Hospital Games

A long, slender curtain lay in a twisted heap on the damp floor, feeding on the murky pools of plaster-mud like a living fungus from another planet. A pattern comprised of green and brown vertical stripes stretched across the stained cloth in a hideously intriguing pattern. Once upon a time, it had hung around a hospital bed to offer a safe and private haven for the occupant, but that was some forty years ago, before everyone had left. The swollen fibrous tendrils snaked out of an open doorway and into the dripping hall beyond the room, beckoning us to follow. I was happy to be back at Glendale.

Stepping out into the corridor, an expanse of red and white tiles stretched out before us, crisply marked with alternating patches of sunlight streaming in from open doors on both sides. Many of the tiles were curling up in a effort to leave this place, as if they were determined to defy gravity itself after so many years of neglect.

This chessboard of brittle linoleum was a game indeed - each step on these lifted tiles produced a loud cacophony of crackling as it disintegrated under our feet, and with a police cruiser parked just outside, it would be wise to avoid generating this amount of noise. So, with some awkward hopping and dancing, we carefully traversed the crumbling building one more time.