink, which gradually blended into the whitish-yellowish we commonly come to associate with angels, and the blinding light that shoots out of a celestial body millions of miles away that we've come to know as the sun. It released many rays that day, as it always does, lest our planet be frozen. In any case, our story will begin with one single, individual ray.

This ray shot through the clouds which would have, if not for the sun's brilliance, made it an overcast day. It hurdled toward the battered asphalt which made up a road, and hit a shattered bottle.  It ricocheted onto the windshield of an exceedingly nice car, which was needless to say the midlife crisis of some poor lawyer or doctor, then off of the sunglasses of a police officer traveling down the opposite side of the road in hopes of catching a drunk driver.  Yes, there were already drunk drivers. Well actually, he might have just had a really, really bad hangover, but this is largely inconsequential to our overall story. This ray was reflected down, into a puddle on the ground, then back up, hitting the middle initial, which happened to be an R, on a fellow's briefcase, then up into his watch. The ray flew through an open window of an office building, off of a computer screen, out another open window, and finally, across town into the eyes of the actual subject of the story, who was sitting on the edge of the roof of The Home Depot. You thought this story was going to be about a ray of sunshine didn't you?

The man reflexively attempted to move to get the damned sun out of his eyes, but he did so rather jerkily, and he fell. He didn't scream or flail about all that much; he just sort of… fell. In any case he hit the ground as you would have expected from somebody who was falling, making a sort of muffled sound between a thump and a thwap. He laid there for a few minutes before he realized exactly what'd happened, and then he slowly got back up, and walked around the side of the building.

He opened the back door, which he had managed to break into earlier with a creative use of hillbilly teeth, and a sledge hammer, and proceeded inside the dark building and took a left, unsure of whether it would lead him to the same place he'd went when he had gone inside earlier.

Doing his best to be stealthy, the man edged his way though the back room, looking for the stairs. Bangs, clangs, and more thumps and thwaps echoed through the room as his shins, arms, feet, and face found numerous objects protruding from the shelves and storage crates and such. He stumbled about for a bit longer, trying to keep stealthy by avoiding an inevitable sneeze caused by the air which was saturated with sawdust and various spray products. As the word inevitable would indicate, he sneezed.

It was no normal sneeze, but it was as if somebody had conveniently placed a megaphone in front of his face at the exact time at which is nasal cavity erupted. It was an "ahh-ahh-CHEE-oo," rather than an "ah-choo." This time, the noise definitely was heard by anybody who may or may not have been in the building. It was so loud, in fact that he could hear it knocking a few things off of the shelves in the sales area through the walls.

Knowing what had just happened, he spun around a few times and found a light hanging from the ceiling, a sign that said "Exit." Not sure why he hadn't found this before, he rushed toward it, knowing that odds were heavily leaning toward somebody having heard the sneeze. Standing under the sign, he saw what he was looking for, the stairs leading to the roof.

He did the best he could to make his way up the stairs, which, as the room below, were covered in a variety of items concealed by the room's distinct lack of light, most likely sales items. Seeing the landing, illuminated by the light from the door to the outside world that he'd left open only a short while before, he sped up. Suddenly the voice of what sounded like a fairly buff security guard echoed behind him. "Hey! Who's back here?" The guard then saw the back door open, held in place by some hillbilly teeth, and drew his gun from its holster, and turned on the lights.

The man saw the reflection of the security guard in the lens of a surveillance camera just over his head, and burst into a run to reach the roof. The guard obviously heard this, as he liberally fired shots throughout the room. Having heard the commotion from earlier, and now gunshots, a second officer burst into the back room, and followed suit, firing uncontrollably. Their shots bounced off of, or became lodged in, new lawnmowers, pieces of wood, insulation foam, bags of concrete mix and sand, and mostly, the gigantic concrete walls, which sent a number of shots ricocheting around the camera's wall anchor, emitting bright flashes as they collided with the surfaces.

The man exhaled heavily as he reached the roof of the building, hearing the increase in the volume of fire behind him. He heard the shots bouncing around the room, and kept walking without a care, but suddenly he heard a scream, and then another, and all the fire stopped. He slowly crept back down the stairs to see what had happened, and then he saw it, the two security guards dead, lying in a pool of their own blood. Unsure of what to do, he ran back up onto the roof to continue what he was doing.

He walked outside, and saw the things he'd left on the roof when he fell, and hurried over to them. Moving his things over so as not to be hit by the sun again, the man sat down, and continued what he'd been doing. Next to him was a plank of wood with some lines drawn on it, slightly resembling a Kindergartener's attempt at drawing an ocean with a black Sharpie, and a decapitated teddy bear filled with jelly beans. Then he put it on, the entire reason he was at The Home Depot at six in the morning to begin with, a helmet-like device he had worked on for days. He placed the head bowl made of tin foil and copper wire on his head, and held the 2 cords ending in buttons that connected to it, and set the crucial part, the car battery, which was connected to the helmet part by numerous wires, behind him. He looked down at the two big buttons; one was red, and said "remember." The opposite button was blue and said "don't remember."

He looked out at the rising sun from the highest place he could manage to get to in Fairfax: The Home Depot. There were, of course, much higher points in the town, but he'd comprised a list of the top ten, nine of which he was reluctant to have broken into. First was the new town hall, a gargantuan building which was sure to have somebody on duty at all times. Second were the various Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, and other religious shrines that he would have had moral difficulty breaking into. Third and Fourth weren't actually in Fairfax, but were needless to say, tall places, one being the flag pole at a baseball stadium for overly competitive 10 year olds, and the other being the top of the left arch at a local McDonald's, both of which would have been hard to get atop of to begin with, let alone stay on top of. Fifth through Ninth were all local shops and such that he really didn't have a problem with, and felt wrong breaking into, because they'd done nothing to him.

Tenth was the Home Depot, the only place in the entire town that he felt deserved to be breached as he had done earlier. He felt this way because he had, months before, been shopping there, with full intentions of purchasing something, when he felt nature's call. He had gone to the commode, and when he was finished, found he was unable to stand and was forced to pry himself from the seat using a pocket knife.

It turned out that a long time employee, one of whom more maturity is expected had smeared the seat with a mixture of Krazy-Glue, Gorilla Glue, and a few other high powered adhesives. The man's ass was still scarred and stained, due to Gorilla Glue's nasty purplish color, and the trauma it had caused had totally erased his memory up to that point.

This incident was all he could think about. From then on, 2 things consumed him, the pursuit of his memory, and getting his revenge at the expense of the multi-million dollar hardware store chain, for ruining what, until then, he considered to be his most valuable asset.

So he chose the Home Depot to be the place where he would seek vengeance for his "incident" as he called it, though 2 security guards accidentally killing themselves with ricocheting bullets that were intended to hit him weren't exactly what he'd had in mind.

And there he was, sitting atop number ten on his list of the highest places in Fairfax, he wanted to be elevated so that everybody could see his mental rebirth, and so he could see everything in case something went terribly wrong, as most would expect a plan involving copper wire and car batteries to have some sort of electric side effect.

He looked out, over the town, seeing the rush hour traffic begin to accumulate, as people tediously worked their way towards their jobs. He smiled, and looked at the sun, marveling at its literally radiant beauty, and mere fact that something so big and so far away was the only reason life on this planet exists. And then he looked down, the smile fading a bit, and pressed the big red button, the one that said "Remember."