An Explosion Of Dust and Fear

Where the Euless Police and Courts now stand used to be a hotel called the Western Hills Inn.  It was once a hotspot for the Euless area, back when Euless only had about 1,200 residents.  Heck, even Elvis chose it as the only place he'd stay when he played the Metroplex. 

It was shuttered some time in the late eighties.

Temporarily.

The Boys and I made it our personal playground for a couple of years.  Who are the Boys?  We were a group that all met whilst attending Central Junior High.  The group consisted of:

Myself
Zac
Zac's cousin Will (Yeah, same as me.  We had separate designations, though.  He was Little, I was Big.  Obviously.)
Joe & Josh, twin brothers.

We would get into all kinds of shenanigans back in the day, crawling over every inch of Sotogrande and the surrounding area in an eight mile radius.  We enjoyed joyriding down through Mosier Valley, and going to construction sites to fire roman candles at each other.  Typical hooligan stuff.  Our favorite activity though, was urban exploring, and the Hills fit that bill.  Later, the Flagship Inn in Arlington, but that's a whole different subject.

We'd often play jokes on each other, like one of us running ahead, cutting open one of those glowing necklaces and smearing the luminescent liquid on the walls and pretend to be afraid.  Or making torches and accidentally setting a mattress on fire and trying to burn the whole place down.

It was mostly about exploring, and seeing the neat stuff that got left behind.  We'd find room registrations, newspapers, the little plastic letters for making signs.  There was a big ballroom there too that we'd make small fires on the concrete floor during the winter.

One night, we were exploring as usual.  I think it was like the second or third time we went in, and we were exploring in the "industrial" type area of the hotel.  We all went into an old office, with one doorway and glass windows.  There were two desks in the room and not much else.

Except a fairly large, old fire extinguisher on one side of the room.

I was sifting through the desk between me and the door when I hear behind me a thump, a crash, and an 'Oh shit' followed by a loud hissing.  Being the curious natured person that I am, I turned around to investigate.  And I come face to face with an approaching cloud of dust and old chemicals.

Now, a lot of things can go through your mind at a moment like this:

"Look at all that dust!"
"Huh."
"Wonder what's on T.V. right now..."
"SHITSHITSHITSHIT"

The last one there is what went through mine.  In five seconds, the visibility went from 80% to 0.  All of us feel our way to the door and barrel out into the hall, coughing like crazy.  We all went to the ballroom and built a fire and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to get the dust out of our clothes hair eyes mouth.  The adreneline was pumping, and we were terrified out of our gourds over that minute explosion, but that passed and we realized how fun and awesome it was.

All in all a good night.