Day 669

UrbEx they called it, short for urban exploration which was apparently now too difficult to fully say and so must be abbreviated to within an inch of its life. It was what brought our protagonist to the old castle that stood between the fields and the lake, well more specifically it was built on a man made island with a large moat that didn't connect to the lake. Probably due to whatever was behind the enormous scales that wash up on shore but that's another story entirely.

This one is about Nadia and the friends that dared her to pull out flowers from one of the castle's turrets. She wasn't scared of heights but she was scared of finding other people camping out in the old place as they tended to do (or so she'd heard but everyone's seen smoke there, even after they put out the original fire). For this reason she went during the day, bringing a small penknife and her phone.

Getting across the moat was easy enough, though there was a "gate" (a couple of crowd control fence panels cable tied together). There was no bridge which didn't really make sense if the moat itself was originally meant to defend the castle. Instead there was a long grassy path which must not have been dug out while the moat was.

Where the main door would have been there was only the burnt remains, not even clinging onto the rusty metal hinges any more. At least the floor seemed stable enough though Nadia had heard that there was a basement which hardly seemed like a wise idea given the moat as well. Thankfully finding the basement wasn't her task today, all she had to do was find some way to the roof or take a few photos to show how impossible it was to reach there.

There was a surprising amount of graffiti along the walls. Mostly squiggles and swears though, not the colourful murals of the nearby cities. The familiarity of the scrawls made her brief view of the ground floor a little more bearable as she found a staircase that seemed stable enough to give her access to the upper floor. Though it wasn't the roof, it was close enough that there was a chance that she could just reach out of a window and snatch the flowers she needed.

Treading carefully around the large cracks that ran along the floors she tried to edge her way towards the nearest rooms which she presumed to have windows of some sort. As the ground creaked and dipped beneath her she quickly abandoned those rooms in favour of the hallways once more, some of which were a tad more stable but equally as dilapidated. While Nadia found she couldn't quite reach the flowers from the windows she did manage to find another staircase.

It was wooden and seemed to have escaped the damage caused by the fire as well as the attentions of whoever had vandalised the rest of the rooms with varying tags and cusses. She was cautious at first, taking each step with great care and greater anxiety just in case the stairs gave out entirely and sent her falling down to god knows where.

Strangely the door to the roof looked just as burnt as the main entrance, singed remains tossed carelessly among the foliage that permeated the majority of the roof space. Glancing around she spotted the flowers she needed nearer to the edge as they were always seen from the ground dangling over the waters below. While it seemed a dangerous idea to walk over to the ledge just to pick them, she risked the mockery of her peers if she didn't.

That's how she found herself clinging onto leathery vines, flowers clutched in one hand and her phone in the other as she frantically called for the emergency services. In all honesty she knew she wouldn't be able to cling on long enough to remain there until they came but it seemed like the only option at the time.

And then, before she could tell the operator where she was, the vine snapped and she plummeted.

When she woke up she felt no pain, she felt no fear and she still had the flowers in her hand. Perhaps she just imagines the roof collapsing? She felt fine so it must have been an intense daydream. She got down safely enough, the flowers were photographed and she was congratulated by her friends - even given the nickname of Hella Nads, by their reckoning she had some serious balls to actually do the dare.

That night as Nadia went to the bathroom, glancing in the mirror instead of seeing her bathroom she saw the castle's walls, blue tinged and covered in places by what appeared to be moss. Shaking her head and turning around she found herself underwater right between a stone wall and a dirt wall. The castle's bridge, she realised, and looking up she saw herself bobbing in the water face down. Her skin was pale and bloated, her neck rolling at an unnatural angle with the small wake she must have made when she fell. The flowers floated limply beside her, mockingly.