You are a flawless lawyer. Follow this closing checklist to legally execute a living building. [2/2]
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< PHASE III - ON-SITE INSPECTION >
Time: 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM, during Closing Date
Location: 712 Oakridge Avenue
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STEP 10: PREPARATION FOR SITE VISIT
Once all the revocation operations from Entry 1 through Entry 21 have been completed, you will have successfully erased every transaction in the title chain dating back from 2019 to 1988. Now, only two major unresolved issues remain on the timeline: the 1987 acquisition by Alcove Properties and the initial registration in 1923. These two transactions involve extremely complex independent procedures (namely, Step 14 and Step 15) and can only be initiated after you have personally completed an on-site inspection.
The on-site inspection is by no means a mere formality, but a legally mandatory step that cannot be bypassed. According to regulations governing involuntary title cancellations, the complete cancellation of any title chain must be accompanied by a contemporaneous inspection report confirming the current physical condition of the subject property. In routine cases, this is merely a formality. But in this case, the most critical event in the entire closing process.
Before setting out for 712 Oakridge Avenue, please be sure to verify the following:
- A blank inspection report form (i.e., Template A from the materials package). Be sure to count the pages yourself. The form must consist of exactly four pages, no more and no less. If there are more than four pages, immediately remove and destroy the extra pages, and under no circumstances are you allowed to watch closely on them.
- The designated fountain pen.
- The expired notary seal engraved with the name “E. WHITMORE”. Keep it close to your body in your coat pocket; under no circumstances should you put it in your briefcase. Throughout your entire journey deep into the building, this seal must remain in direct contact with your body. Inside the building, its function is not notarization at all, but rather to verify your identity. The building recognizes this seal. When Elena broke in there in 1994, she had it with her. In terms of the logic the building understands, this seal is equivalent to an invisible letter of introduction.
- A camera or a cell phone with video function to record the conditions inside.
Your departure time must be strictly scheduled between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm. This time window is crucial. Only during this half-hour, which aligns with twilight outside, will the lighting conditions inside the building stabilize. Once you miss this window, the light inside will begin to distort, the “distortion” referred to here is by no means a physical malfunction like a flickering light bulb. Rather the light itself will begin to reveal things that do not actually exist in the room.
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STEP 11: ENTERING 712 OAKRIDGE AVENUE
Upon arriving at the designated address, you’ll see a single-story commercial building whose exterior matches the original 1923 blueprints down to the last detail: a gray facade, a flat roof, and a floor area of approximately 800 square feet. All the windows have been completely sealed shut, not just hastily boarded up. Rough bricks have been forcefully driven through the window frames from the inside, leaving only faint rectangular outlines where glass should have been set.
The main entrance is a gray-painted industrial steel door, neither a keyhole, nor is any handle visible. Walk up to the door and wait quietly, after about 10 to 30 seconds, you’ll hear an extremely faint metallic click, followed immediately by the door automatically swinging inward about six inches. Reach out and gently push the door open. Under no circumstances should you kick the door or ram it with your shoulder. In this eerie realm, physical contact is a language in itself. Placing your hand gently on the door conveys a “request to enter”, whereas kicking the door is a forceful “demand”. Please note that the building has an extremely low tolerance for “demands”.
The moment you step over the threshold, a fleeting warmth will creep up from your ankles and instantly spread throughout your body. This signifies that the building has officially registered your intrusion. From this moment on, you must not speak under any circumstances. Do not greet the air, or produce any vocal vibrations whatsoever. Within the depths of this building, silence is your first and most impenetrable line of defense. The reason is simple: the building treats human speech as an irrefutable documentary record. Any words spoken within its confines will, according to its logic, automatically be transformed into formal statements on record. Such as an offhand murmur might be forcibly twisted into court testimony, a casual question could very well be deemed a legal inquiry creating an obligation to respond. And once the building decides to “respond”, it will certainly not use human language.
Once you step inside, the door will automatically close behind you.
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STEP 12: INTERIOR NAVIGATION & DOCUMENTATION
Upon entering, you’ll find yourself in an open, single space. The physical dimensions here simply don’t match the building’s exterior volume as observed from the outside. The ceiling is absurdly high, and the distance to the opposite wall far exceeds what an 800-square-foot space could possibly accommodate. Do not panic, as every previous inspection report accurately documents this exact anomaly. This represents the true nature of the building: the interior is always larger than the exterior. It has been this way since around 1990, and continues to expand at a visible rate every year. The light inside has no discernible source. Also there are no light fixtures and no windows. Yet the illumination is surprisingly even and warm, with a faint golden hue, as if the afternoon sun were filtering through a thin, nonexistent sheer curtain. Do not try to locate the light source. The light is not projected from any specific point at all, but as an intrinsic property of the air within the building, just as temperature is a property of air. In other words, this building is its own sky.
About the Staircases:
You will see two staircases. One spirals upward along the north wall, while the other runs straight down to the basement along the south wall. Neither of these staircases appeared on the original 1923 blueprints. Both by no means the product of human hands, but rather thoroughly organic structures. The building has “grown” them on its own over the long years, just as it once grew bricks from within to seal up the windows.
You must absolutely never step onto either staircase.
The upward staircase leads to more unknown floors. This building has clung to existence for 39 years, and as a result, it has also spawned 39 twisted floors above ground level. Each year corresponds to one floor, and each floor is a spatial imprint of the events the building experienced that year, a terrifying image that is extremely compressed, distorted, and completely at odds with Euclidean geometry. According to past reports, while the first few floors are nauseatingly dizzying, they are still barely passable. However, once one steps beyond the fourth floor, spatial coherence collapses entirely, and any form of navigation becomes impossible. To date, no one who has set foot above the fourth floor has been able to make their way back down on their own feet.
The staircase leading downward opens onto a single, secret level buried deep underground. This is not an ordinary basement or a structural foundation. It acts as a lightless abyss where the building specifically hoards its "acquisitions". Jonathan Hadwell, the third attorney to take on this case in 2016, is currently imprisoned in that underground level. Nine years ago, he entered this building and has never emerged. His disappearance was officially reported long ago and has since been filed as an unsolved missing persons case. Remember, he is not dead. The building is forcibly sustaining his vital signs through some eerie means beyond human comprehension. As for the specific mechanics of these methods, they have nothing to do with your mission. All you need to know is this: the only way to free him is to complete the closing procedure you have before you. Once the building is reduced to ashes, that underground level will crumble, and Jonathan Hadwell will naturally be set free. Any foolish attempt to rush down and rescue him directly is doomed to fail and will inevitably bring the entire procedure down with it.
Stay strictly on the ground floor. Execute your inspection by adhering rigidly to the following:
- Starting from the main entrance, walk clockwise along the interior perimeter. Photograph every single wall one by one. Four walls require exactly four photographs. Never take pictures of the stairs, the ceiling, or the floor.
- While you are still inside the building, you are forbidden from reviewing the photos you’ve just taken on your camera or phone screen. There is a high probability that the screen will capture and display terrifying entities that are completely invisible to the naked eye. These entities are real, but they exist within a spectrum of light that falls outside the range of human vision. Seeing them on a screen while still inside the building triggers a severe cognitive conflict within your mind, a conflict the building specializes in exploiting. Therefore, you may only view the photos after you have completely left the building.
- As you patrol along the perimeter, you will inevitably pass a metal plaque mounted on the eastern interior wall, roughly at eye level. About a brushed stainless steel plate measuring approximately 20 × 10 centimeters, firmly secured to the wall with four screws, and engraved with a single sentence as the inscription.
About the Plaque:
For everyone who steps into the building, the words engraved on that plaque mean something entirely different. It is by no means a threat or a warning, but a heart-wrenching fact. Perhaps the ultimate truth about your life, one so overwhelming it takes your breath away. Perhaps the scar you have spent years or even decades striving with all your might to avoid facing. The legal profession knows full well that an emotional breakdown inevitably leads to fatal procedural errors. A trembling hand will inevitably sign a name out of alignment, to a confused mind will surely mix up dates, fill in the wrong fields, or even misread legal provisions. Even the slightest error or omission is enough to render your inspection report completely worthless. Once the inspection report is invalidated, the entire chain of the closing process will break; once that chain breaks, all the revocation procedures you’ve painstakingly completed today will be nullified in an instant.
At this very moment, look directly at that inscription and face what you must face. You will be prepared enough for this moment, and that is another one of the reasons you are chosen for.
Finally, put down your camera, take out the inspection report form (Template A), and calmly fill in every required field.
Be sure to sign only on the signature line where Elena has already marked a small “x” in pencil. As you examine this form inside the building, you will most likely discover that several extra signature lines have mysteriously appeared on the page. These additional lines did not exist at all when you were in your office. They were forcibly added by the building to trap you. If your pen tip touches any line not marked by Elena, you will immediately be bound by terms you cannot even see. Those clauses are written in invisible ink, and the paper on which they are inscribed is, in legal terms, no longer a simple survey report.
After filling out the report, turn and walk towards the main entrance. The building will open the door to let you leave. For you have already given it what it has longed for: an official, indisputable record of its current physical state. According to its own twisted logic, the building also yearns to be registered by the world one last time before it crumbles to dust. It longs for a cold, impersonal record to prove, “This thing once stood here. Someone witnessed it with their own eyes then wrote it into history.”
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< PHASE IV - THE 1987 TRANSACTION >
Time: 7:00 PM to 11:59 PM, during Closing Date
Location: Law firm office
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STEP 13: RETURN & ASSESSMENT
Upon returning to your office, lock the door securely. Sit down at your desk, place the completed survey report into the metal sealed box on top of other documents, and then close the lid.
You currently have about 5 hours of work left. only two transactions remain to be reversed: the 1987 Alcove Properties acquisition (Entry 22) and the 1923 original registration (Entry 23).
Before proceeding, you could take a moment to look around your office. The line drawings that have been hanging on the walls since Step 6 will now seem strikingly conspicuous. The lines are not only deep and distinct, but they also project a strong sense of three-dimensionality in an eerie way that plaster cracks could never achieve. If you stare at them for just a few seconds, you’ll tangibly sense the terrifying depth extending from within the walls. Corridors crisscross, doorways yawn wide open. The interior layout of 712 Oakridge Avenue is gradually seeping into the four walls of your office, like a blueprint tattooed firmly onto your skin. At this stage, you have already severed 21 of the 23 links with your own hands. That building is mustering every last ounce of its remaining strength to cling desperately to the final two links. Its spatial presence is spreading frantically to any location associated with the revocation procedure, and your office is the central stronghold of this procedure. During the upcoming Steps 14 and 15, this spatial overlap will only intensify.
While there’s still a window of opportunity, grab a bite to eat, hydrate, and carefully read Step 14. Once Step 14 is officially activated, you’ll be completely pinned to the office chair.
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STEP 14: REVOCATION OF THE 1987 TRANSACTION & WAITING PROTOCOL
[When you initially receive the checklist, this step remains blank. The text only becomes visible after you successfully complete Step 12.]
The 1987 transaction is the root of all evil. It was at that very moment that this building purchased itself through a shell company named Alcove Properties Ltd., thereby becoming, in legal terms, a completely self-owned, aberrant structure. The legality of all subsequent transactions in the chain of title rests entirely on this transaction. Revoking it would be tantamount to directly dismantling the very foundation of the building’s legal existence. The real difficulty lies in the fact that revoking any transaction requires the joint signatures of both the buyer and seller on the legal documents. The seller in the 1987 transaction was a natural person who had long since passed away. Elena had quietly completed the revocation procedures regarding his share years ago through complex probate proceedings. The buyer, however, was Alcove Properties Ltd., whose authorized signatory was the building itself.
This company is merely a legal shell fabricated out of thin air by the building to hold its own title. The only entity qualified to sign on its behalf is the unnameable entity it serves.
To bring all this to an end, the building must personally sign its own death warrant.
Take out Template B from the materials package and begin drafting the revocation document for Entry 22. This document must be completed entirely by hand. Different from the standard format used previously, Template B contains numerous additional citation clauses, as well as a specific certification clause that took Elena a full 17 years to draft. Every word in this template has been scrutinized with chilling, extreme care. Do not alter any wording on Template B, not even a single punctuation mark. Copy the printed text word for word, strictly adhering to the original, and fill in the corresponding information only in the designated blank spaces.
Then fill in all fields, leaving only the signature line labeled “Transferor/Seller” blank.
Then review the completed document three times. You must meticulously scrutinize every letter, every date, and every number, word by word and sentence by sentence. Even the slightest clerical error will provide the building with a perfect procedural excuse to brutally reject it on the grounds of “documentary defects”. A defective revocation document is not enforceable. Therefore, your document MUST BE FLAWLESS.
Once you’ve confirmed there are already no errors, place the document into the metal sealed box and close the lid. Place both hands, palms facing down, firmly on the surface of the lid. Take a deep breath and clearly pronounce the following judgment in a normal voice:
“This document is submitted for enforcement in accordance with the revocation schedule.”
Remove your hands from the box and lean back against the chair. Then, begin your wait.
During this extremely perilous wait:
Your office will undergo a dramatic upheaval. This is by no means the gradual environmental infiltration described in Step 6, but rather a blatant and ferocious assertion of space initiated by the building itself. It knows exactly what’s inside the box, and it understands all too well what you’re forcing it to do. And at this very moment, for the first time in the entire lifecycle of the revocation process, it has become acutely and thoroughly aware of your presence. It no longer views you merely as a name on a document or a set of mechanical signature patterns, but as a living, physical entity, an invader attempting to devour its territory.
The following spectacle is about to unfold:
- The walls of the office will be completely torn open, revealing a depth visible to the naked eye. The fine lines on the floor plan will warp into actual gaps. You will witness with your own eyes deep corridors extending into the depths of the masonry, filled with the same passive golden light you encountered inside 712 Oakridge Avenue. These corridors are real, and do connect your office directly to the building’s interior. Do not approach these gaps under any circumstances. Do not peer inside, or even reach your hand into. If you happen to see light shining from the end of a corridor, do not delude yourself, it is certainly not an exit, but a reverse view of the building’s ground floor, glimpsed from within the very fabric of its walls. Here, the walls are not even barriers, but the building’s living flesh and blood, the place where you will be like shards of glass embedded in muscle if you enter.
- Your office door likely swings open on its own. When it does, what lies beyond is no longer the familiar office hallway you know, but the interior lobby of 712 Oakridge Avenue: that eerie open ground floor, that nauseating passive light, and those two staircases leading to who-knows-where. Under no circumstances are you to walk toward the door, or step over the threshold. This is the most deadly ironclad rule on the entire list. As long as you remain seated obediently at your desk, you are still within your office, even if the building’s phantom image has completely filled your peripheral vision, this desk is yours, this chair is yours, and the small space where your body stands remains under your jurisdiction. The moment you stand up and walk toward that door, your jurisdiction is transferred. You will plunge completely into the building, and within that building, there is not even a single door that leads back to your office.
- You may hear an eerie whisper. The sound comes from inside a metal sealed box. It may call your name, mechanically recite numbers or dates, or even read aloud, word for word, the terms of the revocation document. Whatever you hear, under no circumstances must you respond. That voice is whispering to the document probably mulling over those deadly terms, represents the building making its final decision.
During this time, Elena will call you. Be sure to answer the call. Her voice will be as calm and steady as ever. She will keep reminding you: “Don’t leave your chair… don’t stand up… don’t look outside the door… keep your hands on the table… wait for that sound…” She will stay on the line with you for as long as you need her. But she won’t offer any unnecessary explanations. At this moment she’s already done everything she can, what remains is purely a life-or-death struggle between you and that box. This agonizing wait will last anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes. Not only will your sense of time become unreliable, but your phone screen, your wristwatch, and the wall clock will each display completely different times, none of them accurate. All you have to do is sit there motionless, wait, and listen intently.
When an extremely soft yet distinct sound comes from inside the box, you’ll know the wait is over: it’s an incredibly crisp “click”, just like the sound of a pen cap being snapped shut.
Open the box, and you’ll see that on the revocation document for Entry 22, a signature has suddenly appeared in the “Transferor/Seller” signature line that was originally left blank. The handwriting is grotesque and illegible, a string of extremely cramped, angular, or frenzied lines that make it impossible to piece together any human name. Take out the original 1987 transaction document (it’s in the archive folder, not in the box) and carefully compare the signatures. Normally the two signatures align perfectly at every stroke and turn, meaning the same unnameable entity, spanning a full 39 years, has left the same mark on both documents.
Be sure to verify this match with the utmost rigor. If the signature on the revocation document matches the original 1987 signature perfectly, it means the transaction has been successfully revoked. The Building has personally issued its own revocation order. Immediately proceed to Step 15.
In the event of a discrepancy in the signatures—if the handwriting on the revocation document becomes “clear and legible”, or if you can even clearly read a specific name: Immediately slam the box shut. Under no circumstances should you speak that name aloud, do not make any written record of it, and force yourself to forget it immediately. It was not the Building that signed that name, but something far more sinister. That entity is neither the Building itself nor part of this closing procedure. Call Elena Whitmore immediately, give her the code phrase: “wrong signatory”. She will instruct you on how to escape. Under no circumstances, no matter what happens, are you to proceed with Step 15 until the signatory crisis has been completely resolved.
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< PHASE V - THE ORIGINAL ENTRY >
Time: ██AM to ██AM, the day following Closing Date
Location: Law firm office / Boundary of Existence
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STEP 15: SUBSTITUTION OF ORIGINAL ENTRY
[When you initially receive the checklist, this step remains blank. The text only becomes visible after you successfully complete Step 14.]
This is the final step. Completing this, there will be no further steps to attend to. Once this step is completed, the closing process will be concluded, and all disputes regarding 712 Oakridge Avenue will be permanently resolved.
From the materials package Elena provided, locate a document marked “Step 15: Do Not Open Until Instructed”. Inside it will be an envelope. Now, take it out and open. It will bear a passage of text in a font you’ve never seen before, and the paper will feel eerily warm to the touch, slightly warmer than your hand temperature. The content will be as follows:
>SUBSTITUTION OF ENTRY
Municipal Land Register, Vol. ____, Folio ____
I, [Your Full Legal Name], hereby submit this instrument as substitute entry for the original registration of the parcel and structure(s) known as 712 Oakridge Avenue, initially recorded on [Today's Date], under the name E. Whitmore.
By affixing my signature below, I acknowledge that this substitution shall have the effect of replacing the original entry in perpetuity; that the original entry, and all rights, claims, and existences arising therefrom, shall be extinguished in full; and that my name shall remain in the register in its place, for as long as the register endures.
I understand that this instrument cannot be reversed, recalled, or voided by any means or by any party, including the undersigned.
Signature: ___________________________
You will notice that "your full legal name" part is already prominently printed in the body of the document. That is the Building’s handwriting, the very same hand that once scrawled that frenzied scribble on the 1987 deed, and which, at this very moment, for the first and only time, has written in an extremely clear and legible script. It has written your name. Different from the ones in Step 7, the reason the Building has inscribed your name at this moment is that it has willingly accepted you as its eternal stand-in in the registry. For a being of this nature, this was the closest concession to “consent” it could possibly offer.
Beneath this document lay another sheet of paper. On it is Elena’s final instructions for this step.
It reads:
>Sign your name. Please understand that when everything has turned to ashes, only this name will remain there forever.
If there were any other way out, I would never ask this of you. I spent thirty years searching for a way out. THERE IS NO WAY OUT.
I’m truly sorry.
Now, you face a choice. This is the only step on the entire list where you have a genuine choice.
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If you choose to sign:
Pick up the designated pen and sign your name on the designated signature line. Maintain your usual writing style, and under no circumstances hesitate for even a millisecond while writing. Hesitation creates ink smudges, and ink smudges imply ambiguity. And when processing this document, ambiguity is equivalent to a death sentence.
After signing, place the document into the metal sealed box and close the lid. This time, you won’t hear a sound. There’s no expected click, only deathly silence. The box will feel ice-cold to the touch for just a few seconds; once the chill subsides, it will feel like nothing more than an ordinary metal box.
Open the box, and it will be completely empty. This time everything is all gone. Every revocation document, every invalidated self-generated document, and that survey report, all have disappeared without a trace. That manila folder on your desk will also be completely empty, the label may still read “712 OAKRIDGE AVE.”, but there won’t be a single scrap of paper left inside. That’s all there is to it.
Over the next 6 hours:
- The building located at 712 Oakridge Avenue will completely vanish from the physical world. Anyone visiting that address will see only a nondescript vacant lot, with no trace of the building that once stood there. All municipal records pertaining to the building will be completely erased. Whether in historical archives or real-time satellite imagery, the site will appear as nothing more than an empty lot. Neighbors will no longer recall that a house ever stood there. The postal system will contain no record of any mail ever having been delivered to that address.
- Jonathan Hadwell would be found the next morning, sitting motionless on a park bench three blocks away from the vacant lot, wearing the same clothes he had on when he disappeared 9 years earlier. He will be unharmed, but had no memory of anything that had happened during those nine years. A comprehensive medical examination at the hospital would confirm that he was in excellent physical condition, suffering only from mild dehydration. His medical records would probably include an entry showing that he had been admitted to an unnamed long-term care facility in 2016 that, in reality, could not be traced. His family would raise countless questions, only to be left without any satisfactory answers. But most importantly, he was alive; he would gradually recover and, as time went on, give up on seeking the truth.
- Elena Whitmore will close the case and file it away for good. She will personally destroy the copy of anything she has kept. Within a year, she will officially retire from the firm saying nothing about the reason, and you must tacitly agree not to ask.
Only you will remember everything. Every perilous step, every eerie document, the suffocating layout inside the building, the warmth you felt as you crossed the threshold, that golden light with no apparent source, and the heart-wrenching words on the plaque. You will remember exactly what was written on that plaque, giving anything to forget it, but still carry it with you for the rest of your life. Because that is exactly part of the price, and the stakes of this deal were, from the very beginning, destined to include something that cannot be sealed away, or certainly cannot be stuffed into a metal box. Every year thereafter on March 12, you’ll wake up at exactly 3:00 am to sense an extremely low-pitched hum. It’s less a matter of hearing it than of the vibration penetrating straight through your marrow. It feels as though an extremely long, long guitar string somewhere beneath the floor deep within the foundation, has been plucked violently. The vibration only lasts exactly 15 seconds no more no less. It is the vast land registry, deep in the abyss, confirming that your name remains safe and sound. In some dusty volume, on some page, in a corner where no clerk will ever look, the location of a building that no longer exists, or never did, is firmly recorded, and the signature at the bottom was written by hand by a person who truly exists and is breathing right now.
That will be the only irrefutable proof that all of this ever actually happened.
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If you refuse to sign:
Gently place the pen on the desk and stuff the document back into the envelope. Leave the envelope, along with the metal sealed box, on the desk. Then stand up, leave the office, and go straight home.
Within 24 hours, that address will be completely erased from your mind. Within 48 hours, you will have completely forgotten this case. Within 72 hours, you will have completely forgotten this list, the building, Elena’s strange behavior, the name Alcove Properties. In your memory, Elena Whitmore will be nothing more than the respected senior colleague who hired you and who recently chose to retire due to ill health. You won’t even be able to recall why she always seemed so exhausted during her final days before leaving. The case file will be reassigned as a matter of course, and Elena will naturally go on to find her next scapegoat. She’s done it before, and she’ll do it again.
And that building will continue to wait. It has always been extremely patient. It has lain dormant since 1987, and it can certainly keep waiting. The long wait has long been etched into its very marrow. The passive light within it will continue to sustain that never-ending twilight; those twisted staircases will continue to lead to realms where the living should not tread; and the plaque on the east wall will patiently await that heart-wrenching phrase, quietly waiting for the next wretch to push open the main door.
Jonathan Hadwell, however, will be trapped forever in that underground level. He does not age, does not starve, and never finds release through death. He can only remain trapped like a specimen in that abyss that should not exist, waiting in agony for someone to come along and accomplish the feat that the four lawyers before you failed to achieve.
He has already endured a full nine years, and he will continue to wait in endless despair.
you could have put an end to all of this once and for all tonight.
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This concludes the checklist.
END OF DOCUMENT
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WHITMORE & ASSOCIATES
CLOSING CHECKLIST FOR 712 OAKRIDGE AVENUE
PREPARED BY: E. WHITMORE
REVISION: FINAL
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