Wrecked Read online

  Wrecked

  New Gods

  by A. L. Magnus

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright ©2019 Hughes Unlimited.

  No part of this publication may be copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the author except for brief excerpts in a review. Cover photo ©Deposit Photos and the photographer, all rights reserved.

  First electronic book publication August 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual businesses, entities, places, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All people and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. This short fantasy is for adult readers.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  The Asylum

  Treatment Room

  Wrecker

  A Blink

  The Asylum

  Sparks pulled up her hood and wrapped her video camera in an extra sweatshirt. She stuffed it in her day pack along with snacks and holstered a bottle of water. Heading for the window, she caught her image in her studio’s glass doors. Dressed all in black, she disappeared. That’s how she liked it.

  Her secret role as the Truth Teller allowed her to be a vlogger on a mission without affecting her status in the town or jeopardizing her standing at the university. She’d scored one of the coveted work-study positions, even though she was a mere freshman. Her activities in the dark could cost her that gig. It was the kind of unwritten rule no one had to tell you. When you came from a poor family and managed to get the bucks together to go to school at all, attracting the wrong kind of attention would be a major loser move.

  A flicker caught her eye. Weird. For an instant, she looked like some kind of ancient warrior, a mage prepared for battle with a kick-ass staff. The leather outfit was sexy as hell, and she wanted those potions and that gear belt.

  Her ancient double slipped away.

  Checking to make sure Corey was fast asleep on the couch, she tiptoed to the window and opened it without a sound. Funny, all these nights of stealing out to do her deeds, and the night she was heading for the loony bin she hallucinated a warrior-woman wet dream.

  She stole down the fire escape on her sneakers. Practice made it easy to miss the creaking spots. No one was likely to see her at this hour. Pausing at the landing, she took a quick check at the building across the alley and down below. No one was stirring at this hour, not even the cats.

  The dead zone was her favorite time to prowl. The bar crowd cleared out or staggered wherever they went to sleep it off, the day people weren’t up yet. The streets were hers. One night, she wanted to try the rooftops. She’d trained with an acrobat, and she was sure she could do it, but that would wait for some other night.

  Right now, she had a mission. Her heart beat faster. If Corey hadn’t alerted her, she would have missed it. She was so glad she listened to her instincts and picked him to share the studio. She’d rather not have a roommate, but there was no way to cover costs without sharing living space. He occupied the couch, and she’d rigged a curtain across one corner that allowed some privacy for her cot.

  Pausing on the landing, she listened. No sounds in the alley, and Corey was a sound sleeper. He never knew she crept out at night. They had an affinity from the moment they caught each other’s eyes at the cafe when he arrived to check about the place. She hadn’t planned to pick a guy, but he was neat, paid the rent on time, and he was gay. Best of all, they’d become friends, and she trusted him with her secret.

  It would have bitten hard to be on this adventure with no one to tell. As if she wasn’t happy enough about him, he’d tipped her off that wreckers were going to take down the old insane asylum in the morning. Technically, today. Corey’s boyfriend Vince worked with the fire department and he heard about it. It was good to have a network.

  She swung down the ladder and made her cat-feet landing. Race-walking, she headed toward the edge of town. Cutting through the old train yard wasn’t her favorite part, but it was the fastest route. She used a beat-up backpack as camouflage. No way she’d flaunt that she carried equipment worth stealing to score drugs.

  Her town had changed, or maybe she’d tuned in to the dangers, now that she was on her own. Her survival antenna were alert. They had to be. It didn’t hurt that in the over-sized and slouchy hoodie, with her hair bound into a club at the back of her neck, she looked like a guy. It was an impression she’d worked to perfect. A walk with a long stride that came from the thighs not the hips, a cocky set to her shoulders, arms akimbo with a stance that said, ‘yeah, I’ll fight,’ and a furtive style of moving with chin down suggested to anyone watching that she was up to no good.

  The first time Corey caught her at it, out in the river park, he didn’t recognize her. After the slight embarrassment and secret elation of him cruising her, he gave her a high-five. She urged him to be careful. She didn’t want him to get hurt. Liking rough trade was one thing, but nothing could be worth getting gay bashed. The way his eyes flashed told her to stay out of it. She didn’t know enough about it, enough about anything, to judge him.

  Sometimes, she was so hungry for touch, she might to something dangerous to get it.

  She rolled her eyes. As if what she was doing wasn’t dangerous. Listening for any sign of people, she cut between two abandoned railway cars. Ignoring broken bottles, needles, and used condoms, she slipped out of the train yard into the shadows of the oaks.

  Her breath whooshed out. She always felt better once she got back into the open.

  The asylum caught her eye, crouching up on the hill above the town, the fog yellow and unhealthy in the single street light. The place had gone to ruin. No surprise someone was going to tear it down. The town kept growing and growing. There was always some developer eager to build more crap.

  Hustling past the local needle park and neon-lit franchises, she ducked into shadows where she could find them.

  Usually, she wanted old architecture to stay. The downtown had a few beautiful old buildings, and people had enough sense to preserve them as historical monuments. Same deal in outlying towns and along the coast. Preserving history added to the local charm for tourists and helped feed the economy. Probably the only reason the whole area wasn’t wall to wall fast-food joints, shopping centers, homes for the wealthy, and other shit.

  The ugly commercial crap gave way to a residential area undergoing gentrification, adding to the housing squeeze so more high-income people could take over the town. Down the coast, townspeople in a farther along wealthy-people-only city had started worrying where the maids would live.

  She pushed her pace, breaking into a jog and staying under the trees now that her target was in sight.

  The asylum didn’t rouse her protective urges. She couldn’t find it in her to be sorry it was going down. She’d looked into the history of mental health care. Enough to give her nightmares.

  A police cruiser crawled around the corner. Sparks slipped behind a fence and flattened herself to it. A dog barked, setting off the neighborhood. Her heart sped up, thudding in her ears over the clamor.

  Last night, she woke dropping hard on her cot in that jolting-awake sense of falling from a huge height after a night of fighting the institutional leather restraints holding her to an insane asylum bed. Welcome to the loony bin. After the way her mother went, she’d figured it might be only a matter of time until she lost her mind.

  The powerful motor kept going. By the sound, it should be around the corner. Good thing about doing a lot of night skulking. Her awareness of sound was keen. Her senses had become so sharp, sometimes it seemed unnatural.

  Holding her breath, she slipped along the fence and made sure the cruiser was out of sight.

  They rar
ely locked up crazy people anymore. The mentally deranged were left free to torture children, scrounge a living, or become homeless. No one cared unless they were making a disturbance in public. It was left to people with three-bathroom homes to set policies on ‘the homeless problem.’

  Sparks tossed her head the way she did when her hair was free. It was a way she shook off the bad stuff, but it felt weird in guy mode with her hair held captive. Mindful of vulnerability, she fisted her hands and did a quick one-eighty turn.

  No one saw her give herself away as a woman, or a restless horse tossing a mane.

  Snickering, she edged closer to the asylum’s fence, eager to get inside. Well, not exactly eager, but she wanted to do it.

  If not now, when?

  As she left the glow of the street’s only light, a swamp-like smell intruded into her nose. Shadows from big widow-maker pines thickened, making the not-morning colder. The damp settled into her, as though it finally made her sweats wet enough to cling to her skin.

  Maybe the dead maniacs were waiting for her to enter. She closed her hand on the broken gate. She yanked it, making a big gap like a missing tooth. Sucking in her breath, she slipped through where the top hinge no longer held one side. The smell of iron lingered on her hand. The whole place was a decaying relic of a horrific past. Institutional sadists locked away suffering people and bound them to face their demons in helplessness.

  Sparks shuddered and hurried to the entrance. Moonlight showed the broad door and the broken stairs, the buckled porch supports, one pillar cracked and leaning.

  She veered away and headed around the side where she wouldn’t be visible from the street.

  The damp grass offered no traction. Slipping, she jerked to one side, wrenching her shoulder as she fought to keep her balance. She stepped more carefully, slowing down, not eager to get hurt out here alone. This would be a horrible place to get fucked up.

  Realizing that she’d hate it if something happened to Corey, she pulled out her phone and texted him.

  At the asylum. All is quiet. Creepy.

  She turned off her phone volume. If anyone was in there, or the wrecking crew showed up, she didn’t want to give away her location.

  Pocketing her phone against her butt like a piece of armer, she picked her way across the slick grass to a side entrance.

  The jagged destruction of the door gave her a sense of relief—she wouldn’t have to break in. Overriding her beating-reinforced training not to trespass was tough enough, she didn’t want to add breaking and entering.

  In the dim light, it was impossible to tell if the door damage was recent or old.

  Okay. Let’s do this. Truth Teller at work. She steeled herself and ducked to get through the wrecked door.

  There. She was in.

  Her heart ached. She stood still, a horrible heaviness holding her to the spot.

  She didn’t have to go any further, did she?

  Treatment Room

  Sparks took a deep breath and headed deeper into the asylum. Her feet, her belly, hell, her entire body wanted to be anywhere but here. She kept pushing the override switch in her brain, forcing her feet to carry her away from the door and toward the worst part of this place.

  Maybe she should carry her pack in front. What if someone grabbed it from behind? She’d have to choose between losing her cam or being caught. Fuck. No time for paranoia. It was a freaking creepy asylum. That’s all. She just had to be careful in case there were people sleeping, drinking, shooting up, or fucking. She found evidence of all of that, the last time she braved this place on a dare.

  Cat-footing it, she evaded debris in the main hall, heading for the back. She’d broadcast her vlog from the wicked treatment room. the sick areas were far from the public entry of the torture institution.

  Nothing stopped her. No big hand clapped on her shoulder by a security guard, no lights flashing, no alarm, no shaking junkie pulling a knife. No pale ass swinging in the ancient rhythm of banging.

  It was almost a letdown. Almost.

  Tiptoeing, she entered the horror chamber. The reddish stains in the tubs and down one wall were rust, but her mind insisted blood. The whole thing reeked of a setting for a mass murder, the kind with dismembered bodies strewn around so wildly it would be a puzzle to put the parts together.

  Stop, Sparks, stop it.

  She found her chalk mark in front of the creepiest tub, the one with the leather straps hanging off it. A rat scuttled, and a horrible horrible head restraint like one from an electric chair tilted toward her.

  Fuck me. The things they did here. No doubt the torturers had woodies while they tormented the insane. Blurred the definition.

  Turning her back on the tub, compartmentalizing it into the background so she could get on with the show, she shrugged out of her pack. Took only a minute to set up her tripod and camera. No lighting for this. The heavy shadows would work, or not.

  No way she’d risk attracting attention. No curtains remained. The chamber’s sole window had nothing but heavy bars. A flash of a skeletal body writhing between them flashed through her, the pale flash bruised, the mouth a bleeding gash.

  Oh, fuck no. Let’s get this over with now.

  She turned the camera on, stepped back, bumped the tub and stifled a shriek. She met the soulless lens with hardened eyes, but no doubt her wide-eyed stare showed she was scared. Truth Teller, be it.

  “Greetings and welcome to the treatment room at our historical insane asylum. As you’ve no doubt noticed, we don’t have an asylum in this town any more, not even a facility with a new euphemism. The people foaming at the mouth are the ones with financial stakes. They’re offended that people with mental health issues roam loose. Some of homeless people with mental problems commit such offenses as aggressive panhandling, sleeping, public urination, public drunkeness... you get the picture. There’s no budget for people who can’t compete in the consumer marketplace. You should see the hoops a person has to squeeze through—repeatedly—to get any kind of help, and the tortures of hell known as applying for disability.”

  The tears escaped and her fists dug into her legs. “I know, because my mother tried to get help before she killed herself. I found her in the bathtub, she OD-ed on sleeping pills when I was seven.” She glared into the lens and stopped the tears by force. “So here you have it.” She flung out her arm at the tub behind her with its crown of skull-restraint horror. “The bad old days of institutionalization, and the glorious progress of no care for people who desperately need help. Welcome to your choices at work.”

  She pushed the button, too heart sore to continue the planned tour. No one needed to see the miserable rooms, the areas where inmates worked for their sad keep, the heartrending garden beyond the bars. She swallowed and carefully packed her gear.

  Resuming the pack, she hustled out of the treatment room, eyes straight ahead, ignoring the flickers of shadows or something else at the edges of her vision.

  Too much, it was just too much, she hadn’t expected that, it wasn’t where she meant to go, but it was done, live-streamed to her followers who got to watch her break down. She’d broken more than her ego, she’d fucked up her anonymity, too. Anyone paying attention now knew her mother was a suicide. They could use that information to narrow down the Truth Teller’s identity.

  Too much truth tonight, but it was done.

  She rubbed her hands on her jeans, as if she could get the clinging atmosphere of pain from countless inmates off of her. Fuck this place. She shook her head hard, missing her whip hair.

  Her hood fell and she left it down. No one to see in here, for that she was grateful. Bad enough to expose herself like that to her viewers, an offline viewer would have been too much. It was one consolation, no human audience.

  “No human.” The voice rumbled behind her.

  Sparks yanked up her hood and ran.

  He appeared ahead of her too fast for her to stop.

  Flailing, she collided with the giant.

&nbsp
; The man filled the space, hard as a living statue, massive. He didn’t touch her, or she would have screamed.

  She rebounded off him, wheeling her arms to keep from falling. “What the fuck?”

  Stepping farther back, she craned for a look at his face. Her feet said run, but what the hell was happening? He sounded like he answered her thoughts. This was impossible.

  The dawning day sent enough light between bars and through a doorway to show a devastating face. Not a monster face, a—it was impossible. Someone achingly familiar. Who was he? Some ‘friend’ of her mom’s who disappeared, the way all the men did, starting with her father? There’d been a time, before Mom lost her looks, when she had men to their room.

  No, she couldn’t picture this man there, with his hard-packed muscles, towering height, strong jaw, blonde-red hair and red beard.

  “Easy now. Let’s talk. I didn’t want to interrupt your performance.”

  “Nice of you. What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, I have business with the old asylum.” Something in his eyes, fierce—but kind.

  She stepped back. She was in her right mind. No way she’d turn into her mother. Standing here alone in the asylum with this huge stranger was fucking crazy. Time to flee.

  “Don’t, don’t go.” He held out his hand and cocked his head. “What do you call yourself?”

  “Sparks.” Disarmed by his friendliness and his so-familiar eyes, she blurted her name.

  Wrecker

  He ran his hand over his beard, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Sparks? What kind of name is Sparks? By the way, most people call me the wrecker. I’m here to level this place.”

  She covered her mouth, but it was too late. She told him her secret name. Kicking herself, she stared at the man’s blazing eyes. Why had she done that? What was she doing with this...massive, too-appealing man? She’d come here on a mission, and it was time to leave. She drew in a long breath and noticed his appreciative eyes on her chest. Well, maybe he could help here with a different mission.