by Shade, S. M.
Me: Mmm…how did you know I have a foot fetish?
The amount of time it takes for her to respond makes me laugh. I can picture her trying to figure out if I’m serious or not.
Jani: Very funny. I almost fell for it.
Me: Fine, I’m not into feet. You have cute little toes though.
Jani: Omg. I’ll see you in the morning.
Since I have to be up at the ass crack of dawn, I cut the video games short and go to bed.
It feels like I’ve just closed my eyes when my phone rings, and I slap at it until I hit the speaker button.
“Are you up?” Jani asks.
“Mmm Hmm.”
“Liar,” she laughs. “Get up and dress warm.” She pauses for a moment. “Oh, and wear dark clothes, black if you can.”
The floor is cold on my feet as I shamble over to turn on my light. “Are we robbing a bank?”
“You’ll see,” she teases. “I’ll pick you up in a few minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’m climbing into her car. She’s so peppy in the morning that I kind of want to slap her. A morning person, I’m not.
“Where are we going? It’s still dark out,” I mumble.
She picks up a coffee from her console and hands it to me. “Have you heard of urban exploration?”
She pulls out of our apartment complex as I sip the nectar of the gods. “Is that where people take pictures of abandoned buildings?”
Her grin lights up the car. “Some take pictures, but it’s mostly just about exploring, seeing places most people don’t get to see.”
Holy shit. We are going to break into somewhere. I’m suddenly wide awake. “Okay, and how many years are we facing for this adventure?”
Her lips curl up and she gives me a sideways glance. “It’s just a little trespassing, but if you don’t want to…”
“No, I’m in.” I have a clean record. Besides, trespassing usually just gets you chased off the property with a warning never to come back. Don’t ask me how I know that. “What are we exploring?”
“Mid-State.”
Is she serious? That place is creepy in the daytime. “The asylum?”
“Yep.” She smirks at me. “You look a little worried. Afraid you’ll find some relatives there?”
“I’m more concerned about the mutants that live in the basement.” It’s a well known story in town that a crazy doctor was experimenting on people and managed to make mutants, that they say still live in the basement of the abandoned building.
Jani bursts out laughing. “You don’t really believe that.”
“Okay, but when some three-eyed frog man with flippers attacks us, just remember I can run faster than you.”
“I have a taser for crazy frog men.” After parking behind the asylum, she opens her bag and damned if she doesn’t carry a taser. “I’ve never been attacked by an amphibian before, but there are sometimes homeless people or junkies.”
Before she can get out of the car, I grab her arm. “Tell me you don’t ever do this alone.”
“No, I always have backup. And today that’s you.” She leans over and presses her cold lips to mine. Am I really going to follow this chick into a dark, abandoned mental hospital that may or may not be home to some biological monstrosity?
Yep.
“Have you been in here before?” I ask.
She hands me a flashlight and slings a small bag onto her back. “Yeah, a couple of years ago. I didn’t make it very far though. A bunch of teenagers were partying here and it kind of killed the mood.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. If I’m venturing into mutant territory, then you have to come to the party we’re throwing at my apartment tonight.”
Looking back over her shoulder, she throws me a smile and replies, “We’ll see.” Without any hesitation, she scrambles over the ten foot high, chain link fence that surrounds the property.
Damn, that was hot.
I follow her over, and we creep across the crumbling concrete parking lot, trying not to trip over the bottles and debris scattered around us.
We explore the back of the building, looking for an easy way in. The dock door is raised a few inches, and Jani pulls a short crowbar out of the bag. She pries open the door until it’s high enough for us to lie down and roll under.
I go first, shining the light into the darkness to make sure I’m not going to come face to face with a rat…or worse. Once I’m inside, she rolls under the door, ignoring the filth that clings to her.
Her face betrays her excitement when she jumps to her feet. Our flashlights are more like powerful spotlights, and they push back the darkness just ahead of us. “The sun is just starting to rise, so it’ll be lighter when we get into the hall,” she remarks.
She pauses at the edge of a staircase. “We can go up and explore the patient wings, or down and prove that silly mutant story is a myth. Your choice.”
“Up.”
Giggling, she starts up the stairs, but I step ahead of her. If we run into anything crazy, I have no idea what I’ll do since I don’t have a weapon, but it’s still instinct to keep her behind me.
“My white knight,” she sighs, and I flip her off over my shoulder.
A door stands open on the first landing, and as Jani predicted, thin light filters through the dirty windows as the sun rises. The smell of decay and mold are so thick I feel like I can taste them.
We stay side by side, slowly making our way down the hall and there’s so much to look at I don’t know where to point my eyes first. Paint bubbles hang off of the walls in strips, showing the crumbling drywall beneath.
We pick our way around a pile of thin metal beams and foam panels; a chunk of the drop ceiling that has given way. Colorful graffiti lets us know we’re far from the first people to check out this place. This actually is kind of cool.
Jani pauses by a door, then tugs it open. The loud screech it emits sends a shiver through me, but she just grins back at me. “Look, it’s a padded room. Or it was.”
Some kind of shredded material I don’t recognize coats the walls of the tiny room. At some point there was probably a bed, but all that’s left now is a wooden chair in the corner. A window the size of my hand lets in a narrow stream of light. “What a nightmare,” I breathe. “Can you imagine being locked in here, only seeing the outside through that tiny window? I don’t know how that would cure crazy. I’d go nuts.”
“Me too.” Jani runs her fingers over the stone windowsill. “This place was used as an orphanage first, then a TB hospital, before it became an asylum. It has quite a history.”
“How long has it been closed down?”
“Almost fifty years. There’s some disagreement over who holds the deed now so it can’t be torn down or sold.”
“Wow, you really did your homework.”
“I always research first. That’s half the fun,” she says, and grabs my hand. “Come here, feel this.”
She places my fingers on the windowsill and I can feel the letters H and N carved into the stone. “It’s stuff like this that’s so interesting. Someone stood in this spot, locked in this little room, and carved their initials into the windowsill. Doesn’t it make you wonder who they were? What they were thinking about or dreaming about? Where they are today, or if they’re still alive?”
Stepping up behind her, I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder. “I never suspected you of being a romantic.”
Her loud snort kills all thoughts of romance. “It’s not romantic, you psycho!”
“I didn’t mean it gave me a hard-on, for fuck’s sake. I meant you’re a dreamer, a sentimentalist. I like it.”
“If you say so,” she giggles.
We step back into the hall and make our way up another dark staircase. “It’s the children’s ward,” she says.
“Okay, this is creepy,” I whisper.
“Why are you whispering?” she whispers back.
“Mutants have super hearing.”
Instead of separate patient rooms, this floor has a long, open area where rusted metal cribs and tarnished bed frames line the walls. A few broken toys lie scattered across the floor, waiting for half a century for little hands to bring them to life again.
“Why would they have babies or kids that young in an asylum?”
“I don’t know,” she replies, gazing around us. “It didn’t take much to be thought insane back then. Maybe they were just special needs kids, you know, kids with Down Syndrome or Autism.”
Well, that’s depressing as fuck.
The next room reeks and it’s apparent why once we shine our lights on the floor. Right in the center of the filthy tile is a huge fungal bloom the size of a kiddie wading pool. It’s an odd pink color with black splotches here and there.
We both take a step back. “Yeah, let’s go. We might get sick,” Jani says.
“Or turn into inhuman creatures of the night,” I add, leading the way back out into the hall.
“There’s only one more level,” Jani says, pointing her flashlight toward the staircase.
“Let’s do it.”
After a few steps, I realize I can’t hear her breathing behind me anymore and I turn, assuming she’s stopped to look at something. She’s standing, frozen, half in a doorway, staring at me.
“January? What is it?”
Suddenly, she screeches, and her whole body is jerked inside.
For the first time in my life I know what the phrase “my heart is in my throat” really means. In my panic, it feels like I could puke it out and it’d go beating across the floor.
“Jani!” I run to the door, only a few feet away, but it seems like an eternity. Stepping inside, I can’t see anything. It’s just another padded cell.
Then something clamps onto my arm, and I shriek like an old lady. It takes me a second to realize Jani is holding my arm, laughing so hard she can’t speak.
“I’m going to kill you!” I wheeze, trying to slow my heart back down to a speed not usually maintained by meth addicts. “I damn near pissed myself!”
That doesn’t exactly quell her laughter. “You th-thought the mutants got me.” She barely manages to get the words out between laughing fits.
“I thought something had you. You’re going to pay for that.” She squeals when I pinch her ass.
Wiping her eyes, she peeks out the window. “The sun is up. We should go.”
Thank fuck.
“Are you pissed?” she asks, grabbing my hips and grinning up at me.
“Nope, but no whining when I pay you back.” I drop a kiss on her lips.
“I never whine.”
Maybe she doesn’t whine, but the little smart ass hums the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song all the way down the hall. When we get back to the first level, there’s a room we didn’t see before, so we duck inside for a quick look. It’s an old office and the floor is covered in files and dusty paper.
“Looks like this room was spared the water damage,” I remark, picking up a file. “Holy shit, this is a medical record. Look.”
Jani joins me while I shine the light on the yellowed paper. “Samuel Forger, age sixteen, committed in nineteen fifty-nine for homoerogenous thoughts,” she reads aloud.
“Holy hell, they used to lock you up for that?”
“Looks like it.”
Before she can look through any more of the papers, I stick my hand out to pick up a stack still sitting on a shelf and that’s when the mutant finally gets me.
A sharp, piercing pain darts through my hand and up my arm, and it takes a moment for me to realize there’s a furry ball made of teeth and claws locked onto it.
“Noble!” Jani yells.
I’m too busy running around the room, smashing my hand into everything like the Hulk on a steroid binge to answer her. I knock an old desk over and it crashes into the door, slamming it shut and closing us inside.
“Hold it still!” Jani shouts, pointing the taser at it.
“No! Are you crazy? You’ll—”
Now, I was going to say, “You’ll hit me” but I didn’t get the chance before she fires. A flash of white hot pain shoots up my arm and spreads through my body, dropping me to the floor. The monster finally lets go and runs into a large hole in the wall, snarling and hissing the entire way, but it barely registers in my mind as I try to shake off the feeling I’ve just been plugged into a socket like a Christmas light.
“Oh my god, Noble, are you okay?” Fear is clear in her voice as she kneels beside me. “I’m so sorry. I panicked. I thought I could hit it.”
“I’m okay,” I grunt, sitting up. Sure, I’m cool. I just feel like I’ve been stomped by an elephant while experiencing a full body Charlie horse. “It bit me.”
“I saw it. I’ve never seen a raccoon do that!” She tentatively removes the barbs from the taser that thankfully hooked to my sleeve instead of my skin.
“Mutant raccoon,” I mumble.
Ignoring that, she takes off her stocking hat and wraps it around my bleeding hand. “We’ve got to take you to the hospital. Come on.”
She grabs the door handle and pulls it, but it doesn’t move. After a few more tries, I step around her and give it my best. At least the raccoon chewed up my left hand and not my right. It doesn’t matter though because the door is stuck shut.
The only windows in the room are far too small for either of us to climb through. I step back and shake my head. “We’re stuck.”
Jani’s eyes widen. “I never should’ve brought you here. This is all my fault. I just thought it’d be fun and an adventure and now you’re hurt and we can’t get out and—”
“Whoa,” I chuckle, pulling her against me with my good arm. “Don’t freak out on me. I’ll call the guys and they’ll get us out.”
“Then the hospital.”
“Then my doctor,” I correct. “It’s barely bleeding. Not an emergency.”
“Then I’m going to suck your dick like it has chocolate filling to make this up to you,” she babbles, making me laugh as I call Denton.
Denton isn’t quite as amused about being woken up early to break into an insane asylum and rescue us, but he promises that he and the guys are on their way. Jani takes the phone and explains exactly how to get in and where we are. After she hangs up, all we can do is wait.
We sit on the floor and read through some of the files, though very few are still legible, until we hear footsteps in the hall. “Down here!” I call out.
Jani steadily taps on the door until Denton taps back. “You in there, man?”
“Yes, the door is jammed or something!”
The door rattles as they try with no luck to get it open. “Dude, just let me smash it,” Trey says.
“Fine. You guys hear that? Get way back. Tons-of-fun is going to knock it down.”
Jani and I retreat to the back wall. The first try only moves it a few inches, but it’s quickly followed by a screech of metal across tile as Trey charges through it like a rhino. Slipping on the files, he falls on his ass and jumps back to his feet with comical speed for a man his size.
Pride fills his face as he smiles and announces, “Spoiler alert! I’m drunk.”
“Good to know,” I laugh.
“Thank you,” Jani tells him. “Are you hurt?”
Trey looks at his arms and legs. “Not that I can tell. Ask me again tonight.” He grins at her. “I did have to walk away from nailing this chick to come and help you, though.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jani replies, rolling her eyes.
He flaps a hand at her. “S’okay. She had these long dreads. Having her on top was like going through a car wash.”
“What happened to your hand?” Denton asks as we make our way back out of the building.
“A mutant got me.”
“In the basement?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jani groans. “There are no mutants.”
“It was disguised as a raccoon.”
“You probably ne
ed a rabies shot, then,” Denton points out.
“Yeah, I’ll call when we get home.” Grinning down at Jani, I whisper in her ear. “So, about that party tonight.”
Chapter Four
January
“I can’t believe you’re going to a Frat Hell party,” Cassidy giggles, packing a plush teddy bear into a box.
“The guy got bitten by a raccoon because of me and had to have rabies shots. After I tased him. It was kind of hard to say no.”
“Are you going to fuck him?”
“At the party, surrounded by a bunch of drunk idiots? No.”
Wyatt walks into the room, and gives Cassidy a look. She turns to me. “So, we have something to talk to you about.”
My hands slam onto my hips. “Did you knock her up already?”
“No!” Cassidy exclaims as Wyatt laughs.
He takes a seat across from me. “I want to offer you the general manager position at Scarlet Toys.”
What? My head turns to Cassidy so quick my neck cracks. “Are you quitting?”
Adoring eyes sweep over Wyatt, and I get a brief pang in my stomach. What they have is something special. Something I really hope is waiting for me in the future. “I’m going to spend more time helping at the community center and I’ve opened a little online store to sell my plush animals. Wyatt talked me into giving it a go.”
I force a smile. No matter how much I don’t want to lose her at the store, she’s happy and I need to be happy for her. “That’s amazing, Cass. Your animals are beautiful.”
“Thanks, I don’t expect it to be all that popular, but I’d like to keep it small, anyway. Offer special orders, monogramming etc.” She waves her hand. “But I can’t leave the store short-handed. You know my job backward and forward. You’ll have to hire your replacement, but I can help with that if you want.”
It’s a great opportunity. More money for the same amount of hours, but more flexibility in my schedule. “When do you want me to start?”
Wyatt gets to his feet. “We’ll run an ad this week for the job opening. After we get the new hire trained, you can take over. If you’re accepting the position.”