“Maybe I should turn back” she said aloud to herself. The unease slipping into her body as it involuntarily shivered. She hugged herself and turned her flashlight to look back at how far she had come. She couldn’t see the door she entered through anymore. She had come too far to quit now. Turning back around, she held on to her resolve.

‘Come on Amanda, Don’t get all freaked out now. We need this story.’ Brushing her long blonde hair away from her face, she grumbled, ‘It’s going to be a long night.’

She continued walking, taking pictures of anything that she would need to look at and decipher later. Hearing the echo of her own sneakers as she walked farther down the hall. She had come to a fork, the hall split into three directions. One was straight ahead, the others were on the left and right of that.

‘Hmm, decisions, decisions. Should probably stay straight, just to be safe.’ She decided.

She had to climb over a stack of crumbled wall and ceiling to get any farther. Careful not to fall and cause damage to her camera she lifted her 4’ 9” self, up and over the mound. She got her footing in place on the floor, Pointing her flashlight in front of her she noticed there were no cells in this part of the building. Instead there were huge pipes. ‘They were for heating the boiler in the basement of this building’ she thought. How she knew that she had no idea. She had never been here before.

The Amazing thing was after she had come back from the brink of death a few months before, she suddenly knew things that she hadn’t before. Craved certain foods and adventure like never before. She even found, to her amazement, one day that she knew Latin.

Graffiti grew more prominent in the hall. The pipes had vanished into the walls awhile back. Words like help me, hell, bitch, die and pentagrams were spray painted everywhere. Trying to scare off any intruders.  

‘Stupid  kids’ She grumbled.

Then she heard something, she stopped. She heard someone coming her way. She stood still and listened as the footsteps got closer. She was looking all around for a sign that this other person had a flashlight with them. She didn’t see any bouncing light coming her way, which meant that the person coming here knew their way around pretty well. Maybe this was the break in the case that she was looking for.

She ran over to a piece of wall that stuck out and crouched down behind it and turned off her flashlight. She could hear the footsteps getting closer, her heart started racing as she clutched her camera, ready to jump out and strike whoever it was. Her hands became sweaty as the footsteps grew nearer. Finally whoever it was was coming up right next to her. She jumped out and smashed them in the face with her camera. Whom ever it was had fallen on the floor, dust and dirt flittered in the air. Amanda could hear coughing and heavy breathing commence.

‘Ow! what the hell was that!?’

Shocked, Amanda had let the camera fall around her neck and asked, ‘Jason, is that you?’

Shuffling could be heard then came the reply, ‘Fuck, yea it’s me, you gave me a bloody nose.’

She shined her light onto him as he lay on the floor wiping at his nose. she had bloodied it alright, maybe even broke it. Where had that strength come from?  ‘well thats what he gets for sneaking up on me, probably broke my camera too, the prick.’  She turned her light over to her camera to inspect the damage. Remarkably, it didn’t look like it had been damaged at all. She dropped her camera around her neck once more and shined the light back to Jason.

‘What are you doing here? I wasn’t told you’d be my assistant on this assignment.’