I don’t know where I am but I feel like I have been here before. Nothing looks familiar but my instincts don’t fail me. Why did you bring me here? I see all the young kids playing in the streets and loud music playing something I cant seem to comprehend. It was a different world; the people were really poor but yet so full of happiness like a big family all in one. We turned on the corner and stopped in front of a small, bright blue house with the greenest grass I have ever seen in my life. I sat and stared thinking, “Where are we? Who lived here? I wanted to know so much more of this place but I was afraid of wanting to know more. Am I dreaming or is this fake I can’t tell but it feels so real. I saw faces that I think I knew but I was not sure. I got out the car and walked closer to this bright blue house that was the brightest in this street…

I was soon reaching my destination as the gps signaled that I would arrive in four minutes. I continued to follow the directions of the gps, only to find that the destination was a DEAD END. I was so confused and felt betrayed by the direction that the gps was leading me in. I didn’t know where to go, but all I know is that I had to find my destination one way or another. I proceeded doing a u-turn in order to see what I missed. But every other address was not as the address I put on the gps. No one was able to help me when I asked them about the address I was looking for. At this point I’m feeling like I wasted my time but frustrated at this foolery. I called my husband to see if he can give me the exact address of the destination. He confirmed to me that I had the right address. Since he was there, I asked him, “Well may you please come and get me because all I see is a dead end.” He replied telling me he counts because he was busy attending his customers. “So now what?”, I thought to myself. “How are you going to facilitate me, when I am trying to do you a favor?”, I told my husband. “Well sweety please try to make it, because I can’t talk and work nor leave my client in the middle of the job,” my husband replied. I was out of it, no one wanted to help me or knew how to help me or made a pretext. I thought to myself, what if this was an emergency, or a severe emergency? How was my husband going to aid to my needs if something was severely happening to me. Nothing was severely happening to me at the moment, but clearly I am lost and not knowing what to do, and my husband took my phone call very light as I am troubled and perplexed. 

 

Suddenly a strong gust sort pushed over the sign of the dead end. And I slowly walked closer to it. Not knowing what to expect and I took a valiant step, and pushed the sign just a little. I won’t lie, I was frightened and got the chills. I wish my husband was here with me. 

Setting: A creepy alleyway 

The child had just finished his third day of second grade, and he was exhausted. The teacher was friendly, his classmates were pleasant, and he was already feeling more comfortable than he had felt in the old school. But any enthusiasm he had amassed throughout the day was gone now, transubstantiated into fatigue from six hours of learning and playing. All he wanted was to go home and lie in his soft bed with his favorite stuffed animal. 

He knew the safe, familiar path to get home. But it took thirty minutes, at a minimum, to follow that route. To a seven-year-old, thirty minutes is a century, and thirty minutes trekking across hard sidewalks and past indistinguishable brown buildings is a millennium of agony. So he decided to take a faster way home, through the dark alleys his mother had warned him never to even consider exploring. 

The buildings there were brown, too, but a different brown–more ancient, and more rugged. There were no sidewalks, only dirty gray tiles that somehow seemed both worn from the heavy footsteps of crowds of people and vacantly characterless, as if no one had ever touched their dull limestone surfaces with so much as a child’s sandal. The sky was invisible to the child, all he could see from his vantage point was dark bricks, then darker bricks, then nothing at all. 

A shiver fought its way down his tiny spine. He did not belong here. He kept walking. Every shadow could be a kidnapper. Every sound could be a monster. He had walked too far down the alley for turning around to be worthwhile, but he had a long way to go before he reached his familiar welcome mat. He was stuck in the middle, not lost, but unspeakably afraid.

I continued walking into Inwood Park in the daylight towards the direction google maps says to go. I’ve never been to this park before. Parked by the entrance of the park was a typical ice cream truck that was singing music that was still the same tune from when I was five years old. On my left, there was a basketball court where sweaty young adults were shooting basketballs into the hoops and some resting on the side. It was as if I was walking past my middle schoolyard where there was a basketball court and students were hanging out around there and playing basketball. Towards my right, there was a huge baseball field where a team of high schoolers were practicing baseball that reminded me back when I was in the softball team in middle school, practicing with my team just like them. I continued walking and saw that in front of me, there were many green benches on the side that people were talking and sitting on. It felt like I was walking through the neighborhood where I used to live, where elders from the neighborhood would come out and sit in the nearby park and just relax. There were big, old trees all over the park were organized similarly to the park that I used to go to as a child. A little further down, there was the grass area where people were having family picnics or kids just running around. I couldn’t help but think of the times that have already passed.