Less than a mile from my bed lies the most intriguing place I have ever seen. The wild weeds, overgrown bushes, and trees leading up to it would make you miss it if you passed it in a car. If you were to walk past it, you still wouldn’t think much of it. “It’s just generators and trees,” you might assume, but with the right amount of curiosity and patience, a cornucopia of mystery awaited me.
As I walked toward this mystery, I encountered a couple of joggers who I imagined were trying to take advantage of the hill to boost their fitness, but it seemed like the hill had started to take advantage of them. The blazing heat of the midday sun only made matters worse.
Guard rails surrounded the object of my investigation, but they couldn’t stop my thirst for answers. I found a sticker on one of the rails with vague but stirring words: “Explore the Garden of Your Mind.” It pushed me to look closer into the scene.
The clearing itself is not so out of the ordinary. However, when I walked a few feet to the back of the clearing, I discovered a flight of stairs that descended into what could have as well been the pit of hell but was simply the entrance to a building. I assumed that is where the generators were monitored and maintained, but on second thought, how could I be sure?
Slightly scary, graphically explicit illustrations of “Choke” and “RIP Trust” were plastered against the walls to which the stairs were built and the building door. These violent and tragic graphics could very well be based on teenage slang or a homage to a person named “Trust.” However, another likely, less agreeable, but more intriguing explanation would be that the “pit of hell” was the scene of some criminal acts.
It looked like the perfect place to commit a crime. The seclusion and density of the vegetation around it would make it the ideal place to bury evidence (perhaps a body), with the added advantage of fauna and the seasons potentially contaminating the scene. The generator monitoring room could be a kidnapper’s den hidden in almost plain sight. The generators are also very likely targets for vandalism.
However, this location could also be what it is: a clearing for the city’s gas generators.
(Word count: 394 words)