Prompt Me Hard - 9. 260 - Hippodrome

“Ow, shitting, fucking ow!”

“Jesus dude. Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh what have I gone and stepped in?”

Silence descended on the three boys in the dark as they froze just inside the now cracked window of the disused hippodrome. The air smelt like dust and dead things.

“You have got the flashlight right?”

“No. I gave it to you. I think I’ve broken my shoe.”

One of the other boy’s decked him.

“I told you not to wear the fucking Converse. They’re shit.”

“Are you telling me,” A tight, worried voice, “That we have broken into a disused building bigger than my house without a fucking flashlight?”

“Er…”

“Um…”

“BOLLOCKS!”

“This is stupid.” The most sensible of the three teenagers, “We should go back. I cannot believe I gave up plane tickets to Manchester to see my cousin to hang around with you guys instead.”

“Oh quit it will ye?” The oldest boy, and the sternest, pushed his friend, “We’re still going in even if numb-nuts here did forget the flash light.”

One boy checked his watch, the other checked his phone. The lights of technology shone a meagre sort of light over their surroundings.

“This way.”

“Why that way?”

“You don’t wanna go upstairs do you?”

“Dude, he’s right, the stairs could collapse.”

A small silence, and worry.

“Is it not going to be ever darker if we go down?” He gestured to the sloping ramp, the gloom ahead.

“You’re not scared are ye?”

Teasing and fear, and fear of ridicule, made the three teenagers walk down the slope into the darkness.

It was damp down there, full of the echoing sounds of water. One boy hit his head in a bit of lo hanging pipe and swore. His voice didn’t echo, and that was weird. The light from the mobile phone was just enough to pick out the tiled floor, the pieces of old paper like dying books spread everywhere. There was some kind of breeze, and the papers rustled.

“This is weird.”

“Shut up.”

Chastised, the three boys continue. There is a light, a bluish glow in the near distance, so they head that way. The coridoor opens up and they find themselves in a room with vaulted celings and baroque architecture.

“Why is there a swimming pool?”

The pool is massive, taking up most of the room.

“Why is it lit up is more worrisome.” The most practical of the boys says, “I thought this place was shut down before we were even born.”

“It was,” This is the scared one, “There should be an power one.

The pool is lit up blue and inviting, like a summer’s day in a hot country. In the centre of the pool is a shape underwater.

“What’s that?” The scared boy asks in a shaky voice.

“A person?”

“No. I think it’s a statue. You know, a nude statue.”

“Why the fuck is it underwater?” The loud one swears just for the sake of it.

“Why don’t you go find out?”

“Not me. He can go.” The smaller boy doesn’t want to, he protests and whimpers, but the older boy pushed him into the pool with a splash, “You’re in there now. Go look.”

The boy is scared, but he’s more scared of getting out and being shouted at, so he swims in his clothes to the middle of the pool. It’s hard to see through the water, but the statue looks clean, pale like marble. The takes a deep breath, and pushes himself underwater to get a closer look.

The statue is beautiful, a greek-god of a man, completely nude and very well endowed. The boy puts a hand out to steady himself so that he can look better, and finds cold fingers wrapped around his wrist.

He yelps and swallows water. The statue is not a statue, eyes made of oceans are looking at him with hunger, and the marble skin is smooth and cold like some great underwater lizard. He tries to pull away, but he ends up swallowing more of the swimming pool. He’s getting dizzy. The marble man pulls him against his broad chest, smiling in a way that means desire.

Lack of oxygen and the pressure of the water are too much too bear, and the boy loses consciousness.

Un-protesting humans are so much easier to transport between dimensions