The alley was cold like chilled bones. The sun did not warm it, though it did shine at its entrance and exit. Strewn about the space were crooked dumpsters, broken glass small enough to not be worrisome, and bundles of drooping flowers wrapped in plastic. The space was in the heart of a living city, yet felt inhospitable to life. When one walked through it, one felt that they had exited the facade of life and were somehow in the “wrong place”. It did not matter what one was doing or what was happening, it simply felt like it was about to become the wrong place in the wrong time for whoever walked through it.

Graffiti was simple and probably to the point, but did not convey any sense of beauty or creativity. It simply enhanced the ever-present feeling that this was not the place to be. Homeless people did not come here; gangsters created the graffiti, but it did not feel like they especially wanted to possess the space, marking it as their territory was simply an afterthought. But despite this, one felt that one should walk more quickly, that one should get to the other side of this place faster.

On each end of the alley was a bustling city, but the alley seemed an aberration, a pocket that at any moment would be hit by its own private earthquake, explosion, or tornado out of nowhere, at least in the overactive imagination. A door would open and machine guns would fire. A brick would be thrown from a window above. Cracks ran through the old asphalt, and it felt like it would be wise to avoid stepping on them. Superstitions that were dismissed with rationality gnawed at the corners of one’s brain when one passed through.

What was it about this place? Perhaps it was the complete lack of real danger in the isolated space that led the imagination to stop for a moment and imagine its own fears into what was a fairly normal space. It was a pause in time where the distractions of the city gave way to a drabness that the mind wanted to splatter with its own blood. It brought out one’s demons precisely because there was nothing remarkable about it, and so the mind turned inward away from the drama of city life. It was a pocket to imagine the worst, a respite that plumbed at the fears of the heart.