a renegade; W2S

17

The sky is getting dark now, beginning to only be illuminated by those little freckles of white we call stars. It's so pretty. There's a welcoming cool breeze away from the party, I was already bored of sweating bodies and drunken eyes and I'd only seen a few.

"So, do you actually wanna do this?" Colby asks me as we step out of the gate to their house, someone had locked it between us arriving, me making out with that boy and me now desperate to leave.

"You fucking bet I do," I say, kind of starting to run down the street. Under these streetlights, everything feels fine. There's no ex boyfriend, no want to be loved again like how it began.
It's a delicate state, but I love it.

"Fuck it. I know this hotel on the hills not far from here. It's fucking crazy," he says and I sense actual enthusiasm and excitement, not a watered down one from embarrassment. It's beautiful. I love when people talk with passion.

"If we run, can we get there in time to watch the end of the sunset?" I say to him excitedly, matching his energy.

"Yeah, if we really run," he says and without a thought I take off. "Wrong way. This way"

I laugh and follow him as he runs. We run as if our life is depending on us getting there quickly. We run as if the only thing we'll ever do or will ever know is running. And it's fucking electric. I feel like a bottle of lightning with it's cap starting to slide off like I've always wanted it to.

"This is some kind of teenage dream," I scream in between breaths as I run and Colby laughs. I remember when I was younger I used to do this all the time. I don't know how many times I've had to run from the police while escaping abandoned places. It's exhilarating beyond comparison. That kind of thrill is still as appealing to me as it was when I was 15, I don't really care for pretentious dinner parties where grace and decorum reign like cruel tyrants over you, yet.

I used to go with the boys from my school. Talia never really wanted to go, neither did any of the rest of our girls. I don't know how many boys I made out with on little abandoned adventures, I don't really know why. That's teenage caprice for you.

Those times were fucking amazing. It's the kind of freedom only afforded to you in those years, the kind of freedom you'll end up chasing for the rest of your life, the kind of freedom I'm chasing right now.

"It's just up here," Colby says. I don't know how long we've been running for, at least 15 minutes. Colby is pointing to a wooded area, it's almost concealed in an entirety of black.

My heart is racing, and I fucking love it.

We enter the wooded area and I stick close behind Colby, listening out in case I hear any twigs snap, which would immediately tell me to dash in the other direction. I'd seen homeless people before in places like this and they're fucking scary, even if they don't mean any harm to you.

"I see it!" I shout to Colby as I see the hotel dawning in front of me. It's pure 1920's extravagance, but it's pretty façade is laced with ivy and cracked paint. I gasp slightly upon seeing it, it's even better than I had imagined. It stands just above the trees, next to the path that we're walking along, the path that looks as if it used to be a bustling road.

I wonder how many people used to walk in and out of the hotel in its hay day. I wonder how many people have visited it since it was abandoned.

"Does it have security?" I whisper to Colby, latching my hands onto his shoulders quickly. They are broad and strong, good for support.

"No, not at all," he says, holding back a piece of stained silver fence so that I can climb through the hole into the hotel's gardens.

"How much did you drink? Am I going to have to baby you here?" I say, walking slightly off, looking at the darkening horizon. I feel limitless.

"No, barely any. Shut the fuck up. I'm going to start recording, this will make a good video," Colby says.

"So, now I'm your muse?" I flirt with him and he just rolls his eyes.

We make way for the hotel, pinning back thorns and stinging nettles. I have been stung at least 5 times and there's not a single doc leaf in sight, so I just stroll on in slight agony with Colby behind me recording.

"Where's the fucking entrance?" I ask him and he points to a cracked window that is boarded up so badly it's almost like they want someone to climb in. "Don't look at my ass as I climb in."

"Why would you even bring that up?" Colby laughs.

"Because I'm a whore," I smile as i clamber through into the darkness. "Shine the torch through, you nonce."

He passes me the torch and I use it to see what's straight in front of me. It catches a glint off of something and I look up. A dangling chandelier.

It's beautiful and shining in the torch light. I stay transfixed on it until I hear a crash behind me. I turn on my heels to face Colby on the floor in a pile of bricks.

"That was pathetic," he laughs and I nod and laugh in agreement.

"Do you know the history of this place?" I ask him, shining the torch through every doorway as we walk forward. I nearly trip on a brick myself. Half of the walls seem to have piled up on the floor.

I shine my torch behind me onto Colby and he squints his eyes and puts his hands in front of his face, which makes me laugh.

"Yeah, kinda. This used to be the foyer, the thing we're walking into now. This hotel was really famous at one point, but the owner was struggling financially and mentally apparently. And she took her life like 5 years after it opened, I think she was found hanging in room 39 by a maid. Apparently the record player in there was left playing and it's still there, and her ghost sometimes makes it play. Don't give me that look, ghosts are real. Anyways, the hotel shut down like basically the day after. No one wanted to buy it or renovate it apart from a guy called 'Sully' but his body was found in room 39 literally the day he was about to start running the hotel. They closed the case years ago but they don't know if it was homicide or suicide. There was little trauma, apart from to the head slightly but no suicide note," Colby tells me and it's so interesting. I morbidly love horrible backstories to places.

It gives it an eerie feeling to walk these halls knowing that there used to be two dead bodies upstairs.

"This fireplace is so pretty," I say, wiping my hand across the cracked mantelpiece. I can only imagine how luxurious this place was before the owner's death.

And then there was a crash upstairs.