 No one ever warns you about how bored you'll be when you retire or how lonely you'll be if you're single at the time. You hear stories about people spending their golden years kicking back and living life to the fullest. No one, however, warns you about the bad food, the strict regulations, the insulting orderlies, or just being ignored by your own damn children. No, they don't warn you about how they'll put you away like an antique quilt after spending years keeping you warm and cozy, just to be forgotten with the rest of the worthless trash. I found it in an elderly people's house, not one of those posh resort style houses where the golf course is in the backyard. No, I found myself at Millwood Green, once a decrepit housing block that provided for accommodation for mine workers. It had been converted into a depressing retirement community. With all the drab appeal of a federal prison, it received its name from the fact that it was built near the local Millwood Green mine, an ancient coal mine that, according to what I've heard, used to generate quite a haul. After long days of work, the coal miners would return home and repeat the next day. Because of this, a mixture of fading paint and accumulated coal dust had permanently darkened the brick walls. The main level, where the equipment room used to be, had been transformed into a leisure room with a sole leisure being a TV that was probably as old as I was and was one of the types with the two prong antennas that required frequent adjusting. Local rooms were lined up along the second level that encircled and oversaw the leisure area. This facility featured dozens of tiny rooms that used to house beads for the workers, which were therefore converted into dwelling quarters for couples and singles. Despite the dismal lodgings, Millwood Green's worst feature is how they lock all of our doors at night. Though one enters or exits any of the rooms at night, the administration claims it's to prevent dementia patients from straying and injuring themselves. But I wasn't believing it. They also kept the rooms at a bone-chilling temperature. I protested about the temperature several times, but was just given extra blankets and informed that it was better for blood flow and built up resistance. To keep the cold at bay, I had to push one of the coarse linens into the vent, but the cold air still blew in and froze the room. One of the two rooms without an old resident was what used to be the admin's office. The entrance was electronically locked and the windows were blacked out. They said it went to the post-mortem preparation area for people who died on the premises. The second vacant area was on the leisure floor and the only indication of what was inside was a large fluorescent danger sign. This one appeared to be a holding area for all of the mine's extra chemicals that had yet to be disposed of, and to which we might easily become ill if exposed. I've never seen anyone enter or exit, but I was well aware that constructing a retirement facility without properly eliminating those dangerous chemicals was a major violation. About a month into my stay, I began to hear strange noises at night. It was approximately midnight when I was startled awake by a repetitive clicking outside my door. I couldn't see since the doors had no windows. I just strained my ears as much as I could. It sounded like someone tapping on the floor, but it wasn't footsteps since it was too light. As I got closer, I heard it going further away. It abruptly came to a halt, and I believe I heard one of the other residents' doors open. I spent the next morning going around to see if anybody else had heard anything unusual. But in typical senior fashion, they were out by 8pm. One of the orderlies informed me that it was either one of them patrolling the walkways or some type of electrical plumbing noise that shook the walls. It wasn't until I heard it the second time a month later that I recognized something strange. In the morning I found out one of the residents across from me had died during the night. The personnel wheeled a stretcher into the mortuary area the next morning when we were permitted out of our rooms. A white sheet was gently put over them. I didn't know the individual, and heart failure or natural causes were quite frequent among the elderly, but it was nonetheless unusual to me. The third month was the same as the previous two, one night of strange clicks followed by another visit to the mortuary the next morning. The empty rooms were quickly reoccupied by more miserable elderly like me, since there appeared to be quite a waitlist for youngsters ready to isolate their parents and grandparents behind these walls. I ultimately informed the house psychiatrist about my concerns, and he told me I shouldn't be up so late, citing sleep deprivation, and a wandering bored mind as the most likely cause of my paranoia. He inquired as to what in my room made me feel uneasy prior to the sounds. When I informed him about the temperature and how I'd block the vent, he reprimanded me for doing things like that in a place where I was meant to feel at peace. He returned me to my room with an orderly who pulled the blanket from the vent, promising to alter the temperature so I wouldn't have to. He kept his word, but not before putting a metal grate over the vent to keep me from tinkering with it anymore. This seemed strange to me, and I understand the dangers of blocking the airflow system, but was it essential to build a countermeasure to stop me? I was glad for the following several weeks of unbroken sleep, and I just begun to forget about the strange noises until the fourth month. I hadn't heard the unusual noises the night before, but the covered stretcher was being moved from a room almost precisely one month after the last death. This time the community coordinator mentioned cancer, but I'd previously spoken with a woman who lived in that room, and she'd never mentioned cancer to me. In fact, she was fit as a fiddle. I decided to stay up late in the hopes of learning more about what was going on. I'd grabbed instant coffee packs from the cafeteria and napped for the majority of the day. When night fell, I poured the strongest cup of coffee I'd ever made and gazed at the clock at 8 p.m. A few minutes later, I was fast asleep. I was perplexed as to how I'd fallen asleep so quickly. I mean, I was getting on in years, but this seemed more like blacking out than dozing off. That's when it dawned on me. I would wake when the vent was blocked, but when they unblocked it, I fell instantly to sleep. They must be pouring some type of chemical through the vents to keep us sleeping, and putting that old blanket into the wall shielded my chamber for a time from exposure. That's why I was always the only one awake, to hear the strange clicking noises. And that's why they wanted to unblock it. The next morning, I struggled to conceal my growing anxiety and mistrust. I knew I wouldn't be able to inform any of the workers, and I doubted the other residents would believe me. All I could do was sneak about Millwood Green and discover more about what was actually going on. I concluded that hearing through my door wasn't going to be enough. I needed to find a way to leave my room at night. Millwood Green had an excellent workshop, despite its depressing lack of atmosphere. After a few days of putting my meager skills to use, I'd fashioned the ideal tiny blocking plate. All I had to do now was connect it to my door and it would block the locking bolt. I only hoped there were no sensors on the doors. As we walked into our rooms, the orderlies checked off our names on their resident roster. I sat on my bed after slapping the metal attachment I put over the lock without being detected. The punishing hum of the lock engagement continued for several seconds before dying away. I listened as the staff's footsteps faded down the end of the corridor. It seemed the locks, after all, didn't have sensors. I waited about an hour before taking my backpack and quietly opening my door, nervous that I'd set off some sort of motion detector, which I didn't. I chuckled and reminded myself that I was at Millwood Green, not a guarded federal institution. To avoid alerting a patrolling orderly, I took care to shut the door to my room. It was strange seeing the pathways for the first time at night. I listened for a few minutes and heard nothing. No employee conversation, no patrolling footfall. It was definitely quiet. I took the little flashlight from my backpack and muscled it slightly with my fingers before turning it on. I prowled the overlook, shining the light down into the dimly lit leisure area and quickly concluded that no employees were present. I set up camp behind the janitor's floor waxer and a small nook. I didn't notice the hazardous storage room was unchained and its doors were wide open, until after approximately a few minutes of looking. This was the first time I'd ever seen those doors open, and I was curious as to why they were open in the middle of the night. I toyed with the idea of staying still and observing, but my curiosity got the better of me. I crept across the leisure area, peering into the dim light of the restricted area. The darkness was oppressive and I could smell mildew and damp filth right away. My flashlight's beam barely lighted a small area of the room at a time and it didn't go very far in. As I passed the doorway, I took a quick look around. The tiling terminated at the leisure area and the room's floor was made up of squeaky old wooden panels. The walls and ceiling were made of the same weathered pallets and beams that appeared to be about to collapse at any moment. The foul odor grew stronger and shifted from smelling like old dirt to smelling like rot. I recognized it was a mine shaft when the wooden panels were replaced by dirt and jagged rock formations a few meters in. There was a real mine shaft linked to the damn structure. Given the location of the lovely Millwood Green retirement home, I suppose a mine was under the building somewhere, but that didn't explain why the doors were only open at night, though. As a terrible mixture of shrieks resonated from farther below, I nearly bit off my tongue. I dashed back up the stairs and came to a halt simply because I noticed the door to my room was wide open. I vividly recall locking the door as I left. A tiny red light shone through the doorway of my chamber, a light I'd never seen before and the only thing that could pierce the darkness. I moved my head around to see whether anyone was in there, but I was quickly distracted by skittering footsteps approaching from behind the ajar doors. Recognizing that my ascent up the stairs would most certainly alert whatever it was that was clearly rising towards here, I chose to remain in my initial, much closer lookout location behind the floor waxer. I put out my lights and put my hand over my mouth. I could only see the shape of the creature that emerged from the gap across from me, but I could tell it was low to the earth. Before turning its concentration towards the red light and heading to the stairs, it undulated around the room with cacophonous wheezing gasps, like obscene hissing murmurs. As I watched it slink inside my room, the familiar tapping on the scaffolding cut at my nerves. It only took a few seconds until it let forth the same gut-wrenching screams it had from whatever earthen tomb it had called home, only louder and angrier. The room was lit up by an unexpected glare of sirens accompanied by dizzying red strobe lights. The doors to the staff quarters burst open with a loud buzzer and approximately a dozen highly armed guys poured into the room, their rifles aimed at my room. The pandemonium that ensued was a scarcely audible cacophony of gunshots, guttural roars, and what I now sadly identify as shredding skin, as well as whaling. It was over in a flash after the struggle, which ended with the furious creature rushing back down into the mine, its unearthly wails faded into the darkness. I sat silently for a few minutes. I stepped out of my corner and listened, but all I heard was the sound of dripping. I dashed towards the reception desk and threw the front doors into the darkness. I'd just been on the road for five minutes when I heard helicopters, a whole fleet of them. Just as a column of blacked out SUVs barreled down the road towards Millwood Green Retirement Home, I retreated into the woods. My stroll through the woods was pleasant and I was picked up by my grandson at a petrol station a few miles from the retirement home. I told him I was booted out of there for striking and orderly, which he accepted without hesitation. He arrived about an hour after I'd run away. As we drove towards his house, I turned on the radio in his car and it was all over the news. Fire crews are now on the scene and we're hearing reports that there were no survivors after the retirement complex burnt down just moments ago.