The Photograph

Chapter 1

I reached the scratched back door and the deafening sound of the silence that seemed to haunt the abandoned hospital brought a chill to my spine. I felt like if my subconscious was trying to tell me that my mere presence on that forbidden place was going to cause an impact of such dimensions that anyone with sanity would have considered it as an extremely insensitive thing to do- standing there alone at the edge of midnight. But still, as my fingertips caressed the rusty door knob and lightly turned it to one side to open it, accompanied by a creaking noise, no sense of fear rushed trough my veins, no quiet noise made me turn my head wondering if someone was following my steps, no owl screamed in the foreign distance, and no freezing breeze iced my blood. My breathing was slow, but constant. With every breath I inhaled, I felt how the cold air of the night filled my lungs, as if threatening to destroy me from the inside.
I entered the hospital, and felt a warm tear caressing my cheek. For a second the thought of giving up and running to the safety of my apartment tempted me in a way anything had before, but I reminded myself the reason why I was there and obliged my feet to keep on moving.
Truth being told, I wish I hadn't done so. I wish I had never entered that damned hospital and I wish I hadn't had enough courage to reach the end of the corridor. Because when I did, I knew that going back wasn't an option anymore. I heard a loud noise, and when I turned my head I witnessed how the door I had just used to access the building had been locked. The lights suddenly went out, and a wave of darkness flooded the corridor. A glance of horror flashed through my eyes, but due to the blackness that swallowed the whole venue, no one saw it. Although then and again, who would have been able to, even if some light had shined through? I was completely alone, there was no one in there. Just myself and my paranoid thoughts, which were consuming me at a vertiginous speed. Convincing myself that I wasn't under any sort of danger, and trying to avoid the fact that doors don't slam on their own, I reached the nearest wall and started feeling it in order to find a light switch. After a few minutes, what had first appeared as an effortless action to perform turned into a nightmare: there was no light switch to be found, and a suffocating feeling of being hopelessly trapped took control over my rational thoughts. I screamed in agony and desperation, drifting trough the endless hallways of the hospital, until I stopped to catch my breath, sensing a level of exhaustion that I hadn't experienced ever before.
It was only then that I felt a warm breath on the back of my neck, and as much as I wanted to deny myself the obvious, it was clear that I wasn't alone.
In fact, that I had never been.