Dragonfly; Phan

I

"We shouldn't be here."

"Would you quit that?" Dan sighed, fiddling with the switch on the flashlight in his hand. He tapped it against his bike's metal frame and breathed through his nose, irritated when it didn't click on.

"No, I'm worried," PJ insisted, putting pressure on the word and weighing it down as he peered up at the glaring building.

"Scared, you mean," Dan muttered, concentration entirely elsewhere.

"Yeah, okay. Whatever you wanna call it. I'm scared. Terrified, actually. What does that make me?"

"A—"

"Human," PJ rushed, before Dan could get a replacement word in. "A human being. I don't want to go into the abandoned asylum because I'm a human being and it's a natural instinct to fear for my life."

"Fear for your life?" Dan finally glanced at him, a bit disbelieving, then went back to cursing quietly at the broken flashlight. "The worst we're gonna see in there is a couple cockroaches and cobwebs and some darkness, if I don't get this damn light working. Jesus."

"He isn't gonna help you when you're in there," PJ zipped his jacket up tighter to his chin. "Dan, I don't want to do this. Really. I said no."

"Good for you. Get lost back to the town if you can't handle it, but I'm doing this."

"You wouldn't do it alone. If I head back now, you'll follow me," PJ dared, one foot coming onto the pedal of his bike.

"Don't kid yourself," Dan secured the flashlight on the front of the bike by tying a piece of string around the handle. "Are you coming or not? I got this fixed now, I'm ready."

"Dan," PJ sighed, running a hand over his hair. "Please."

"Please, what? It's not rhetorical, my question requires an answer. Yes or no," Dan said slowly, insulting his friend's intelligence. "Are you coming with me?"

PJ drew his lip into his mouth, eyes taking up as much as they could of the dirty building. Fantasy was minuscule in comparison to reality. It wasn't nice, admittedly, to become aware of how something in your head falls limp when fighting against something before your eyes. This asylum—this place—was sure to stay in memory forever. It set up camp in the permanent part of your brain, bringing food for your memory to feed off.

"You can't go in alone," PJ finally said, some sort of conclusion. "You could die or something, seriously. And I'll be the last one to have been with you, so—"

"You'd be screwed," Dan finished, and rolled his eyes. "Just come with me, PJ."

"That's what I was bloody getting to, if you had some damn patience," They began riding steadily down the dark street, illuminated only by the occasional streetlight.

"It was around here somewhere, yeah?" Dan stretched forward over his bike, squinting his eyes at the heavy gate that ran around the outside.

"What?"

"The entrance," he said. "Can't enter without an entrance, contrary to popular belief."

"Shut up," PJ sighed. "And I don't know. As if I know where the entrance is."

"We came here yesterday," Dan recalled their preparing wander down this street on their way home from school.

"Yeah, when it was daylight. I can't see crap now, that light is complete shit—Seriously, Dan, we've been planning this for months and you don't even think to bring batteries for that thing?"