Entropy

… It felt good to be back home from Montreal but I would need to get a quick nap and be at work in about six hours. Being young had its advantages. Energy being one of them. It didn’t take me long to rest and refill that tank. I grabbed an egg sandwich and my coffee thermos as I headed out the door to work. It was early and hardly any traffic on the road but as usual Detroit city airport was busy. As I got closer to the UPS terminal I could see they had at least 8 to 10 semi trailers backed up to their dock. It was going to be a busy night. When I got out of my car, in the parking lot, I noticed something unusual. and I got an eerie feeling. There was a box the size of a washing machine next to one of the semis propped up against the wall of the dock. There looked to be a pair of bluejeaned legs dressed with cowboy boots sticking out of the box. The legs were crossed.

…I called out to the person in the box but got no response. I was getting concerned as I called out again and again got no response. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to go find out what was happening, and I’d have to say that I was shocked at what I saw. The dock lights illuminated the inside of the box. I could see it was a white male with long greasy blonde hair a mustache and goatee of the same color. He had on a black summer shirt that was full of his spittle as it dreuled from his mouth over his mustache and goatee. His lips and finger nails were blue. He had what looked to be a loosened tourniquet on his arm and a needle made from an eyedropper still stuck in the vein in his forearm. I understood immediately what I was looking at as a teaspoon, small patch of aluminum foil and matches were laying in his lap. His eyes were wide open and blue. He wasn’t breathing and probably hadn’t been for sometime. He lost his body fluids, and on this hot muggy night it wasn’t something I wanted to keep smelling. All I kept saying to myself was “Holy Shit.”

…I ran into the UPS terminal and tried to find my supervisor. He was opening up the truck bays and he saw me running towards him. He could tell I was flummoxed as I shouted “there’s a dead guy by the dock bay, and he looks like an OD.!” He walked down the steps of the dock to see what I was talking about and he saw him immediately. He looked back at me after looking in the box and said, “that’s one of our semi drivers. I’ll call the police.” He thought the same thing I did. He’d been there awhile. It was going on 5:00am and he dropped the trailer off at 1:30AM. My boss now understood why the other trailer he was to pick up wasn’t. “He’s driving but it ain’t no semi. He’s got a permanent vacay in the land of nod.” My boss told me to go punch in and start unloading trailers. He informed me the police would probably want to talk to me too. I shook my head yes, and went to punch in still numb from what I had just experienced My heart was just a thumping.. …My Life’s Journey continued…