At 4:45, in ’95,
as rain drummed hard on factory tin,
old Eric Tollett stayed inside,
with Leslie near, the storm shut in.
The workers home, the rooms were still,
just thunder stalking overhead.
His brother Donald, age of sixty,
played with Leslie’s boy instead.
But suddenly the office door
swung wide with terror in the child.
“He’s fallen down! He’s on the floor!”
His frightened voice came cracked and wild.
Eric ran—his heartbeat sharp—
into the garage’s shadowed gloom.
There Donald lay without a breath,
like life had fled the choking room.
But Eric too, while kneeling down,
felt iron bands around his chest—
then darkness swallowed all he knew,
and he collapsed beside the rest.
Sixteen years before he bought
this factory built on coal and grime.
Beneath the boards, forgotten deep,
a sealed, abandoned, silent mine.
And in that mine, as years rolled by,
a deadly gas began to creep.
Choke damp rose when pressure dropped,
invading where the walls were weak.
That storm outside had pulled it up,
it seeped unseen into the air—
and in that garage, still and closed,
it turned the space a fatal snare.
Poor Donald died from poisoned breath,
while Eric, saved with seconds spare,
awoke inside a hospital bed—
alive, though death had brushed him there.