Urban Explorers

It was nighttime. Rain poured down on the parked car. The constant rythm was so hypnotizing that Carl was nearly falling asleep. Suddenly the door was pulled open, and that startled him so much that he let out an unmanly shriek.

This reaction was just what Aubrey had been aiming for.

"Hah, I got you!", she laughed, making a creepy face. Then, quickly, she climbed on the passenger seat. "You nearly pissed your pants!"

"I did not", Carl protested, slightly annoyed. He and Aubrey were buddies, but she could be a nuisance. His personal manic pixie nightmare girl. Now she closed the door, shook raindrops out of her unkempt hair and giggled as if she was absolutely positive that he was lying.

"It's fine, Carl. You're only double my size and part of the wrestling team, so of course you are prone to be a bit jumpy when I attack you." She smirked.

That was Aubrey for you: People looked at her and saw the archetypical art student; a wiry, pretty girl that could be beautiful if she cared. They would look at her grungy clothing and think she was the thoughtful, poetic type, citing french literature while her large, dark eyes were half hidden behind the curtain of her unruly black hair.

Then she would open her mouth and they would realize she was actually an extrovert loudmouth, slightly damaged and highly intelligent and equipped with a devil-may-care attitude that was downright scary.

"We're going to the rape house!", she now started singing in an upbeat voice while she buckled her seatbelt. It was a nice little riff on a well-known song. "Uuh-hu, the rape house, yeah yeah..."

"You know, it's not that funny", Carl sighed, but turned the engine on and got the car going. "I mean sure, it's great that we finally do this. But maybe sell it with a little less... glee."

"I will try to be more serious once we are recording", Aubrey promised. "A little more serious at least. Come on you big baby, this is our chance to become famous!" She whirled around and hit a small fist against his shoulder.

"Ouch", Carl said. "But okay, you are right. I just want this to work out."

Aubrey took her phone out and checked the battery, then turned and took the case with the recording equipment from the backseat.

"It's the perfect opportunity", she said. "Fenton House has a creepy history, it's the most fucked up place we have yet explored. A mansion on the lakeside where an insane psychiatrist tried to turn women into sexual slaves, how perfect can a story be?"

"It's maybe not a perfect story for the women he abducted", Carl said, now grinning himself. "Also, he did not just try. He suceeded. He broke something like twenty women over the years." He had to admit that Aubrey was right, it was a sexily creepy story.

"Oh come on, those girls were dumbasses! I mean, how naive can you be? I have been on a lot of weird parties, but never ended up in a guys trunk, or chained in a basement. And if I had, he would have regretted it. It's just inane that he managed to brainwash them all."

"A brainwashing might do you some good too", Carl mumbled with his eyes on the road.

"Fuck you", Aubrey answered, chuckling. Then her eyes widened as she looked ahead into the night. "There it is, you gotta turn right. Down that country road, about two more miles."

Carl did as she ordered. Aubrey was always right about those things. So they went down that dark, narrow road, and meanwhile Aubrey turned on the camera and filmed herself.

"Good evening guys and gals!", she explained with a bright smile to all their future viewers. "This is your beloved Aubrey again, on a fresh trip into insanity. With me, as always, is my buddy Carl. Say hi Carl!"

"Hi Carl", Carl said, focussed on the road.

"So", Aubrey continued, "I know you guys love when we explore lost places and dark catacombs. And that is why, this time, we have chose the darkest of them all: We are going to Fenton House, a lakehouse in the vicinity that has an especially dark history." She pointed the camera at Carl again.

"Carl, darling, baby, be so kind and fill us in about what happened at Fenton House."

Carl grinned, because frankly, Aubreys chipper attitude always did that with him. He had been annoyed, but now his adrenaline level was rising and he was getting into the mood. This was by far not their first stunt as urban explorers, but it could very well be their breakthrough.

"Well, it's a fucked up place to be sure", he explained with verve. "Psychologist Dr. Richard Fenton lived here, and after the death of his wife converted the place to a private asylum for women from good families. You know, troubled women, as they called that in his time. Being admitted here did not really require a female to be mentally ill. She just needed to be trouble or an embarrassment for her wealthy clan."

"So you mean that I could have ended up here too?", Aubrey asked, playfully shocked for the viewers entertainment.

"Not really, because as far as I know, your broke-ass family could not have afforded your incarceration", Carl chuckled.

"How lucky for me!", Aubrey said with exaggerated relief.

"Well, except for the possibility that the good Dr. would have seen you as a good candidate for the... lower levels of the house", Carl said now, conjuring campy horror vibes.

"Well do explain!", Aubrey asked, widenig her eyes as far as possible. "What happened down there?"

"Oh well, that is where things get really twisted." Carl kept his eyes on the road, because in this rainstorm it was hard to follow, becoming more and more narrow and riddled with potholes. "The good Dr. Fenton worked here for over 20 years, undisturbed. Only then did police discover a connection between Fenton House and the cases of several missing girls and women. Runaways, female students from the nearby college and some single ladies from the area had disappeared. Finally, the mansion was searched for clues."

"Oh no!", Aubrey explained in a mockingly shocked voice. "Do tell what they uncovered, Carl!"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I think we all do!", Aubrey proclaimed as a stand-in for all their devoted, horror-addicted fans.

"Well, it turned out that the good doctor loved his straightjackets a little too much. He had several hidden tracts beneath his house, and in those he experimented with abducted women from the area. He kept them in constant bondage, used drugs, hypnosis and electroshocks on them, stimulated them in different ways... that kind of stuff."

"How kinky!", Aubrey said, grinning. Then she pointed the camera at herself again. "So what do you say guys and gals? Should we pay Fenton Manor a visit? because as we just found out a few days ago, it's the perfect time for that! The house has been abandoned for a decade, but a security firm was always on the compund, making sure that interested citizens like Carl and me - and you of course! - had no chance to check the place out. But now the guards have been fired and a new contractor will take over in a few days. And in the meantime... no one is going to stop us!"

She made a cute cheering motion and blew a kiss in the directin of their future viewers. Aubrey was very good at that: She could be creepy and cute at the same time, and their fans loved her for it. With her as the manic pixie and Carl as the straight man they had already been pretty succesful up to today. He assumed that after their newest stunt they would be celebrities in the scene. With the student debt he had accumulated, it was about time for some relief.

"Let's see what we can find in there", he said loud enough so that it would be audible in the recording. "And who knows, maybe I'll get a chance to stuff Aubrey into one of those rubber cells."

"Let's find a straightjacket for me", she grinned, playfully hugging herself. "And one of those masks Hannibal Lecter wore!"

Carl enjoyed the thought. Usually, when they visited one of those creepy places their fans loved, they exaggerated the camp, played around with the macabre details and overstepped the boundaries of good taste at least a little. It was what brought the most clicks.

"I'll find one of those for you, I promise", he agreed cheerily. "I'll tie you up and strap you to one of those tables. Oh look, we are there."

There was an old iron gate in front of them, its gothic shape so impressive in the stormy night that Aubrey immediately filmed it too. Behind the gate, in a distance, the mansion was visible. It loomed on top of a flat hill, just at the side of the lake, and it looked just as creepy as it had on all the photographs.

"Here we are!", Aubrey proclaimed, her eyes widening a bit. For a moment she looked shy, even a bit unsettled. Then she grinned again. "Let's make this a night to remember!"