Jun

“Look at this place,” Jun whispers, shining his flashlight around the dingy halls of the building he had come across, so broken down he couldn’t tell what it once was. He had a few assumptions, though; there wasn’t any graffiti inside or out, so not a lot of people had been here, and a lot of whatever was left behind was still there. Syringes, surgical tools, clipboards broken and paper crumpled and shredded, it looked like a hospital. Whoever had been here wanted all of the evidence gone.

Well, it made for good content, at least.

“In case you’re wondering, it does reek in here,” he gives an unsure chuckle, looking around the halls. “I think it used to be a hospital or something. It couldn’t have been abandoned long, still smells like something died in here… Oo, you think we’ll find bodies?” He flipped the camera around to face him, wiggling his fingers spookily before shaking his head. “Nah, probably just some animal that got lost in here.

He flipped the camera again, steeling himself to trudge further through the eerily well-kept building. “This place gives me the creeps,” he whispers, shining his light on the particularly disturbing contents of what looked to be, at some point, a laboratory. The vials of blood had been emptied, everything lined up neatly in shelves. Whoever was here had left the equipment and took any proof anyone had been there - including documents and diplomas taken out of frames - with them.

His attention was snagged by a door that looked like it was once locked tight, peeking out behind a half-assed attempt to cover it with stacks of thick books full of medical jargon. With a bit of effort he moves the pile, the door seeming pretty important by the warning tape that’s been scribbled out. A part of him is really getting a bad feeling about this- Why did everything need to be so concealed?

After more thorough investigation in the pitch-black lab, he suspects the door was meant to lock air-tight upon being closed, but a couple books had fallen in the hasty attempt to cover the door entirely and stopped it from closing all the way. “Bingo,” he grins, working on forcing the door the rest of the way open. The plan was simple: go in, get some creepy shots, and get out.

The door finally gave way, letting him in. His face drops as the smell that radiates from the room makes him gag, frantically stepping back and coughing as he braced himself against the wall. “Holy fuck!” He retched, the bile burning his throat and making his eyes water. “I think I found the smell!”

Once he was sure he wasn’t going to vomit, he wiped the stinging tears from his eyes and exhaled deeply. “Swear to god, there’s something rotting in there, ugh…” His groans and complaints are cut off abruptly as he hears shifting coming from inside the room he had just uncovered, his face blanching. For a few moments he can’t bring himself to move. Is a stray security guard still back there? Is Jun fucked?

Some force convinced his body to start moving forward despite being admittedly terrified out of his mind, feeling like he was trapped in quicksand. As he swept his light over the surroundings, noting how run down this room seemed in comparison to the rest of the building. “What the fuck…?”

Cages. Rows and rows of cages, all stacked and lined against three of the four walls, mostly plastic with barely any ventilation holes aside from what looked like wire doors. Jun understood the smell now. Dead bodies lay rotting inside each cage, the carnage mixed with other disgusting bodily fluids, making it obvious whoever was kept here had been there for a while. “Hello?” He called, his voice unsteady as he examined every cage individually. He flipped the recording off on his phone, hands shaking and struggling to even hold onto the device at all. I’m gonna puke.

He heard the rustle again, quickly following the sound to another wall. He can’t tell if he’s grateful or terrified to find something- someone moving around in the much-too-cramped cage. Alive, but not exactly well. They looked gaunt, covered in festering wounds, obviously having been sitting in their own waste for a while. The sight of it made him throw up right there on the floor.

“Hey…” Jun shakily whispered, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “D-Don’t be afraid, it’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you…” he extended his hand out to the creature inside. They looked mostly human, but they were so caked in accumulated grime that it was hard to tell. He carefully unlocked the cage they were crammed into, opening the door and stepping back to give them some space. “Help me help you, okay? Can you talk? Can you walk? I’ll- I’ll figure something out, yeah?”

Maybe he should stop doing the urbex videos. Yeah, good idea, Jun.