The Lost Alaskan Part 2

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Her feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence, that all-too-familiar post snow crunch engulfed her eardrums.

“I did it” she muttered to herself. “I really freakin’ did it….”

Her steaming breaths were in short intervals. Her nervousness had her stomach in knots.

“Toss the flashlight over!”

Russet tossed it, and she caught it. The cold steel stung her palm as she caught it, her eyes seeing dots from the brief moment the lumens made contact with her retinas.

When she regained her bearings, it wasn’t long until Russet’s voice broke the deafening silence again.

“So, come on! Find the door! Let us in!” There was a child-like excitement in his voice, like a kid at Christmas telling his parents to come downstairs with him. He knew damn well there was no way in unless he came over the top, too, but his excitement never waned. “Hurry! It’s brick tit out here!”

“It’s not gonna be any warmer in there,” Mallick pointed out. “This building hasn’t been used in a century!”

Juniper took a couple of crunchy steps towards the hate that Russet was boxing with a few moments earlier. Like she suspected, it had a massive padlock on it to prevent trespassers.

“There is no way in” she shivered out the words, until reality hit her like a bullet train. “Or…” she gulped ....”way out.”

The old asylum loomed behind her, as if looking over her shoulder. Taunting her. There was a presence here…..a presence that didn’t want her snooping around.

The wind was starting now, blowing the leaves and brush around by her feet. “I’ll go check out the inside, and let you know if I find anything. You two, in the meantime, figure out a way to get me out.”

“This place is huge, be safe” Mallick said.

“Don’t be such a pussy!” Russet told him, “she wants all the cool stuff to herself! I knew it was a bad idea!”

Yeah, a bad idea it sure was. She was stuck behind the fence of an abandoned sanitarium in the middle of nowhere that has federally restricted signage all over the place—--

She felt herself beginning to walk, using the narrow white light with the small circle to guide her.

The building got closer with each passing step. The crunches got louder as they seem to echo off the withered brick. The grime stained windows didn’t have the moonshine glimmer, and she shuddered to think what lay behind them. After what felt like an entire calendar year, she got to the what was once a door. It hung sideways off its hinges, and the opening space was roped off with yellow tape like a crime scene. DO NOT ENTER.

ACCESS DENIED

She hadn’t come this far just to come this far. She ducked under the tape, and stepped into the place or horrors that had tortured so many Alaskan’s before her. Was it possible to be colder inside than out?!

It was.

The place was huge, she’d give it that. She figured it needed to be, to house all of those people. There was broken glass and debris all over the floor, so she couldn’t escape the crunch with each tentative step. The walls were eerily plain. No graffiti, no holes or or stains. No sign of human life at all. The place looked exactly like it was left, albeit it older. She continued to walk, feeling more and more uneasy as the minutes passed, until the came to a large room filled with empty metal bed frames. Rusted, and some missing bars. Each one had straps attached, however, causing her to gasp at the sheer idea of what they may have been for….

–who they may have been for.

Papers littered the floor, many of them with writing far too faded to be legible. There were sounds echoing in the distance. Pops and bangs, faint yells. Surely it was Russet and Mallick, trying to find a way in. Her flashlight blazed a trail on the chipped concrete floor, and she followed it for as far as it would take her.

“This place gives me the heeby jeebys” she said to herself. The fact that she was alone hit her again, her anxiety preying upon her psych like the jaws of a snake clamping down on her temples with undeniable force—

She gasped, audibly.

She had come to the back of the vast expanse of torment. What lie before her made her physically ill. 

Graves.

Sometimes people, such as chronic inebriates, were sent to Morningside as a way to keep them from freezing to death on the streets.

You have to consider the times. This was before psychiatry, there were people there (at Morningside) with epilepsy and substance abuse and everything, including mental illness. Most of the treatment was about safety and a place to live. It was before pharmacological treatment.

The youngest person at the facility was a mere 6 weeks old, and the oldest was 96. The youngest were most likely severely developmentally handicapped. Many had Down syndrome or birth defects.

There are now approximately 500 death certificates posted in the Morningside Archives, many of which have never been properly exhumed from their desk drawer. The hospital closed in the 1860s and all the records were lost. The only thing that still remains to tell the macabre tale of the patients who didn't survive here were these headstones.

The Lost Alaskans.

Her stomach contents came up and she heaved, a dizziness coming over her that she couldn’t explain. Something, someone, was here.

There was a loud bang behind her, and not too far behind. It sounded as though something had fallen off of a shelf deep within the confines of the hell behind her, most of which she had not explored. Another, but this time louder, and with more force. It shook it out of her trance.

It was a gunshot.

A gunshot from the woods, and lights.

Her head turned back towards the cemetery in front of her. “ALEXANDER”, one of the headstones read. She could barely make it out, but there was enough there to piece it together. E. Alexander.

“Who were you”, she said softly, her breath dancing softly off the stone slab. “Why were you here?”

Another shot rang out, louder than the previous.

HER FRIENDS.

She forced herself back to her feet and took off towards the fence behind the burial site.

“RUSSET??!!! MALLICK?!!!” She yelled for them, but felt like she was yelling into the grand canyon. The Alaskan forest was dense, and they could be anywhere.

She called out to them again, only to be met with another shot. Through tear stained eyes she thought she could make out two white dots heading in the other direction, back into the wilderness. Flashlights.

A feeling deep in her core told her that this was Russet and Mallick. They had taken off, left her for dead…..

Or worse.

The other, deeper voices were getting closer. She frantically scanned the fence for any deficiencies, a way out. ANYTHING.

There was none.

They were so close she could hear them now.

“There were three of them. Scared off the other two. Split up and let's find their buddy.” Radios.

The law.

Shit.

With her sweat dripping and sticking to her clothing, making it like wearing a skin tight icicle, she did the only thing that she could do.

She heaved with a grunt as she wrapped her arms around the headstone.

“Lift with your legs” she huffed, “not with your back.” About the only thing her piece of shit stepfather ever told her that turned out to be useful.

“Hrrrmph!” She pulled as hard as she could. Footsteps echoed behind her followed by chimes in two way radios and distance voices.

“HRRRRRRRRUUUUGHAWD!”

Her shoulder blades felt like they would disengage from their sockets and and her forearms burned like 3rd degree.

She heaved again and threw the heavy stone at the chain link. It shook the fence, but didn’t break.

“I think she went to the cemetery!”

She lifted it again, not sure how she was getting the strength to do it, but thankful she was.

Another throw. Shaking but no break.

A third.

A fourth.

“HEY!” A voice behind her.

The final throw was her last ditch heave. It was success or failure, survive or face a federal charge.

She heaved, sobbing as she did so.

IT BROKE.

Footsteps behind her, running.

She didn’t have time to smile. She took off, running with all of the poise she could muster. Running into the woods, anywhere. She ran until her legs gave out, and she hit the dirt, panting heavy.

Silence engulfed her. The footsteps behind her were gone. She looked around at the wilderness with no idea where she was.

What direction she had ran.

For how long.

If she was even still alive.

There were sirens in the distance, and dogs. They were far off, and seemed to be going the opposite way.

She looked around again, trying to catch her bearings. She was alone, in the deepest and most desolate woods in North America. She got to her feet, brushed herself off, and did the only thing she could.

She began to walk.

Looking back towards the asylum, she smiled.

E. Alexander had saved her life. The dead man had given her a chance to survive, and all she needed was a chance.

“The Lost Alaskan” she said to herself, with a soft chuckle.

FOR SOME, THE LIVING ARE FAR SCARIER THAN THE DEAD
Show me all the deaths are the same
Show me you'll remember my name
Show me all the deaths are the same
You will remember my name

“Easton, you poor tortured soul you.

It must be like dying a thousand deaths every time you stare into the ass end of a mirror, because you realize that what is staring back at you has amounted to nothing more than a puddle of bubbling afterbirth since the moment you got here. I tried to be nice, I did. I even complimented you! I gave you a chance to show the world that everything everyone says about you is just phooey, jealousy and misplaced shade. You took that chance and what did you do?! You took a steaming dump on it the moment you opened your mouth. A hot, liquid crap that spewed from your lips like a chocolate waterfall. Contradictions and ill formed statements born from the deadly combination of not believing in yourself, and not being all that bright. Your little temper tantrum when your failure to win anything that matters was thrown in your face shows that it's a touchy subject for you. Who cares about titles? Apparently you do, and your poker face is terrible.

This is mine:

And a mighty fine derriere, too, I might add.

You can’t figure me out, Easton. You don’t control this narrative, and that scares you, too. I’m inside your head, like I said before, and I have you in a mental game of chess. You’re so desperate for a checkmate that you have slipped up, made a mistake, moved the wrong way. You’re going backwards. I gave you every opportunity to eviscerate me and prove you’re better at talking the talk than walking the walk (because we know your legs are basically broken when it comes to walking the walk), but you fumbled the pass in the backfield. Easton Butterfingers has struck again, and this time it hasn’t cost the Alexander team the game, but perhaps his entire livelihood.

This game we play, this torment we put our bodies through night in and night out, is all for one purpose: being the best. If you don’t want to be the best at this, you’re in the wrong game. Some people just want to watch the world burn, some people want to capture it in their palm. You lack that killer instinct needed to be the best, because you’ve become complacent with your shortcomings. Excuses and a shotty defense instead of accountability and improvement. You could ‘care less about a world title’, but only a few loosely thrown together sentences later it's ‘I’m gonna win that title! I’m gonna be somebody for once!’

Pick a lane, E-Man. Preferably one that leads to some train tracks.

You're stuck in a storm that you are ill prepared to weather. That storm is me. I am a damn tornado, Easton. You’re just the cow being spun around for cinematic value.

You’re so absorbed with your own delusions that clearly you haven’t been paying attention to anything other than hair gel and cut off sleeves. I took down the very woman who hired me in my first defense but her name is Strader. Not Alexander. So, you probably missed it.

It was a good time, you should go back and watch it.

I left you a little gift in that ring at Piledriver. I showed you your future. You ran with it and claimed that you’ll be the champion buried under the ground–in a buried alive match–which makes me chuckle, facepalm and “awwww” simultaneously. I think that may be the first time I’ve ever done that, so, hey, you won something….for once. Don’t let it go to your head!

You were right about one thing, though. You will be in that grave. Your career will take an altering turn, and you will come face to face with your biggest fear. Everyone has their day, and yours is rapidly approaching. It is almost time to drag the sickly dog out to pasture and do what should have been done long ago.

I really do wish you the best, Easty. I really do hope that one day you capture that title you don’t care about and claim it has made you worthwhile. I really do hope that one day you win while losing a match, ya know, for shock value. That’ll be neat! Stick it to the man! Buck the trend! Work the system! Defy…..reality.

You can do anything you set your mind to Easton, anything except for beat me on this night.

Pride cometh before the fall, they say. Pride is the devil, and yours is your death sentence. Your tragedy is my comedy, and I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

Flint Michigan is going to run red with the blood of the OCW’s biggest disappointment."