As the sun began setting on the horizon, Jacob's day was just beginning. His ‘93 Ford Taurus pulled into the large empty parking lot. The day was done for most of the oversized glass front building. With just a few minutes until the start of his shift he began the walk to the side door. He walks past the security guard at the front desk eating a sandwich and playing solitare, scanned his badge at the metal detector, and headed to the custodial closet at the end of the first floor.

Every night was the same at work, Jacob would grab the bulky cleaning cart from the first floor closet, check the many bottles of elixirs and acids, twist the large rusted faucet to turn on the water supply in the mop closets for the 15 stories above, and then he would ride the open service elevator to the top floor.

The top floor was his favorite place to be, the full length windows that overlooked the sprawling flat fields of corn perfectly framed the masterfully painted sunset as it balanced with the coming night sky. It also was the easiest to clean to be frank. After throwing away the leftover napkins and styrofoam cups that were left from some great meeting of the minds, Jacob quickly dusted the oversized oak table and moved along. He wished he could spend all his time upstairs however there was bigger work waiting to be done.

Jacob ping ponged his way through the other floors. Starting by cleaning up the fire stopping foam that always oozed beyond the training room on 12th floor, then picking up the fragments of clothes that caught in the ceiling tiles of the 10th floor, he filled the laser holes and swept up the dry walldust from the 5th floor, and then it was time for his dinner break.

As he unwrapped his ham and cheese sandwich from the cellophane, another part to his routine began, a layer of uneasiness settled in his stomach alongside his dinner. After his dinnerbreak he would finish 4 more floors of mundane messes that were waiting to be cleaned and then it was time to head down to the underground.

While the 16 floors above ground were always shown in building tours to prospective heroes, the underground was kept there for a reason. Jacob finished the upper floors and then returned his janitor cart to the first floor closet and turned off the rusted water faucet. He then closed the door and opened the adjacent door that was hidden in the wainscoting. He stepped inside the small entrance and grabbed the heavy plastic and metal jumpsuit from the hook on the wall. As he zipped the suit on, he flipped open the small door next to his suit hook to expose the laser thumb scanner. He scanned himself in, put on the heavy glass fish bowl helmet and waited for the next door to open. As it screeched open, Jacob took his last breaths on outside oxygen before turning on the oxygen tank on his suit.

The next door slammed open to reveal the skinny metal stair case that Jacob always hated seeing, in his mind they only lead to one thing, darkness. As he descended the staircase, he reached out to find two cords, he pulled the first one to click on the large industrial lights that clicked on in sequence across the football field length warehouse basement. The second cord was a thin braided wire support system with a carabiner at the end. Jacob clipped himself in and began working.

He slowly walked across the grated catwalk over the large vats of superhero producing sludge to the first large drum and grabbed the wire brushed broom and net that were attached to the lid of every drum. This was the worst part of Jacob’s job. Not cleaning up the mundane messes that anyone could do if they just took a few extra minutes to look around or fixing the breaks that were caused over and over again day after day. It was grabbing the net and broom off the top of a stainless steel drum and fishing around for any remains that the acid didn’t eat of the hero’s that didn’t make the cut and scraping the foam off the sides from the days mutations. While the 16th floor was a place for for the executives to bring in new heroes, the underground is how they disposed of old heroes.