Deep in her dream Daphne was desperately fighting the smell of a bad memory. She woke suddenly from the struggle when someone kicked her and found that the smell was not a memory at all, but was the very real grim black 10 PM now stench of burning tires sweeping through a twisting decayed maze of industrial corridors outside the small room she lay in. Unsure of where and in what sprawling multi-story nightmare building she was and just as unsure of where the blaze was going, Daphne knew she had to run and while running make all the right decisions to escape the fast-moving flames that danced in multiple directions across the oil soaked floors. In those few minutes before the fire engulfed the entire vacant building Daphne clung desperately to the hope that she would survive and then, when she was suddenly free and knew she would live, she continued running until she tripped and collapsed in the shadows just beyond a row of bystanders standing in the parking lot at the nearby McDonalds.

The building, most recently known as Fairhaven Mills, that had once been the New England Cotton Yarn Company and then the Pemaquid Mill, where huge quantities of automobile tire yarn were once produced, where 300,000 junk tires were once stored, where hazardous substances used for a variety of purposes were found stored and then removed by the Environmental Protection Agency, where "big-box" superstores and a casino developer had at one time expressed an interest was gone quickly. The New Bedford firefighters had long ago drawn up detailed plans for fighting fires in each of the city’s many abandoned mills and they did their job with cool thorough professionalism. Daphne had no plan at all. She had no idea where she was and what she had been doing in the building. She sat watching the fire then turned to look up at a man who was leaning over her. When he asked if she was "aw-ight" she nodded yes and reached for the hand he offered.