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Location DB > Canada > Ontario > Toronto > Centennial College - Warden Woods Campus > Busted at Centennial

Story Info
Sun, Mar 27th, 2005
posted by Guy With Hat
Busted at Centennial

After the March UE meet, 12 of us simultaneously decided to go explore the exact same location. You can probably guess where that location is, based on where this story is located! For those who were there, I probably got who said what and when a bit mixed up, but oh well.

We all pile into cars/pickups/motorcycle, don our respective FRSes for inter-vehicle communications and we speed off toward the abandoned Centennial College. In the car with me, Conundrum and Avatar-X in the front seat, and Shiroi and I are crammed into the tiny back seat with our knees crammed into our chins. To say those seats were small would be an understatement. Av turns around, vaguely, to ask us whether any of us knew where it was.

"I do! It's on Warden." I chime in.

"Yeah, but at what street?" says Av.

"..." I say. I have no idea where on Warden it is, only that it's near the subway station. Don't ask me for directions, guys, I only think I know where I'm going.

But the folks in the other car know the way. We follow them and eventually get there. We see the building, and gasp! It's been entirely gutted, the walls and ducts and pretty much everything that was once inside was thrown through a wall and onto the ground. Shiroi described the building as looking as if it was "vomiting". That was pretty accurate. But seeing as the main obvious entrances are on the street, and in plain view, in plain daylight, both vehicles decide to do a little trip around the block to see if we can attack this place from behind. rz350 and Lost Flock were taking up the rear... uh... on rz's motorcycle, and out of FRS range.

We make a full turn around the gigantic block and realize that there's no easy way to actually get to Centennial. And, to make things even more complicated, we come back to the front of the site once again and see that right outside, there's a fat guard wearing a fluorescent orange/yellow jacket. He's sitting prone on a lawn chair, smoking a huge-ass cigar. We park in a little lot opposite him and the inhabitants of both cars just stare at each other, incredulously.

"Was the guard there before?" asks Conundrum. Talk from the other car is unintelligable. The consensus, though, seems to be "I don't think so."

Not letting a single cigar-smoking guard get in our way, we figure we're safe getting to the building from behind. We sneak in through the lot of another demolished site, and navigate through a gigantic puddle which we were sure we would sink into and never be seen nor heard from again. We negotiate the various fences, playing a game of "find the hole", until half of us are crouching down on the Centennial lot. This is about the time the FRS buzzes we get a transmission from rz and Flock, who have arrived on the opposite side of the road, and we can barely see them from across the field.

IMG_4020.JPG

We mention the guard, they confirm that he's still out front, sitting around and smoking, so we book it for the nearest entrance. Once inside, the rest of our big group comes bouncing in. Now there's 10 of us inside this place and we're pretty loud.

So we start getting shutter happy, and Boffo and I disappear into a side room to take some long exposure shots. By the time we come back out, though, everyone has vanished. I'm not kidding, we weren't in there for long, and everyone else just POOFED.

After a bit of wondering what the heck just happened, rz and Flock arrive. After trying to stay quiet for a few minutes, every little footstep seemed too loud.

"whshehshtheh..." I whispered to Flock, far too softly for any human ear.

"What???"

"we have to be quiet!" I whispered back.

So again, I start taking pictures, taking far too much time and getting separated from the rest of the group. The next time I look up, every single one of us has vanished. rz, Flock and Boffo are nowhere to be seen or heard. I'm completely alone. And, of course, this is the perfect time to be caught.

IMG_4036.JPG

I'm setting my tripod up for another shot, when suddenly I hear this distant voice shouting, in a rather commanding way, "Can I help you?"

I look up, in shock. Standing at the very end of this long corridor is the fat guard with his fluorescent jacket. He's looking straight at me, and of course I have to give some sort of excuse for being in this demolished school.

"I'm taking some photos, is that okay?" I say, tentatively. The man doesn't respond. He just sort of looks at the ground, and keeps stepping toward me, as slowly as possible. I'm thinking, man, do I run, or do I try to talk my way out of this?

"Is that okay?" I asked again. My mind is racing, I'm sweating, and trying to formulate some sort of story as to why I'd be here. But he doesn't answer. He just keeps walking toward me. Jeez, he's slow, I wish he'd just get here already.

"Is... that... okay?" I ask, one last time, really weakly.

He's almost near me. I think I've got a story prepared. But then, of course, luck comes around and reams me in the ass.

See, I'm standing right next to this stairwell, and just as I'm about to present a vaguely well-crafted story, who comes bounding down the stairs but Shiroi, who starts whispering my name really loudly, trying to get my attention.

Okay, that complicates things, I thought, and despite my best efforts to send him mental rays, telling him to turn around, he walks right into view of the guard. The guard shouts "Hey!" and Shiroi spins on his heels and proverbially pisses his pants.

And then, if things couldn't get any more complicated than that, suddenly I hear EVERYONE coming down the stairs, talking and making sounds like elephants square-dancing. My heart is racing, and once again I'm trying my best to figure out a way to explain this.

Right after Shiroi comes Flock, who sees the guard and executes an impeccable U-turn and books it back up the stairs. I think I spot Vince and a few other people, who clearly get the message and run up the stairs, which sounds less like elephants square-dancing and more like elephants break-dancing. But eventually it's just Shiroi and I. Shiroi decides to do the talking.

"Oh, um, we're here doing a school project." he fumbles. He's just as nervous as I am.

"Oh yeah?" asks the guard, testily. "What school you go to?"

Shiroi mentions his own school, in his far-off town I know nothing about. I decide to just play along, assuming the guard knows nothing of said school and we could get away with any lie.

"Oh, okay. What grade you in?" asks the guard.

"Grade 12." answers Shiroi.

"Who's the foreman?" he asks. What? Who's the foreman? What, in our photography group? We need a foreman? Is this a quiz?

"We don't know..." answers Shiroi, for the both of us.

"Do you have, uh, a letter, from the foreman, to be here?"

"Uh, no..." answers Shiroi.

"Then I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you two to leave."

"Oh, alright, sorry." I chime in. I'm glad he's not deciding to press charges or anything, or cuff us, or otherwise be an asshole. I don't want to give the guy grief for doing his job. He tells us it's his third day, and if his supervisors came to check on him and found him just sitting around it would be the end of his career as a security guard.

He starts talking to us about his job, who he knows, his friend in the Dominican Republic and the stuff that his friend does, and we start walking. A noise makes me turn my head though, since it's Boffo and rz coming over from across the room.

I'm a bit less worried this time. The guard looks up at them, and just sort of stares, so I decide to get them involved in our story.

"Hey!" I call, being all friendly-like. "We gotta get out of here, guys."

The guard looks at us and says, "How many of you guys are here?"

"Oh, there's a few of us somewhere else." I say, since obviously he heard them making all that racket in the stairway. Plus, I didn't want to fuck THEM up by saying that we were alone. Though I probably shouldn't have assumed the guard heard them, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

"A few? Like..." he prompted.

"Four." said Shiroi, definitively. There was twice that number, but it worked.

So the guard starts walking us out, excruciatingly slowly. He starts talking to us about school violence, and crime, and satanism, and his friend, and a bunch of other stuff at random. I ask him, during a lull, if it's okay if we take pictures on our way out. He says he has no problem with that, so I start shooting, with an aim to get him in at least one of my photos, which I succeeded in.

IMG_4037.JPG

On our way out, Boffo gets a nice call from Av, with him asking, "So, did you guys get caught?"

Boffo does his best to make it sound like an ordinary conversation. "Yes." he answers, and tells them that the guard knows they're there (sorry guys) and to that they prompty and unanimously decided that now would be a good time to leave.

On our way out the door, I think of what would happen if he catches the rest of the guys on their way out. "Hey," I say, "If you see the rest of our friends, could you tell them where we are?" I say, to which the guard agrees.

Boffo says, "I think they're already gone."

I add, mockingly, "They probably got scared!"

And so we were led outside, the guard unlocked the gate for us, and we were free. We got a lot of great photos out of it too.

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