The Three Best Friends in a Car

It is currently five degrees Celsius. I came home not long ago, emerging from the warmth of the car after a forty-minute drive through the abandoned streets that ached with the crustiness of the fog.

Just when I thought that I was the only crazy person leaving their house on a day that would end with such a cold night, I was mistaken, for just as I was turning the key in my shop door to enter back into the comfort of warmth, I peered behind me and saw a car that normally is not found parking in front of my shop. It was a small hatchback, and it stood there peculiarly, staring at me as though I were the one out of place. Soon after, three heads within the vehicle momentarily turned around to look at me the same way as well.

Three girls, presumably best friends, discussing a serious issue which needed attention to urgent that it could not wait for a warmer time. They only took a couple of seconds to glance my way and then faced one another, continuing their conversation. I would have paid to have the ability to hear through solid objects. What were they talking about? Were they planning a heist? Were they planning a murder? Had they already murdered someone and had the body in the boot and did not know where to put it?

My mind was racing. I did not know what to think because all my mind could process was murder. It could not imagine a gossip session taking place, that is for the schoolyard. And then it occurred to me – I am probably the only person who would consider three girls to be plotting a murder or a burial. The situation where three girls together automatically assumes itself one of an innocent context, therefore almost immediately ridding a passer-by of the possibility of being murdered by these three seemingly innocent females. What if they have been best friends ever since a young age, and one of them had her heart severely broken, so the three of them, sticking to their childhood pact, decided to murder him tonight?

That just makes the situation worse, and so does the fact that they looked at me accusingly when I looked at them, as though they could hear my thoughts and as though my thoughts were right, each one’s face showing a worse reaction than the former. I could not get into my shop any quicker. I kept imagining turning around after I had opened the door only to find them waiting with large butcher knives in their small, fine hands. In the cold of the night, who else would sit in a small hatchback and plan things other than potential murderers?

One cannot imagine a murderer plotting something evil on a nice sunny day in the middle of a busy car-park, which is why I needed not my imagination to imagine the motives of these three women. Tomorrow, when I hear the news and I hear of a murder carried out by three women in a green hatchback, I will cringe and move countries. I will honestly book the next flight to Turkey, or whatever country that pops up even if I am so foreign that I cannot comprehend their accompanying hand movements when they try to communicate with me. At least those imaginary hands are not holding butcher knives.

And what a perfect night, what a perfect atmosphere, what a perfect scene for my imagination to take control and take hold. It could not have chosen a better moment. I honestly will be sleeping ever so lightly tonight in the event of those three best friends having stumbled upon this and read this.

Dine with the Dead

source

Have you ever had the feeling that your dinnertimes were too shallow? That having a cup of tea with people that are alive is far too mainstream? That restaurants buzzing with life are too boring? Well, you must not worry, because apparently, you are not alone.

Meet 'Lucky' from India, a busy restaurant which despite the fact that it was built on a graveyard and still contains coffins of the deceased, is bustling with life. Attendees of the restaurant have no idea that the zombies apocalypse is nearing and that at any waking moment they will join the deceased without having the ability to retain their brains - or perhaps in dining with the dead they are attempting to make allies for when the apocalypse comes - in which case, they would be cleverly enjoying a cup of tea with some zombies while the rest of us run for our lives, literally. 

It is just bizarre that such a thing exists. People cannot fathom the reasoning behind it, and when people from Melbourne, Australia hear about it I am sure that they too will freak out. Little do we Melbournians know, though, that we have been doing so all along as well. Yes, when I say this I am referring to the Queen Victoria Market, a market heavily attended by tourists and locals alike on a daily basis that was built on a graveyard and that still has bodies of the deceased resting below it. In this instance, visitors trod all over the unmarked graves without acknowledging their presence. There is no room for ally making here, because all you will find is bargain hunting and profit making continuously happening. There is no attention paid to the fact that beneath our feet are zombies in the making, eavesdropping on our conversations of how good the Spanish donuts there are, on how damn cheap that shirt was, and on how clueless we are of their presence. 

Visitors of 'Lucky' claim that they feel refreshed and indeed lucky after dining there. A corpse after being interviewed said "I like being here more than I did when it was just us lying here. Now I have more people to listen to and delicious food to smell. I have never felt so alive!" Similarly, another corpse stated that he was "lucky to be here." All other corpses simply nodded with agreement.  This just may be where the name of the restaurant derived from. "Once you dine with us," he continued, "we give you both a blessing and our company. We may not smell that good or look that good but we communicate from within our coffins so as not to interrupt your enjoyment too."

I would personally never consume anything in that restaurant, nor would I even breathe nor be anywhere in its proximity in the first place. I have nothing against corpses, I really do not. I just prefer to eat food in a place that does not remind me of my inevitable demise.

Awesome Asylums

Teenagers are thrill seekers. Whatever they are advised not to do, they most likely will do, just to spite those who attempted to place invisible blockades to render their adventurous paths. Today, I relived my teenage days by disobeying a 'no trespassing' sign which was hung all around the outsides of abandoned and apparently haunted mental asylum buildings in a place I will not name in the event of a ghostly spirit reading this and learning my location. 

We parked in a bay graffitied with a message in white: 'park here and you die.' We did not obey because the possibility of this was not high, unless we were approached by Godzilla or a similar horrendous monstrosity of the sort. We stared around to determine our entrance points, and away we went, trying not to pay attention to onlookers who could report our trespassing. As I entered the buildings, some difficult, in that I had to crawl through a noisy blocked door to reach the entrance, and some rather simple, in that I simply walked in as though the spirits were awaiting my arrival, I wondered what exactly it was that brought me there. It was my eighth time there, however this was the only time that I had built up the courage to actually enter the buildings. 

I thought and thought, as I stared around at the eroded and vandalised walls. Was it the asbestos in the air that thrilled me? Or was it the possibility of getting in contact with a ghost? Perhaps it was the risk factor that I might get caught trespassing and receive a bad name forever. Maybe it was all of these factors mixed together. Either way, I was in an eerie place which had limited my breathing and increased my awe in the spiritual world. 

I felt comfort amidst the creepy quietness, because I was guaranteed an exit from each building as at least the second-last person, but never the last. I was content with this because with whatever could have happened, my slow self would have not been caught up in the potential tragedy or remake of a paranormal situation like those in movies such as Paranormal Activity or Insidious. I explored most rooms, attempting to imagine who or what used to be in each years before I was there. My imagination knows no bounds, which scared me even more than the fact that I was there. 

There was one building that we dared not enter, though. We peeked inside, and saw that every door there was intact because they were barred. Cast iron bars had held back patients which had needed solitary entrapment. These patients would have been the worst cases, and to feel the negative spiritual energy of these would have scarred us all for years. We simply walked back to the car and drove off. 

Our adventurous needs were for the day met. We enjoyed ourselves in a place which at one stage of its existence was the epitome of the total opposite of the feeling of enjoyment. We did not speak a word about this place in the car trip back home, and rightfully so. These places are purely for thrill seeking and sympathy. Those who do not respect them ought not be respected by possible spirits. 

I will continue to enjoy this type of thrill seeking despite the possible danger I might face. Thrills are adrenaline pumpers, and I prefer my mostly stable adrenaline levels to become unstable and heightened. For a life lived without adventure is a life not worth living.