The Sanitarium in Whispers For the Masses

As I was working this evening, I got a call from The Kid that said, "I'm coming to get you in a half an hour. Wear crappy shoes and bring a flashlight. We're going to break into the sanitarium tonight."

The Kid was sitting in the front passenger seat like a true criminal, hair and makeup perfect, all in black, and looking every bit like Catwoman. Her fabulously effeminate brother drove; his blonde hair spiked to perfection and the squareness of his jaw failing to soften every lisp that fell through his dialect.

The place was an abandoned mental hospital campus from the late 1800s. While I knew about it, I had no idea of its complexity. At the back end of a set of new apartments, we crawled into an open window of a half-sunken office from the 1960s. One policeman between the apartments and the campus would be a foreshadowing of what was to come.

"Hurry. We have to find the basement before someone spots us".

The chained gate to the stairwell had been torn open, and the normally structured basement gave way to a small opening at the end of a hall where the boiler pipes traveled into infinity. The exploration by flashlight of the old rooms, upturned furniture, and endless pipes went on for what seemed like an eternity. We stumbled across an underground gymnasium where the wooden floor was buckled into a wave cresting near 6 feet high. We walked, and walked, and walked. For what seemed like 20-30 minutes, the halls and pipes seemingly went on forever. It felt like a video game - as if we had survived the apocalypse and would be fending off zombie hoards at any moment.

Eventually the cold, icy stillness of a morgue gave way to a blast of cool air coming from a doorway. We scrambled slowly up an icy staircase to find ourselves behind a locked fence in front of a crumbling, ancient structure. Making the decision to stay above ground, we found a way around the fence and strolled down the desolate street. We were marveling at the buildings around us when we saw a manhole open in the road leading to a different tunnel than the one we had emerged from. As we were debating on whether or not to climb down, another police car turned down the street and there was no more decision to be made.

Down the rabbit hole we went.

...except this time we were being chased. We had been spotted. We saw the harsh light from the cops spin around a few of the breaks in the asphalt and brick that made our cage as we started to walk on. We figured that as vast as the tunnels were, as long as they didn't call for too much backup or come down to meet us we could outsmart them. As we walked on, we found a MASSIVE boiler room that looked closer to a nuclear reactor than anything else I'd seen before. The building we were assuming (from the outside) was a second gymnasium had been built ONLY built for the boiler.

I felt infinitely small.

The lights continued to peek in from outside, trying to find us as we scurried along like rats. Eventually we found a staircase that led to the outside. Enough time had passed and the signs of pursuit had faded. We made it for at least 10 minutes before we were spotted and had to run again. This time we used a huge embankment as a guard, and were able to slide by unnoticed around the other side.

These are the nights I need more of.

The maps of the passages in my head and the slinky, black, fearless figure darting around the puddles and pipes in front of me. The way that history can change the way the air tastes. The way the terrified man behind me says, "You know that in the movies, the black guy and the gay guy get killed first, right?"

The Summer is almost here. Let this be a delicious appetizer for the season.