Sam and Colby: The Asylum

92

"Can I see that shot you took?" asked Colby.

"Yeah, brother," Jake said. I handed him the camera back and he pushed a couple buttons. We all crowded around Jake and looked down at the little screen.

"Yo, that's sick as fuck," Colby said. Sam had been right about not being able to see him. It looked like Colby was holding me up over some bottomless pit, pulling me to safety.

"Hah, dudes are going to dig that, if you know what I'm saying," Corey said.

"Oh, god. Come on, you guys," Colby said.

"What? Why?" I asked. I looked back down at the picture. "Because of my tight shirt? I don't get it."

"I mean, that certainly helps but that's not what I meant," Corey said.

"It's not?" Sam asked.

"Oh no, brother. It is not," Jake chuckled.

"What? You have to tell me," I said, looking up at Jake.

"Me too, I feel like this is something I should have been able to immediately figure out," Sam said.

"Look at it again," Corey said. Sam and I stared back down at the picture. It was me, holding onto Colby's arms, staring up at the camera. It was almost weird to see, like I was making eye contact with myself.

"Ohh, I get it. Jesus, dude. Really said that in front of them?" Sam chuckled.

"Yeah, really?" Colby asked, looking over at Corey.

"She doesn't get it, so what's the harm here?" he asked.

"Oh my fuck, get what?" I asked.

"I'm not telling her," Colby said, walking away from the camera.

"I didn't even get it at first so I'm not either. One of your nasty asses gets to tell her," Sam said.

"Okay, Nessa, here's the deal. Picture this. The year is 2020. You're a guy scrolling through the YouTube trending page, trying to find something to watch. You're a sucker for clickbait like 90% of humans. You see a picture like this, of you in the dark looking at the camera, with your ponytail," Corey said. I stared at him.

"That did not help at all," I said.

"Oh my god, it's cause of the angle," Jake said, closing out of the picture and putting down the camera. "The angle and the eye contact."

It took me another minute. My hair being up? The angle? Of directly above—oh.

"Oh, god damn it," I muttered.

"The eye contact really sealed the deal, there," Corey said.

"You suck," I said. Corey and Jake erupted into laughter.

"Poor choice of words," Sam said.

"Okay, new topic. Where the fuck are we?" Colby said. We all looked around, shining our flashlights. We appeared to be in some kind of basement closet, tattered cardboard boxes and mops and picture frames and other things haphazardly thrown in. There was a water heater in the room, suggesting that the manhole cover may have once been used as a drain for any leakage.

"It's a closet," said Sam.

"Here's the door," Jake said, moving to one side of the room.

"This is an important moment for Jake, you guys. It's very serious and he's been building up the courage to do this for years, so I ask that you display your respect and acceptance," Corey said, turning to all of us. I stared at him. Huh?

"Because he's coming out of the closet?" Colby asked.

"Don't say it like that! This is serious!" Corey joked.

"Hey! Real issue for some people, bucko. Shut up. Let's go," I said, pushing past them to Jake. He opened the door to reveal what looked like the inside of a pretty standard house. We were definitely in the basement, as it was dark and the windows led out to silver window wells, shiny with water from the rain.

"Is this, like, someone's house? Like, is someone in here?" Corey asked. I hadn't even thought of that.

"It honestly could be. Although I didn't see any habitable looking houses for miles around this place, I did see a lot of old shacks and houses that were clearly abandoned or falling apart. Basements would look mostly normal whether the place is abandoned or not, so we should just be quiet going upstairs in case someone is here," Sam said.

We slowly made our way further into the basement and came up to a rickety wooden staircase that had faded to grey with time. Sam went first, testing the bottom stair to see if it would creak under our weight. When he learned that it wouldn't, he led the group slowly up the staircase, stopping at the door at the top. He crouched down and peered through the crack under the door for a second before turning back to us.

Colby held a thumb up asking if it was clear, and Sam nodded back but put a finger up to his lips. Sam slowly opened the door, which creaked like a bitch. Anyone in that house would definitely have heard it. However, the open door revealed an empty, old dusty house that no one could possibly be living in.

"Oh, thank Jesus," Corey said. We all visibly relaxed when he said that, like him confirming it out loud made our thoughts affirmative. We all filed into the house, spreading out into what appeared to be a living room.

"I thought the tunnels were supposed to connect to the hospital buildings," Jake said.

"There's probably some that do," Colby said.

"There was just an old weirdo who had one leading to his house," said Corey.

"Honestly, he might not have even known it was there. It looked like it could have been used as a drain for the water heater," I said. We decided to explore the house.

It was a complete wreck. There were holes in the walls so deep that they led outside, and shattered windows lined the walls. Pieces of bricks, pipes, glass, and wiring were all over the floor amongst large chunks of gravel and masses of dust. It was a decently sized house, pretty standard for a two story suburban place.

We found the staircase after not too long and Corey led the way up. We didn't need to use our flashlights in here, but we did need to use our masks. The rain had stopped, but the interior floors were slick with water due to the dozens of openings in the walls from random holes and broken windows. The upstairs floor didn't have any bedrooms, just a huge open space with beautiful floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows. Well, the glass that was left was beautiful, at least. Some windows were still fully in tact while others were bare frames. I walked over to one of the empty frames and stared out, seeing the hospital buildings all spread out a short distance from us.

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