So. I just noticed I screwed up the Disney story. I guess it didnt all post with the picture :/ so. Here is the rest. Sorry guys. My bad. - Corvo The kitchen was as youd imagine... an industrial food prep area with all the appliances and space, no expenses spared. Every glass surface was broken, every door knocked off its hinges, every metal surface kicked and dented. The entire place smelled like very old piss. The huge freezer, not even remotely cool now, had row upon row of empty shelf space. Hooks hung from the ceiling, probably for hanging cuts of meat, and as I stood inside for a moment, I noticed they were swinging. Each hook swung in a random direction, but their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see. I figured it had been caused by my footsteps, so I stopped one from swinging by clutching it in my fist, then carefully letting go, but within seconds it started to swing once more. The bathrooms were in much the same state as the rest of the place. Just like the Treasure Island resort, someone had methodically smashed each porcelain commode with coconuts and other implements. There was about a half inch of rancid, stinking stagnant water on the floor, so I didnt stay there very long. Whats odd is that the toilets and the sinks (and the bidets in the ladies room, yes I went there) all dripped, leaked, or just ran freely. It seemed to me that they shouldve shut the water off long, LONG ago. There were plenty of rooms in the resort, but naturally I didnt have time to look through them all. The few I did peer into were similarly wrecked, and I didnt expect to find anything there. I thought there was actually a television or radio in one room, as I really think I heard a quiet conversation coming out. Though it was like a whisper, probably my own breathing echoing in the silence, or just another case of the sound of flowing water playing tricks on the mind, this is what it sounded like... 1: I didnt believe it. 2: (short, unknown reply) 1: I didnt know that. I didnt know that. 2: Your father told you. 1: (unknown reply, or possibly just weeping.) I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. Im just telling you what I experienced, why I thought there mightve been something running in that room - or worse, some vagrants who had holed up there and probably wouldve knifed me. At the front doors of the Palace again, I figured I hadnt found anything of note and had wasted the trip up. As I looked out the door, I noticed something interesting in the courtyard that I had apparently missed. Something that would give me at least ONE thing to show for all my trouble, even if it was just a photograph. There as a lifelike statue of a python, maybe eighty feet long, coiled up and sunning itself on a pedestal right in the center of the area. It was almost time for the sun to start setting, so the light fell onto the object in the PERFECT way for a photograph. I approached the python and snapped a photo. Then I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved closer again to get the detail of its face. Slowly, casually, the python lifted its head, looked directly into my eyes, turned, and slithered off the pedestal, across the grass, and into the trees. All eighty feet of it. Its head long disappeared into the woods before its tail even left the sunning spot. Disney had released all their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floorplan map was the Reptile House. I should have known. Id read about the sharks at Treasure Isle, and I should have KNOWN theyd done this. I was dumbfounded, just utterly stupefied. My mouth mustve been hanging open for the longest time before I came back down to Earth and snapped it shut. I blinked a few times and backed away from where the snake had been, back toward the Palace. Even though it was totally gone, I still wasnt taking any chances and backed my way into the building. It took a few deep breaths and slaps to my own face to get myself right in the head again after that. I looked for a place to sit down, as my legs were feeling a bit like jelly at this point. Of course, there WAS no place to sit down unless I wanted to recline in the broken glass and dead leaf carpet or haul myself up onto a desk of questionably reliability. I had seen some stairs near the Palaces lobby and decided to go have a seat there until I felt better. The staircase was far enough away from the front of the building to be relatively clean, save for a startling accumulation of dust. I pulled a wedge of metal off the wall, once again painted with the ABANDONED BY DISNEY motto Id become accustomed to. I placed the wedge on the stairs and sat on it to keep at least somewhat clean. The stairway led downward, below ground level. Using my camera flash as a sort of improvised flashlight, I could see that the stair case ended in a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door... a REAL sign... read MASCOTS ONLY! THANK YOU!. This perked up my spirits a little bit, for two reasons. One, a Mascots-Only area would have definitely had some interesting stuff back in the day... Two, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there. Not the vandals, not the looters, nobody. This was the one place I could actually explore and perhaps find something interesting to photograph or wantonly steal. I had come to the Palace essentially agreeing with myself that it was okay to take anything I wanted because - hey -abandoned. It didnt take much to bust the lock. Well, actually thats wrong. It didnt take much to bust the metal plate on the wall that the padlock was hooked to. Time and decay had done most of the work for me, and I was able to bend the metal plate enough to pull the screws out of the wall -something nobody else had apparently thought of, or hadnt been able to do at the time. The Mascots-Only area was a startling and very welcomed change from the rest of the building Id seen. For one, every second or third fluorescent light overhead was illuminated, even though they flickered and faded randomly. Also, nothing had been stolen or broken, even if age and exposure were definately taking their toll. Tables had note pads and pens, there were clocks... even a punch-in clock on the wall complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around and there was even a small break room with an old, static-filled television and long rotted-out food and drink on the counters. It was like one of those post-apocalypse movies where everything is left in the state of evacuation. As I walked the maze-like sub-basement hallways of the Mascots-Only area, the sights just became more and more interesting. As I went further, desks and tables were knocked over, papers scattered and almost melded with the damp floor, and a large carpet of mold was slowly overtaking the real rotting crimson floor-covering. Everything was just sort of squishy. Anything wood disintegrated into mush when I applied even the least amount of force, and clothing items hanging on hooks in one of the rooms simply fell to moist threads if I tried to unhook them. One thing that annoyed me was that the light was becoming more sparse and unreliable as I went further into the dank, suffocating depths of the place. Eventually, I reached a black and yellow striped door with the words CHARACTER PREP 1 stenciled on it. The door wouldnt open at first. I figured this was probably where the costumes were kept, and I definately wanted a photograph of that twisted, stinking mess. Try as I might, whatever angle or trick I tried, the door wouldnt budge. That is, until I gave up and started to walk away. That was when there was a slight popping sound and the door creaked open slowly. Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. I used the camera flash to look for a light switch in the wall buy the door, but there was nothing. As I made my search, I was jarred out of my sense of excitement by a loud electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading in and out like the rest I had passed. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and it seemed like the light was going to just keep getting brighter until all the bulbs exploded... but just when I thought it would reach that critical stage, the lights dimmed a bit and steadied. The room was exactly as I had pictured it. Various Disney costumes hung on the walls, fully put together like strange cartoon cadavers hung from invisible nooses. There was an entire rack of loincloths and native clothes on hangers toward the back. What I found odd, and what I wanted to photograph right away, was a Mickey Mouse costume at the center of the room. Unlike the other costumes, it was lying on its back in the center of the floor like a murder victim. The fur on the costume was rotten and shedding, creating bare patches. What was even odder, however, was the coloring of the costume. It was like a photo negative of the actual Mickey Mouse. Black where he should be white and white where he should be black. His normally red overalls were light blue. The sight was off-putting enough that I actually put off photographing the thing until last. I took a picture of the costumes hanging on the walls. Upward angles, downward angles, side shots to show an entire row of frozen, putrid cartoon faces, some with plastic eyes missing. Then I decided to stage a shot. Just one of the bedraggled character heads on the slick, grimy floor. I reached for the headpiece of a Donald Duck costume and carefully removed it so the thing wouldnt fall apart in my hands. As I looked into the face of the wide-eyed, moldering head, a loud clattering sound made me jump with fright. I looked down at my feet, and there between my shoes was a human skull. It had fallen out of the mascot head and shattered into pieces at me feet; only the empty face and lower jaw remained, staring up at me. I dropped the Duck head immediately, as youd expect, and moved for the door. As I stood in the doorway, I looked back to the skull on the floor. I had to take a picture of it, you know? I HAD to, for any number of reasons that may seem silly, but only if you dont think it through. Id need proof of what happened, especially if Disney was going to somehow make this go away. I had no doubt in my mind, right from the start, that even if it was just gross negligence, Disney was RESPONSIBLE for this. Thats when Mickey, that photo negative, opposite-Mickey in the middle of the floor, started to get up. First sitting up, then climbing to its feet, the Mickey Mouse costume... or whoever was inside of it, stood there at the center of the room, its fake face just starting directly at me as I mumbled No... over and over and over... With shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, I managed to lift the camera and aim it at the opposite creature now quietly sizing me up. The digital cameras screen displayed only dead pixels in the shape of the thing. It was a perfect silhouette of the Mickey costume. As the camera moved in my unsteady hands, the dead pixels spread, marring the screen wherever Mickeys outline moved to. Then the camera died. Went blank and quiet and... broken. I raised my eyes once again to the Mickey Mouse costume. Hey, it said in a hushed, perverted, but perfectly executed Mickey Mouse voice, Wanna see my head come off? It started to pull at its own head, working its clumsy, glove-clad fingers around its neck with clawing, impatient movements similar to a wounded man trying to pull himself free of a predators jaws... As it worked its digits into its neck... so much blood... So much thick, chunky, yellow blood... I turned away as I heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh... only cared about getting away. Above the doorway out of this room, I saw the final message clawed into the metal with bone or fingernails... ABANDONED BY GOD I never got the pictures out of the camera. I never wrote the blog entry about it. After I ran from that place, fled for my sanity if not my very life, I knew why Disney didnt want anyone to know about this place. They didnt want anyone like me getting in. They didnt want anything like that getting out.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 05:53:34 +0000
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