Stuck (Venturiantale)

The Asylum

"This is a level six ghost capable of assuming a physical form and manipulating objects. It also is able to speak." Ghost rifled through his bag and pulled out a strange device that looked like a remote control.

"What's that?" I asked.

"This is the patented Paranormal Scanner. It's able to scan an entire building for any paranormal entities. Toast made it."

"You made that Toast?! That's amazing!" I was astonished. The machine had clearly taken time and talent to make. Time and talent I didn't know Toast had.

"I dabble in inventing." Toast blushed.

"Toast made nearly all of the equipment we use. When it isn't breaking or blowing up it works great." Ghost began scanning the building.

I looked at the scanner nervously, "That isn't going to blow up right?"

"No, no it's perfectly safe. The scanner hasn't blown up in ages." Toast reassured me, though I didn't exactly feel reassured.

"Aha! The scanner picked something up!" Ghost exclaimed, "The ghost is down in the basement." Ghost ran out of the room and Toast and I followed.

Why is it always the basement? We're gonna get shanked.

"Does anyone else think going to the basement is a bad idea? People die in basements!" I said as we ran towards the elevator.

"Are you scared?" Toast teased.

"I AIN'T SCARED OF ANYTHING!" I shouted before running into the elevator and going to the basement... without the others. I regret everything.

The elevator doors opened to reveal the basement. I stepped out of the elevator into the dark. The basement was sparsely lit and the few lights there were flickered on and on. It looked like the den of a serial killer.

I tried to head back up in the elevator only to find that it wasn't working.

"I'm gonna die alone in the dark." I groaned as I grabbed my phone from my pocket and turned on the flashlight.

I decided to explore the basement instead of wait for Johnny and Johnny. It would take them awhile to find a way into the basement since, for some strange reason, the stairs stopped at the first floor and didn't descend into the basement.

I walked deeper into the basement which looked like no one had been down there in years. I officially hate basements. And the dark. An-OH MY GOSH IS THAT A RAT. I screamed and ran into one of the rooms connected to the long hallway I was trapped in. Spiders I could handle. Snakes, piece of cake. But I absolutely did not do rats. In sixth grade my math teacher told me a story about a kid who had wandered off during a field trip and gotten his finger eaten by a rat. (True story it was terrifying.) Ever since I'd been terrified of the vermin.

The room I was in was dark and dusty and appeared to be some kind of infirmary. The only furniture in the room was an old examining table, a desk covered in medical equipment, and some filing cabinets. I rifled through the filing cabinets and found an order to demolish the Ashbury Asylum. Deeper inside of the file on the asylum was a picture, the asylum looked exactly like the hotel. Just my luck that I end up in the only hotel in the country that used to be an asylum. Sometimes I really hate my life.

I read the rest of the file and found out that Ashbury Asylum had closed down after one of its high profile patients had escaped. The building was demolished and the hotel built on the foundation. What they hadn't realized was that there was an entire floor that they hadn't known about that hadn't been destroyed. The floor I was on now.

I took a closer look at the desk to find that it was stained red and the medical equipment wasn't just normal stuff like stethoscopes or those Popsicle sticks they use to look down you throat, but it also had scalpels stained in what I assumed was blood and those things that look like hooks that you see in horror movies. I looked even closer to find a message scratched into the desk, ESCAPE WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

Deeply disturbed I scooted back from the desk only to fall onto the examining table. I put a hand out to balance myself only to grab onto a coarse fabric and pull it down on top of me. Squashed under the weight, I used my free hand which held my phone to shine a light on what I had pulled down only to scream in terror.

It was a corpse, smiling up at me with its cold dead eyes.

Author's Note:

Sorry for taking forever to update! I've been agonizing over how to write this chapter and I think I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Question of the chapter: What are you afraid of?

I'm afraid of holes and being alone. Holes creep me out and I really don't know why.