I pass the tall, iron gates every single day I go to school. They loom over me with their pointed spear tips as if to say, 'you come any closer, you gonna be dead'. No one in my family knows these gates even exist, in fact, no one at my stupid torture centre they call school knows it exists either. Only me.
I mean, I am the only one aware of this back-alley shortcut to school, that begins right in my backyard. All I have to do is pull aside the thick menacing bushes that line the very back of the yard, the area furthest away from the view of my house, and there's a narrow path. It's dusty and windy, but eventually I'll find myself in an abandoned alley.
That's where the gate is. The alley looks as if nobody has stepped into it for months, maybe years. There are rats and bugs climbing the walls, and I remember screaming the first time I came here and saw them, the strangled high-pitched noise echoing over and out.
Now I'm used to it. I might go so far as to say the creatures of this back alley are even my companions, since I haven't seemed to found any real friends here in the outskirts of Chicago. The alley is my haven, my moment of solitude in a world that's constantly moving.
Well, it was, until giant military vans started spilling through it, one by one. The gate would creak open, and the vans would drive through. My place of solitude was destroyed. But my place of mystery had been created.
What is behind that gate? Why have I seen no one go through it until now?
Those questions have continued to nag me at the back of my mind for some time. And although I know I don't know the answers, I know one thing for sure; I'm gonna find out.