ASYLUM

The building was cold and damp and the moon's beam reflected jaggedly off the broken, musty, old windows.
Deep shadows lurked in every corner of the yard. The four floors of the decrepit asylum reached up to the
dark sky. It loomed before him. It had been closed for a half century but the memories of the long-gone
inmates still haunted the ancient halls.

The main entrance was guarded by two stone lions; their mouths open in silent roar. Two huge oak doors
as solid as iron, stood before him, and if he closed his eyes tightly, he could see the big doors open, feel what
it was like to be pushed through them, and sense the ghosts of fifty years gone by.

He opened his eyes and calmed himself. After a quick glance behind him, he strode towards his own entrance;
one slightly less grand than the heavy oak doors. Just to the right of them, almost completely hidden by a dead
rosebush, was a tiny broken window. Behind the rotting frame of the window was a ten foot drop to a cellar.
A cellar once used to house the Devil's own. Some of the patients who were kept there were sick. Most, society
just hoped were sick.

He removed the splintered frame and gazed down into the murky room. The darkness was so dense that it seemed
to stir with a lifeless energy. He could see nothing. The drop could have been a hundred feet and he would not have known.

He pulled out a torch from his sports-bag and shone its wide beam down into the vacant dorm. For the first time he
saw the cellar, and it sent a cold, icy chill through his veins. Most of the furniture had been removed, but a rusty
old bed frame complete with a very worn mattress, stood haphazardly in the far right corner. A large black rat
scurried from one of the many holes in the mattress, quickly followed by three more. The torches beam skimmed
across the far wall, and panned down onto the floor, illuminating a stirring carpet of cockroaches.

The towns children told horror stories to their friends, repeating second and third-hand tales of how the inmates
were forced to eat the roaches just to stay alive. But even when the stories were told in the dead of night, in the
middle of the woods around a dwindling camp fire, forgotten marshmallows burning in the flames, none of them
truly believed what they heard. Very few ever realised how close to the truth they were.

He dropped his bag through the window, and watched as various rodents and insects scattered quickly out if its
way. He aqueezed in backwards through the narrow window and hung silently from the moist ledge before dropping
the last few feet. Something crunched loudly under him. He chose not to think about it.

The swinging light of his torch found the door. It was constructed of some kind of heavy, badly rusting metal and
sat atop four stone steps, slightly ajar. He walked carefully across to it, ignoring the occasional nauseating crunch,
and brushed an itch off the back if his neck. He breathed only through his nose; he feared opening his mouth
incase something crawled in. He didn't like that room.

Water ran softly down the wall and onto the steps, giving off a pungent stench. He pulled the door inward as far
as he could, breaking a spiders seal in the process. The hinges grinded, and squeaked loudly, the piercing sound
vibrating and echoing off the walls. He squeezed quickly through the doorway, and out into a long corridor, pleased
to have left that little corner of Hell behind him.

The hallway spread out on both sides, and even with the powerful beam from his torch, it appeared endless. He
decided to turn right. He headed along the featureless passageway, the sound of his footsteps bouncing off the grey
concrete walls, and the low, flaking ceiling. After a few minutes, the corridor started to curve lightly to the right,
and soon developed into a slight incline.

After what seemed like far too long of a time to be in a lightless corridor, he finally reached a small wooden door.
It stood, rotting in its frame, hanging limply from its top hinge. He pushed the door inwards, but that was enough
for the decrepid door, and it fell, crashing loudly to the floor. It's echo swelled around him and flew off in all
directions, bouncing from wall to wall and room to room.

He crossed over from the passage into a small room. It was in no better shape than anywhere else he had seen so
far, but at least it offered a way up - a spiral staircase stood in the far corner. He climbed the stairs, grateful to be
back above ground again.

He climbed all the way to the fourth floor. The musty odour of decay hung thickly in the damp air as he turned left,
and headed down a much smaller corridor than the one below. He walked a few paces, then stopped and looked up.
A large hole in the ceiling gave him a view of the rafters above. He felt a cool breeze on his face accompanied by
the whistling of the wind, as it blew its way across the fourth floor and back out into the night. He pressed on.

Along the hallway, his torch would pick out rats and beetles at sporadic intervals, and once its beam fell onto the corpse of a huge disgusting black rat, its lifeless eyes gazing behind him, following the wind.

He passed several doors before stopping. He stood silently in the centre of the corridor then turned to his right and
rasied the light. It fell on the door number which still clung awkwardly to the green door. Room number forty-nine.
He entered, letting the door fall shut behind him.

The room stank. The draft was worse than in the hallway. There was another hole in the ceiling, only this time he
could see all the way through the roof to the moon and stars. The floor was wet and soft, decaying beneath him. He
walked softly to the corner and slid down onto the floor, resting his back on the fungus that lined the walls.

He propped the torch up against the wall beside him. It pointed upwards, creating a fountain of light that showered
the putrescent room with its orangeish glow.

He reached into his black sports bag one more time, pulling out a long silver revolver.

'In this thoughtless decade,' he muttered, 'even I can get my hands on one of these bastards.'

He slipped the barrel of the gun between his lips and closed his eyes. The metal was cold against his tounge .It was
reassuring.

The building that had taken his soul so long ago, was about to take his life. He pulled the trigger.