Thread: Weekends at the Asylum - 1200 Words

This piece is an obvious "Part I." It's a memior with the intent of turning it into a piece of fiction. I'm not sure what I want advice on specifically, but please respond with anything at all for me. Thanks.


Wow, it’s just houses now. Not like it used to be. Only a few of us remember what it looked like before they built these houses. I wonder if the new homeowners can feel it. I wonder if they hear screams at night as they fall asleep in their expensive new bedrooms. I wonder how long it will be before they have the house back on the market. My guess is not long at all. It really wasn’t that long ago that the city was still trying to get the last remaining wings torn down so they could build a golf course. I’m actually surprised to see the sub division here. I guess what you don’t know won’t hurt you. I remember. God, I remember.

During the fall of ’94 we seemed to have spent a lot of time there. I think we went out there very weekend if we could get everyone together and gather our weekly courage. It never got easier going in. As often as we went, I would have thought that I’d get used to it. Every weekend was a new adventure and we would always find something that was just enough out of place. There was always something different from last time. I don’t mean that we would always notice something new like every time I watch “The Big Lebowski,” but that there would be something noticeably different every weekend – we were not the only ones going in.

The first time we ever went in was one of the most apprehensive moments of my life. The guys I had been with had been there before, but I was a virgin. They tried to describe it to me on the way there, but it didn’t justify the real thing. We parked at the Burger King across the street and made sure that we didn’t see any cops hanging around in the area. The last thing I needed was to get a fine for something stupid like this. Of course, we were in my car, we were always in my car, so I knew something bad was going to happen to it by leaving it in the parking lot. We grabbed our flashlights and locked it up. We looked both ways and bolted across the street looking all around to make sure no one was watching. We came up to the entrance, which was only a piece of chain, and stepped over it. Wow, nothing to it, I remember thinking. I would have assumed that it would have been locked up tight. Well, the hardest part is over. Nothing to be nervous about now.

The mud was sticking thick to my shoes and the weeds and dead tree branches were slapping me in the face as we walked up the path. We followed what used to be the road that led in to the facility. The first building we came to was what looked like a welcome center. It had a horseshoe driveway so that the families of the patients could get in and get out, so to speak. The driveway was overgrown with plants and weeds, but we could still make out the general path. I looked to the right and saw a big building with the lights still on. From what I heard, the electric bill was paid up to a certain point and this was the last building to be shut down; apparently not yet, though.

We walked up the stone steps to the welcome center and inspected the outside of the building; no one had been admitted here for a while. The door was missing, the windows were broken out, and there were Nazi symbols spray-painted all over the stone walls. Looking through the entrance, we could see broken bottles and more graffiti. We were slow moving, but we had managed to walk into the building. It was dark in there – no moonlight. My balls were tight enough up to that point, but somehow they manage to tighten up just a tad more. I was genuinely scared. Who knew what lurked in the dark in here. Crazy people had checked in at the very spot I was standing in. There was a broken desk in the middle of the room and that was it. It was a simple little building, not much to it.

The three of us were too afraid to walk towards the lit building, so we headed to the next building on the quasi-path. This building was in the same condition the welcome center was. If there was a window left unbroken, it was only because the kids like us who were here before must have missed it. This building was bigger and darker. The brush grew thicker the farther back we walked, and by the time we came to this structure, we were deep in it. Again, there were a few steps up to a porch and missing double doors. We slowly walked in and the beam of our flashlights bounced around the room to reveal a theater lobby.

The lobby was trashed and tagged with graffiti, but the underlying elegance of what it used to be was still visible. Brass poles and ropes were lying around. Smashed glass-top counters were thrown around the room. We walked up to another set of missing double doors and looked out into a huge amphitheater. Where we stood was the very top of the seating in the balcony. From where we were standing, the actual theater was underground. As we started to walk down the steps to get to the stage, we heard noises outside. We were in a very remote place and it was pitch black. Hearing noises at that moment scared me more anything ever had in my life, especially since we were in awe at that point of what we had just come across. We had realized that the place we found was an entire community. It was not just a hospital that took care of mental patients, it was a living center.

We froze when we heard the noises. Was it the cops? Was it other people like us, just looking for a rush? Was it the crack heads in the tunnel that we had heard about? Since we weren’t sure, we split. We ran out through a broken window on the side, snuck around the corner, and bolted down the path, past the welcome center, and out through the chain link gate. We were gone; didn’t even look back.

When we got back to the car, we sat there, no one said anything, huffing and puffing. After about five minutes of us catching our breath and absorbing what we had found, someone finally spoke:

“What the fuck?” I had said.

That was the general feeling going through the three of us: Sean, Will, and me. From that moment on, though, we knew what we’d want to do every chance we got. We knew that we just found a cheap fix for a brand new addiction.

144 views and not a single comment? Is it really that bad? Please, leave me some feedback.....Thanks.

not bad at all. it kept me reading and ended with me still interested.

That said, it does need some editing. The writing is a little too informal for me; I know that is the voice you have chosen as narrator, but I think you can keep the voice and style while tightening it up a bit. It is also a bit choppy here and there, and could use more descriptive langauge.

i will edit your first two paragraphs as an example:

I was surprised to see the subdivision here. It wasn’t that long ago that the city was still trying to get the last remaining wing of the asylum torn down so they could build a golf course. I guess the city thought better of the golf course project.

It’s just houses now. Not like it used to be. Only a few of us remember what it looked like before they built the houses. I wonder if the new homeowners feel the asylum's presence. I wonder if they hear screams at night as they fall asleep in their expensive new bedrooms. I wonder how long it will be before they put their houses back on the market. My guess is not long at all.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe what the new homeowners don’t know won’t hurt them.

But I remember. God, I remember.

During the fall of ’94 we spent a lot of time there. We went out there every weekend that we could get everyone together, if our courage held. It never got easier. As often as we went, I would have thought that I’d get used to it.

Every weekend was a new adventure. We would always find something that was out of place. I don’t mean that we would always notice something new like every time I watch “The Big Lebowski,” but that there would be something noticeably different every weekend – we were not the only ones sneaking in.

just my thoughts. keep writing this!

Very helpful. Thank you.

Yo, Dude ( as Randy Jackson would say)

The start of a good scary story. It's a fun read.
I agree with Alan, it needs to be tightened. Not so much that it loses the feel of a teenager who still feels the tightening balls a little.

I think that by the third paragraph I wan to know it's a mental hospital. It explains the high anxiety, and lets me participate in it.

Keep on trucking. You have a good story here.

Jim

I'd take out the first two sentences and just start with the third.

I could visualize what you wrote very well. You describe the surroundings with great detail and also the feelings that are conjured up throughout the story. I didn't really the line where you descibed his anxiety as his "Balls tightening up". I think you could find a better way to explain his feelings of tension during that moment. Other than that, I liked it. Keep up the good work!!