Rubberasylum
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Story: Welcome to “The Asylum” (Part 1)
🕑 Added 2018-02-13 04:48:12 +0000 UTC August 22nd, 1978.The Clarksville police department was a buzz that day, for a break had finally come in the missing hikers case. A group of College kids that, by the family’s accounts were to be taking a week long camping trip in the Northshore nature preserve had been missing for the last two months.
Two days ago one of the missing kids was found at the edge of the woods suffering from dehydration and hypothermia, his arms showed tracks… The potential outcomes looked grim.
Michael Bradley, the lone survivor of the mysterious disappearance, sat in a padded chair on the 9th floor of Clarksville General Hospital, huddled under a blanket that he had been provided, gripping it tight as if it were his last salvation; to let it go would be to let go of the last shred he had clung on to during his perilous journey back to the town, back to the people he knew and cared for.
He shivered as he thought about his last two weeks in the woods, fighting for his survival as he travelled as far as his body would let him, thanking Jesus for every morning that he awoke again to continue his trek towards home. He was determined not to die in those woods, for he had a story to tell, what little he could remember of it, and if he could get them to believe even a titch, a shred of what he had to say, then perhaps he could help to bring the other boys home.
How could they believe him… why would they? Hell the last two weeks made very little sense to him as well. It all sounded like some bad pulp novel of alien abductions or some other bullshit like that.
For the last two days he occupied this hospital room, under close observation, as the cops came and went, asking the same questions that he couldn’t answer in as many ways as they could think to ask. They were trying to throw his off his game, getting his to slip and say something that would indicate he was more than just a victim of this tale riddled with inconsistencies.
It was a tale he had told again and again through fits of tears to hysterics; yet he knew he would be asked to recount it many times over in the coming days, for as he was reminded by chief Harper, as he stood over his hospital bed, glaring at the mysterious needle marks in his arm with an accusatory stare ‘This was a small town, and shit like this just doesn’t happen here’.
He remembered it all like it was yesterday, for it was a story that played non stop in his mind like an all night movie house that only owned one film. Rolling over and over in hopes to find a detail that he had missed before…
Though with every concurrent viewing, a small piece of his soul slipped just a little more…
It was Friday June 9th, when his and his boyfriend, Kevin, and three of their college roommates drove up the old logging road in to the deep forest on what was to be the boy’s yearly camping trip. The Van was quiet as the other three guys: Moray, Chris, and Joe; were a bit ticked at Kevin in his insentience to bring Michael along. It seemed that in previous years this had been a very closed, no others allowed, ‘male bonding’ type trip. Michael imagined the boys completely drunk, running around with their shirts off, caked in mud, and barking at the moon in some sort of ridiculous masculine call to nature.
He scoffed silently under his breath, but kept it to himself, knowing better than to aggravate the situation any further than it was. He wished to enjoy himself, and that they would too after they finished their pouting. All-in-all he knew this problem was nothing that the fifth of jack in his knapsack couldn’t cure, he just needed to wait for the right time to make his peace offering.
After about an hour of driving, Kevin pulled the van off to the side of the road, as they unloaded and went looking for a suitable clearing to set up camp. The boys had never been this deep in the woods before, for some asinine reason they refused to allow him at their normal camping spot, so Kevin was forced to stake out anew.
After the tent was staked, and the fire stoked, Michael produced his peace offering, in his opinion Tennessee’s finest. This elicited a burst of laughter from the boys as they brought out mason jars of moonshine. ‘An amateur’ they called him as the spirits flowed and the air cleared. The rest of the evening was taken up with merriment as one by one they disappeared in to the tent to sleep of the haze of the hooch.
As he awoke to what he perceived to be the next morning, Michael realized he was soaked to the skin, and lying in a pile of pine brush. His head pounded, and he had an amazingly hard time shaking himself awake. He had suffered hangovers before, but this was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
As he picked himself off the forest floor he cursed those assholes for what they must have thought to be fucking funny, dumping him off outside the tent in the middle of the night while he was out cold. He wandered about a bit in an attempt to regain his bearings, but could not find the clearing they had staked in the night before.
He called out, and then screamed out for them to no answer, he voice echoing off of the trees that surrounded him. For the next few hours he searched the woods for the guys before he finally dropped to the ground in frustration. Sitting there, on the edge of a felled tree, he attempted to make sense of what was going on as he absent mindedly scratched at the crook of his arm.
His attention slowly moved to his arm as he realized something was not right. Rolling up his long sleeves, he uncovered the needle tracks. Horror and mortification swept over him. What had happened? What had Kevin and the guys done to him? It was all too much, he slid off the edge of the log on to the damp forested floor, buried his face in to his hands, and allowed all the possibilities to wash over his as he shook and cried until he could not shed another tear.
And then he stood up, and hiked… as if his life depended on it, which by all points of common sense, he imagined it did. It was imperative he kept moving. Every day he would push himself until his body gave out on him, every morning he would orient himself on the rising sun hoping to god he was still in the woods to the west of the town.
He survived by foraging for nuts and berries, whatever he could find. At nights he would form makeshift shelters of pine branches and was able to start fires from the cigarette lighter that thankfully was still in his jeans pocket.
The morning he appeared from the edge of the woods, he collapsed in to the arms of a state trooper that had spotted him emerge.
He woke up again in this hospital room, knowing well what everyone must think, without any ideas how to alter their perceptions….
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On August 24th, 1978; at 3:27am in the morning, Michael Bradley ingested a lethal dose of narcotic pain meds. An investigation by the hospital in to how he got the meds turned up to be inconclusive.
Most Clarksville residents to this day believe there is more to the story of the missing boys than he told. Any other information that he may have known he took with him to his grave.
Despite intensive searches of the Nature Preserve, no sign of the missing boys, their campsite, or their van was ever found.
To this day it remains a cold case.
************************************************** **********************
January 14th 2011,
A lone van sat on the edge of the Preserve, as Bradley Dudley and his friends packed provisions.
This had been in the planning stages for a while, kind of a camping trip for some of the members of the Clarkesville High School varsity football team.
OK, well perhaps “camping trip” is a misnomer… More organized extortion on the part of Bradley, the captain of the team.
His compelling argument of “Either you go or you’re pussies” convinced four other players to join: Sam: the wide receiver, Steve: the Half Back, Gary: the Full Back and Todd: the Tight End, by which if you listened to the rumors that floated around town was a very apt moniker.
This of course inspired Bradley to come up with the witty nickname of “Queerbait”.
Todd really wanted to lay the bastard out, but since Bradley was much stronger than he, Todd kept the growing anger to himself.
They were headed up to the old Brackenridge Manor Lodge, a former destination spot, on the edge of the preserve, whose business slowly died off in the wake of the disappearances…
…Uh, the killings… Uh… See now that was the problem, no one could make up their mind what they believed happened, and in a town as small as Clarkesville they were happy believin’ what they damn well please and not taking any chances, thank you very kindly…
So yes, Brackenridge faltered for a few years, they even put up a good fight against public attitudes, but still ended up closing their doors in 1983…
There it sat, rotting; few people have the guts to go there, as rumors change with time. Like the storybook fish, the tale grew and grew with every re-telling.
What was once the playground of Fudds and Snowbunnies alike is now known as a place of grizzly acts….
…And this was where Bradley aimed to take them, those who didn’t want to be known as pussies and queerbait….
… And so they packed the van, like suckling pigs offering to stick apples in our their own mouths…
…Perhaps they should have just stayed the fuck in bed…
