The Soul of 425

By Jeffrey Vander Muss

A middle-aged Midwestern male working and living in the heart of Los Angeles finds himself in troubled times after losing his job due to a racist boss. Now working a few blocks away for half the income, he also finds himself face-to-face with a spirit from the past. Together they find themselves overcoming their own demons from their own pasts and helping each other face them. A friendship develops, and one life changes forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524509620

Book preview

THE SOUL

of 425

Jeffrey Vander Muss

Copyright © 2016 by Jeffrey Vander Muss.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-0963-7

                eBook            978-1-5245-0962-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/15/2016

Xlibris

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Contents

How I Ended Up Here

Day 1 at 425

Briefing # 1

Face-To-Face

Starting to Communicate

Becoming Friends

Taking Baby Steps

Briefing # 2

Drawing a Map

The Dream

Understanding the Dream

Standing on the Corner

Skip a Rope

A Fallen Home Life or Briefing # 3

Daddy's Story

Understanding the Soul

The Others

The Olive Way

Afraid of the Light or Briefing # 4

The Light of the Dance

Finding the White Bearded Man

Free the Pain

It's a Cruel World

The Small Brown Shed

Thanking Daniel

Walking Angels and Sleeping Demons

Lights Out

Understanding My Own Soul

Briefing # 5/Reading Souls

Souls Will Change You

In Your Dreams

Letting It All Out

Meeting the Parents

Death of a Wiseman

Final Days

Passing on Grandmother's Message

Weeks of Silence

Cindy's Return

Cindy's Life Part 1

Cindy's Life Part 2

Magical Days

Saying Good Bye

Broken Hearted

Final Words

Postlogue

How I Ended Up Here

My name is Jeffrey Vander Muss. I am a 45 year old white male from Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have been living here in Los Angeles, California for four years now after running away from divorce and several other personal problems I had back home.

Now I am working as a security guard at a vacant building on the corner of Hope Street and 11th Street downtown Los Angeles.

I work the night shift starting at midnight until 8:00 in the morning with nobody else in the building except myself. Well, at least I thought I was the only one in the building.

Before I get into that, let me tell you how I ended up here in the first place for the last 4 years. I was working at a plaza on 7th Street downtown Los Angeles. It was 3 buildings in one, part Mall, part Office Tower and part Hotel. And in those four years I never had a problem. I was the supervisor of security and I did a great job as the supervisor.

That all changed when a new security director was posted at the site. The man's name is not even worth mentioning, however he is a black male. My best description of him would be a fat, lazy, selfish, racist son of a bitch.

Now, I don't hate black people at all. In fact, a good friend of mine is the one who is responsible for me having that job. Oh, he's a black male also, heavy set guy but he is a teddy bear. He's a great father and husband who would bend over backwards for anybody. His name is Sam.

It only took me one day to find out that our new director is a racist, son of a bitch because another white male just like me walked out and never returned because he had a history with the racist son of a bitch.

The white male's name was Phil. And Phil was whiter than I am and he warned me of the new Director. But at that time, I didn't listen to him because it all started out okay with the new Director.

It didn't take no more than 2 months that I started getting bad vibes from the Director. He was giving me write-ups right and left over the smallest details. For example, the director gave me a write-up for misspelling Medical on a slip and fall report I had to file as normal procedures.

I made several complaints to the office but the so-called write-ups keep coming but yet they never made it to the main office so I faxed one over and started making copies of all the write-ups.

The Director even gave me a write-up for calling in and telling him that I will be an hour late despite the fact that he never gives my relief write-ups for being late day after day.

In fact my relief never came into work one night. That is a no show but the Director never gave him a write-up, instead he basically bitch slap me for complaining.

Well, this was going on for over a year and the poor son of a bitch tried everything to get me fired but each time he tried, he failed.

As luck for me would change in the beginning of July 2013. A new management took over the site.

This was perfect for the son of a bitch because the new management asked him who they should get rid of and of course, guess whose name came up. Yup. The racist son of a bitch got his way.

I have witnesses and plenty of proofs that everything he filed against me was false and made up.

However, I give him credit for finding the little details to file fake reports.

He did such a good job at that. Even the main office fell for his little tricky games.

On July 12th 2013, it was a Friday when I was called to the main office and to no surprise they told me that I am not to report to work at the Plaza. I have been terminated.

That's right, the fat, lazy, selfish racist son of a bitch got his way. But I'm one of those people who believes in fate or even Karma and he will get what he deserves sooner or later.

I was making $14.25 an hour and the office line me up with a job for $10.00 an hour. And that is a huge cut when you have bills to pay.

I decided to take the job because I can't afford to wait around until something better comes along.

So that's how I ended up at 425 West 11th Street and that changed everything for me.

Life became more than a walk in the park and I had a story to tell.

Every day I wrote about my events on a scrap piece of paper not knowing how big this would change my life. This is the story of the Soul of 425.

PICTURE OF BUILDING

Day 1 at 425

Tuesday, the 16th of July 2013. I am to report to 425 West 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles at 8:00 p.m. for training.

Not ever seeing the place before, I decided to leave home a little early so I could find the place and scope it out before I report to the post.

At 7:25 p.m., I found 425 West 11th Street and I was hit hard with sadness. I found it to be an old building from the outside that looked run-down and forgotten about.

I did not feel like I belonged here and I was overwhelmed by the fact that I will miss everybody from the other post.

I thought of a dear friend of mine who worked in a health store at the Plaza and knew I would not see her here.

I want to be able to look her in the eyes and enjoy her smile that always cheered me up in the worst of the days.

Her name, I can't really say but I called her Skippy. And it was really bothering me knowing I don't have Skippy to cheer me up as I am standing outside an old building fighting my tears.

I didn't fight hard enough because the tears just kept falling not only for Skippy but all the friends I have made at the other post.

This didn't seem fair and my heart at this point was crushed only because of a man who hated white people found a way to get his way that put me here.

But I had to be a man and wipe the tears from my eyes and just swallow the pain because it was already 7:55 p.m. and I needed to report for duty in 5 minutes.

I tried to be positive about this but negativity was kicking me in the ass.

By the time 8:00 p.m. came around, I was at the front door trying to regroup when I saw a very nice looking woman who had dark skin but not very dark came to the door asking me if I needed any assistance.

I told the woman that I was to report here for training at 8:00 p.m. until midnight.

The woman seemed surprised and she had good reasons. Apparently the office never notified her of my arrival or any training.

Like most people in this story, I am not going to reveal her real name. Instead, I will call her Angel.

Angel just took my papers to make sure I was supposed to be here then gave me a tour of the place.

I'm not going to try to describe this place in detail, instead I'm going to show you how it looks by adding pictures to this book, saving myself a lot of time and whoever reads this.

However, I will tell you that this place is a 5-story empty building that just adds to my depression.

Each floor looks the same except the 5th floor has 2 rooms that may have been offices or something at that time.

There is no running water and the only floors with electricity are the 5th floor and, of course, the first floor where we sit around most of the time.

Every hour we had to run up each floor and hit a detex on each side of each floor and 5 detexes outside around the building.

There was no bathroom but only a porta potty on the 1st floor near the gates going out to Hope Street.

As I followed Angel while she was showing me where all the detexes where, I could not stop thinking about how depressing this is.

Not only have I lost all my friends at the other post but when Angel leaves here at midnight, then I will be the only person in this whole building. And again, it was just adding more to my depression.

It only took me and Angel 30 minutes to complete my training and now we had 3 and a half hours to talk about anything.

Angel didn't really talk too much because she spent most of the time talking on her cell phone while I just sat there hoping an earthquake will come and take this building down with me in it.

So I just sat there basically by myself until 9:00 p.m. when I decided that I was going to ask Angel if I can do the detex on my own. Of course, Angel didn't mind me doing it.

So I walked up to the roof and started to hit the detexes. On my way down, I was thinking that this place would make a good movie setting for a good horror movie or a ghost movie.

I spotted myself thinking about it that the hairs on the back of neck started standing up.

By the time I was done with the detexes, I sat down in the only area of the building that showed some kind of life.

I was impressed that it was occupied by a radio and a microwave oven. Normally, a post will not allow anything such as a radio or use of a cell phone but nobody comes in this empty building especially at night.

While Angel was talking on her cell phone, I was reading a paper on this old building which was built in 1916.

I started to walk around a little bit.

I was in the back area by a small staircase that went up to an electric room that appeared to be a ramp of some sort.

There is a door that goes outside on the east side that goes out into an alley. When I walked by it, the wind of my movement or from outside must have caused it to open about 4 inches. I tried to close it but the latch was missing and it would not close. But there is a gate bolted to the outside so nobody could get in.

I find this funny because I came to the understanding of putting logic in everything that happens even if there is no logic at all just like everybody.

Our brains try to come up with some sort of logical explanation for things that happen in our lives that should not happen or have any reason to happen.

When midnight came along, Angel's daughter picked her up and I was now let alone in a very depressing building.

I was a little upset that the office didn't give me much detail about this place because I was going to be here for 12 hours with no food or even water.

It was about 2:30 a.m. when I became very hungry and thirsty. I bent the rules by walking to the 7-11 store. I sat down to drink my water and eat some chips.

As I sat there, I had a weird feeling that somebody was watching me. I turned around but I was still alone. I had that same feeling a few times after that for the rest of the night but never really paid any attention to it because I always get that feeling. But it was more noticeable than normal. I guess it's all because I am alone and pretty upset about everything. I played it off as my mind was just playing games with me not to mention I was also extremely bored.

Briefing # 1

Every now and then, I am going to write down a briefing about what is going on because I am writing this as time goes on.

I did not start writing this until things started happening on a regular basis. The first part of this story may seem a little pointless but there were so much little details that should have forewarned me about the upcoming events.

I'm talking about the door opening 4 inches and the feeling of somebody watching me.

I may be alone in an empty building but every now and then, I will get a visit from the field inspector. To me, it's a break from the boredom but at the old post, it was an annoyance because over there I was always in the middle of doing something.

I even had