After Stasis # 5

The closed Ridgeview Resort, sans the sign board, was easy to find without having to stop and ask for directions or rely on following Fat Johann’s scent trail (which is no great feat itself, as you know, he does not believe in personal hygiene). The long stretch of cemented fence was a dead giveaway. The pitch black spread it seemed to keep in was an open invitation to the daring and for the less daring to unleash their idle hands to spray paint the names of their street gangs which they laughably think of as fraternities, not-so-original nicknames derived from the hip-hop/rap genre and adolescent dogmas such as Emo Is Gay, Mabuhay CPP-NPA!! and the ever famous Punks Not Dead.

I chose the darkest, most vegetated area off road for parking. Once outside my vehicle, I stripped and tossed my clothes through the open car window. A gentle breeze uncorrupted by the city’s smog dappled my bare skin; waking every single sleeping pore until they rose as goose bumps to dot every inch of me. I breathed in a lungful, not exhaling, rather holding in until I felt every chest muscle stiffen and my gut draw up. I shut my eyes tighter, more by force of habit than the necessity to obliterate any possible visual distractions. Find the echoing void swirling inside. Then… You know the drill Selene, though I doubt you remember the feeling, if rumors were to be believed that you no longer need the change in order to tap into the gnawing force within us all.

Hopping to the hood then to the car’s roof, my ears twitched, straining for any sound that would betray the presence of any that could be alerted by my intrusion; the faint rustle of leaves, the sigh of boughs sprained in its own weight, the chirping of insect legs rubbing against each other, huff and bloated puff of frogs and the almost silent slither of a small serpent in the gutter a few paces from me. All these contrasted against the distant backdrop of the metropolis’ cacophony kilometers away.

Satisfied, I leapt and cleared the tall fence in a single bound and landed on the grass with a soft thud.

Random scents of moist earth, rotting leaves, dried twigs and fallen half-rotted fruits mingled with those of flaking paint, corroded tin and time-flayed lumber. It was the scent of abandon that assailed my nostrils the strongest. I also found it hard at first to distinguish the scattered unlit cottages from the stunted trees and shrubbery. I needed to refocus before my preternatural eyes adjusted itself to the gloom. Here is where you’d say darkness becomes its own presence.

I padded silently forward, sniffing the hard-packed ground beneath the untended grass. Beyond the empty pool where the acrid stench of disinfectants still unbelievably lingered came the mixed whiff of sweat, urine, blood and carrion. I traced it and it led me to what perhaps was once a swanky convention hall, circular and topped with conical roofing and a spire, but had now been rendered into nothing but just another boarded up structure in a cluster of yet other boarded up structures.

The cobbled walkway had grass sprouting from the cracks. It brought me to a concrete steps inlaid with rough hewn stones and flecked with patches of healthy moss. The wide narrow double doors before me was not bolted or padlocked from the outside. The scent was stronger here, sashaying from gaps between the doorframe, jamb and floor. And the wide windows of wood and capiz promised more darkness within.