I quite enjoy urban exploration as a hobby, which is just sort of a fancy way of saying I enjoy snooping about in places where I really ought not to be. I sometimes refer to it with my friends as recreational trespassing. Old buildings, steam tunnels, water infrastructure, it doesn’t matter so long as it’s man-made and not somewhere too frequented by cops or security guards.
I was on one such excursion at a dried up old reservoir when I found the notepad. I was taking a few photographs when I heard a faint plop from behind me. I turned around to see it just sitting there on the sunbleached concrete; a small yellow legal notepad. I looked about to see where it could fallen from, but there wasn’t anywhere above it where someone could have tossed it. It was as if it had simply fallen out of the sky.
Obviously I went over and picked it up, what else was I supposed to do? It felt old, the pages stiff and crackly as though it had been left out in the sun for far too long. The first few pages were just the normal sort of things you’d find on a notepad like that; random numbers, grocery lists, various reminders, etc, but eventually those gave way to a solid block of dense, close-written text that continued for the remainder of the notepad. What follows is a transcription of what I found written there.
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I always loved the immensity of cities, the awe-inspiring magnitude of it all. It was just the people I didn’t like. There is a calmness, a beauty to the vast concrete expanse of urban development, ruined utterly by the stupid, pointless creatures who inhabit it. This was one of the reasons why I started spending a lot of my spare time in the parts of the city where there are no people.
In any given city, or even large town, there are vast swathes where nobody actually goes. All those places you pass by while driving which just look like empty expanses of cement and graffiti. Usually they’re some sort of waterworks, concrete rivers where rainwater is meant to flow into in order to prevent floods and the like. Of course, the state I used to live in had been in a drought for most of my adult life, so it was rather rare there would ever actually be any flooding. Just long pathways of concrete and silence, a private sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of city life.
Nobody ever tried to stop me, that’s what’s funny. People are always so afraid of wandering out where they aren’t supposed to go, terrified of hopping fences because of the vaguely threatening signs insisting they’ll be prosecuted for trespassing, but it’s all meaningless. The barrier exists entirely within your mind. Nobody actually cares, and the police have much more pressing matters to attend to than keeping out trespassers on bits of infrastructure that haven’t really been used in over a decade.
Obviously I wasn’t actually alone, I’m sure I wasn’t the only explorer in these artificial wildernesses, and there was always the ever-present hum of city traffic at the edge of my hearing. There was enough graffiti to indicate at least some other people had visited these places, but I never encountered anyone. If I tuned out the sound of cars passing on the nearby freeway I could almost convince myself I was the last human being on the planet.
Do you know what it felt like, walking through those vast empty spaces? It was as if I were an ant, crawling steadily along on my own on a crack in the sidewalk, surrounded on all sides but up by the weight of a world so much larger than I was. It was so liberating, so freeing to be so small, so alone, with nothing but the sun-warmed concrete and the gently cloudy skies above for company. I usually brought my polaroid camera with me, snapping photos here and there to look at later on the days when I couldn’t go on an excursion in person.
It was a day like any other when I crossed over to the place that I am now. I was walking along one of my favorite spots, the canal I called it, though I’m sure it had some more official name in the city planning parlance. It was just a long artificial river of sorts, designed for water to flow down, though none had ever passed through it for as long as I could recall. It went on for miles and miles, and I could walk uninterrupted for hours if I chose to. I can’t place the exact moment that it happened, when the illusion of isolation transformed into reality. When you work so hard to tune out the sound of cars passing, you fail to notice when it actually does stop. I recall feeling faintly uneasy, as though something was wrong and I should turn back, but I can’t for the life of me pinpoint exactly when that feeling started or what actually prompted it.
It was in the late afternoon when I had decided I needed to head back home, during that period of time where the sun’s rays cast long shadows and everything feels subtly unreal, as if you are wandering through a dream. I don’t wear a watch, so I had no idea what the exact time was. I’d arrived at the canal at about 5 o’clock I believe, and must have been walking for at least 2 hours, so it couldn’t have been earlier than 7, but at the same time it seemed too light out, too warm.
I began my journey back, sneakers slapping gently against the warm concrete as I watched my lengthened shadow march ahead of me, stretched out like taffy by the afternoon sun. The clouds were a faint pink. Or, to say more correctly, they are a faint pink. They haven’t changed one bit since that afternoon which now seems so long ago.
I have no precise idea of how long I walked down the canal. The sun showed no signs of lowering, there was no breeze to move the clouds, and I had, as previously mentioned, no watch to measure the minutes. I could have been walking for 3 hours or 3 days, there is no way for me to know for sure. However, it eventually became apparent that I had been walking significantly longer to get back than it took for me to get there. I was just about to turn back around, thinking perhaps I had missed the spot I had entered and just didn’t notice, when I spotted something up ahead that made me very, very concerned.
The canal split, forming two distinct paths to the left and right. I want to make it very clear, the canal never split on any of my previous excursions, and I had traveled both directions multiple times for hours each way. It wasn’t as if there were signs of drastic new construction, a branch off of the main route, it just split evenly down the middle, the graffiti covered concrete on both paths looking as though it had been there a long time, weathered by years under the hot sun.
I paused for a moment. At least I think it was a moment. It’s impossible to tell here. Time doesn’t have much meaning when there is nothing to measure it. I tried to think of what logical explanation there could be for the sudden discrepancy in the structure of the canal. I couldn’t come up with a single valid reason. I knew I wasn’t losing my mind, I’m not sure how, but I was absolutely certain that I was still sane and lucid. Something had changed. I snapped a picture of the split, determined to compare it with the polaroids I had taken previously when I got back home. It’s amusing to think back on it now, my belief that I would one day be able to return to the place I chose to think of as a home.
By this point I was uncomfortably aware of the complete and total absence of the sound of traffic, and decided I needed to investigate. The walls of the canal weren’t very steep, so I scrabbled up them and hauled myself over the edge to try and find some sort of landmark.
I didn’t see any sort of recognizable landmark when I stood up. I saw something so much stranger.
At first I couldn’t believe my own eyes. It seemed utterly impossible. I could see nothing but a vast, endless expanse of concrete, as far as my eyes could see. There were no buildings, no freeways or proper roads, it wasn’t as though I was looking upon a city. The closest comparison I can make is this; imagine an outdoor skate park, the sort that is simply slopes, tunnels, and ramps of concrete. Now imagine it spanned a continent.
Nothing seemed to serve any actual useful purpose, not really. It was just an abstract landscape of gray, marked occasionally with graffiti. At the time I believed this meant that there must be other people here, but I know better than that now.
I didn’t really know what else to do, so I just started walking. Ascending up the side of the canal had led me to a sort of pathway that was elevated above the rest of the concrete wilderness, and as I walked I was able to get quite a good look at my surroundings. The further I traveled, the more I noticed how strange the landscape was.
As I said, nothing seemed to have any sort of real purpose, but certain structures did seem to emulate “real” ones. Occasionally I’d see bits of chain link fence randomly blocking off certain places, though there always seemed to be some way to get over or around it, like it was an obstacle to avoid rather than any sort of actual barrier. There were bridges of sorts, but it seemed less like they existed to span gaps and more as if they were meant to recreate the shade created by highway overpasses. I’d see stairs leading to nowhere in particular, and random tunnels shaped like sewer entrances but which seemed totally devoid of any wastewater.
Even the graffiti seemed pointless, random. Later on I tried to analyze some of it, attempting to translate some sort of meaning from the scribbles painted haphazardly on the walls, but it was no use. Everything is either meaningless squiggles or just random sequences of letters.
All the while as I walked, I snapped pictures with my camera, watching them print out and shaking them dry, checking to make sure that the landscape looked the same on film as they did in my eyes. Everything always turned out normal. If I wasn’t already convinced of my utmost sanity, the photographs at the very least seemed to prove that I wasn’t hallucinating.
Eventually I expended what little food and water I had brought with me in my backpack, and still the sun showed no sign of lowering and the path showed no sign of ending, just continuing onward forever into the horizon. I decided I would descend down the next slope I saw that diverged from the path and walk a different route instead, just to try and see if the change in scenery would bring about any new revelations as to where I was, and how I could leave.
I came across what seemed almost like a concrete slide of sorts, gently curving downwards with many twists and turns. I began my descent carefully, watching my footing. I wear fairly high quality sneakers, and the traction is generally good enough to help me on any precarious slopes, but this time I wasn’t so lucky. I’d been walking for God knows how long, and I was far too tired to think carefully about putting one foot in front of the other. I stumbled, and soon found myself on my back, sliding down the slope.
I was afraid there might be a fall of some sort at the bottom, that I might break a bone in this place and die of an infection, and tried desperately to slow my descent, scraping up my hands a bit in the process. I needn’t have worried though, as eventually the slope leveled out and I found myself on flat ground. Beyond some mild scrapes on my hands and a slight tear on the back of my jeans, I was none the worse for wear.
Surveying my surroundings, I found a series of rectangular concrete blocks, perhaps 8 feet tall, arranged in a grid. I rested against one, closing my eyes for a moment and trying to catch my breath. I was still no closer to finding an exit from this place.
I opened my eyes after a minute or so and noticed something peeking out from behind the corner of one of the concrete blocks. I got up, groaning from fatigue and soreness, and moved over to see what it was. To my immense surprise, it was a soft, padded blanket.
Next to the blanket was a transparent plastic water bottle, with no brand sticker visible, and a similarly unbranded granola bar. I was baffled. I picked up the water bottle, examining it. It was unopened and entirely full. I opened it and drank, finding the water within oddly colder than the ambient temperature around it, refreshingly cool. I downed the entire bottle and set to work on devouring the granola bar immediately afterwards.
They say that hunger is the best sauce, and that might very well be true, because that simple meal tasted better than anything I’d ever eaten up until that point. I lay down on the blanket, pulling my hat over my eyes to block out the sun, and slept long and deep.
I’m afraid I can’t say exactly how long I slept, but when I finally did awake there was that faint soreness that accompanies especially long rests. I blinked the sand from my eyes and stood up, stretching my limbs out and blinking in the light of that perpetual late afternoon sun. The empty water bottle and the wrapper for the granola bar were gone, though there didn’t seem to be any wind that could have moved them.
I was scratching gently at an itch on my behind when I realized my jeans had been mended somehow. The rip that had been there when I had fallen asleep was gone now that I was awake. I took them off so I could get look at it, and the damage had been sewn up with gray thread. I knew I slept deeply, but not deeply enough for me to not have noticed somebody taking off my pants to repair them. There was an odd shiver that ran up my spine when I realized the scrapes on my hands were gone too, as if somehow they’d had time to completely heal over.
I contemplated bringing the blanket with me, but decided against it, I didn’t have the room in my backpack to carry it. I continued on my journey through the concrete landscape, wandering with no clear direction in mind, just hoping that if I walked far enough I would find a way out of this place.
I walked for as long as I could stand to, taking whatever paths caught my eye. I walked on sidewalks without roads to accompany them, bridges, the occasional tunnel, vast stretches of flatness, stairs leading up and down, all manner of structures, and yet there didn’t seem to be any end. As I walked, I’d occasionally come across more water and granola bars, and would consume both immediately.
It took me a while to realize that the food and water only ever seemed to appear when I felt hungry or thirsty. I never went long enough without either to feel any effects of starvation or dehydration, I always went just long enough to feel the slight want to eat something or have a drink. At the time, that revelation made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I began to feel like I was being watched.
The sun always stays in its late afternoon position in the perpetually partly cloudy sky, but my internal clock did once again inform me I was due for sleep. I looked about for a place to rest, some suitable area to curl up and at least take a short nap, when I once again found another padded blanket just lying there, peaking out from behind a nearby wall. It looked exactly the same as the one from before. It sent a shiver down my spine, but I didn’t feel like I had much other choice, I was once again exhausted.
My first sleep in this place was dreamless, just comfortable rest, but that second time brought about the first of my dreams about Her. Would you believe that at the time She frightened me? The folly of youth I suppose, or perhaps it simply takes time to appreciate the true beauty of divinity.
The dreams are vague, disjointed in the manner that such visions so often are. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish the dreams from the waking world, since my actions are the same in both. I wander the beautiful landscape, warmed by the gentle sun. I am not alone in this place. She is with me. My concrete angel with wings of rebar and a face like graffiti, smiling down upon me with infinite kindness.
The first time I dreamed of Her, I woke up screaming. Isn’t that silly? In fact, for quite a long time after that I avoided sleep entirely, ignoring the blankets I found and choosing instead to keep on walking for as long as possible. Nobody can keep the sandman at bay forever, and when I did eventually pass out, slumped against a staircase to nowhere, I found myself dreaming once more of my concrete angel. When I awoke, still startled, I found I had been lovingly carried to a padded blanket at the base of the stairs.
Since then, I have had periods of madness, of anger towards She who I perceived to be my captor. I screamed at Her to show Herself, I pleaded for my “freedom”, I sobbed for hours, begging desperately to return home. But as time passed, I’ve come to realize this is my home. This is where I belong.
In life, I spent every hour I could wandering places just like this, only infinitely smaller and more pathetic because they were built by the hands of men and not those of angels. I never fit in with my peers, and craved absolute solitude amidst the concrete wilderness of city infrastructure. Now I have what I always wanted.
I don’t need to worry about food, I don’t have to think about deadlines, I can just wander forever, seeing sights so beautiful I cannot hope to describe them accurately. Here I am loved, I am cared for. My concrete angel speaks no words in my dreams, but I know She wants nothing but my happiness. I often wake up from my slumber with tears of joy.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. My hands tremble slightly now, and seem somewhat wrinkled in appearance. My voice sounds hoarse, like that of someone nearing the end of a long, fulfilling life. But I don’t feel old. The more I’ve roamed, the more I have seen that fills my heart with wonder and joy. I have seen cyclopean monuments that would put the pyramids of Giza to shame, I have crossed bridges that make Golden Gate look like a child’s toy. I have looked over the depths of pits that seem to extend downwards into infinity.
I am, as I write this, sitting next to one such pit now. I ran out of film for my camera long ago, and have decided that it is time for me to stop lugging it around. I don’t need it anymore, nor do I need this notepad I am writing in. The clothes on my back are enough, and I know food and water will be provided whenever it is needed.
I didn’t want to just leave them in some corner in this place though. I cannot see the bottom of this pit, but it seems far, far deeper than any rational structure could be. Something tells me that at the bottom is a way back to the world I came from. Perhaps it is my concrete angel, whispering it to my mind. I’m going to throw down this notepad, along with my camera and all the photographs I have taken. Perhaps someone will find them, someday.
There is a padded blanket next to me. After I throw this notepad into the depths of the pit, I think I shall take a nap before continuing on my endless, beautiful journey.
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I’ll admit, this writing disturbed me greatly when I first read it, and I found myself listening desperately for the sound of traffic. For several seconds I was horrified that there would only be silence, before I eventually heard the deep rumble of a passing truck and allowed myself to relax a little bit.
There is every possibility this is just some idiot’s idea of a joke, perhaps the notepad was dropped by a drone or something like that, but I don’t think so. It seems awfully involved to be some sort of prank. The end of the narrative mentioned photographs being dropped along with the notepad, and I did indeed find one, tucked in the last pages, but it hardly proves the tale’s veracity.
It’s just a photograph of the late afternoon sky, a gentle sun turning the clouds faintly pink.