as part of my wanderings while back i picked a spot behind a sturdy row of ugly shrubs. it's a random row of bushes serving as a very shitty filter to the windswept litter.

It's near my house and I was looking for a smoke spot that's not home. Better spots abound after dark. In the daytime it was this or walk 2 miles to an actual park or go home.

on one side of this row is a mild road through the abandoned industrial rust belt wasteland, abandoned so long ago the buildings were torn down and it's now a vast series of parking lots and suspect green space. Infrequently a tree or some shitty . Suspect as in could still be tons of broken infrastructure underground, and there is still some weird shit above ground.

the area freaks me out, but it's not even ugly or scary picturesque. just vacuous. it's lowkey doldrums.

Once I was stumbling through there and tripped over the metal cage of a completely broken security flood light. Eventually I hauled that home and took out the innards and the metal cage makes for a demented little shadowbox heavy enough to hold up a bicycle frame.

So! Other side of this particular row of litter collection shit shrubs is another crumbling ashpalt lot, but it's a bit shielded from traffic and whenever I'm over there, I have focused on that lot and that side of the shrubs to pick up litter and tidy up a bit against the onslaught.

It's a terrible place to camp, or hang out for very long. The litter comes in through there on the wind like a force. But if someone had to squat to pee and they had a lookout, they'd be okay.

That's a low bar, I'll concede.

I was, today, perhaps unwisely cross-legged chilling behind said shrub-row and completely introverted.

I saw this guy pop out around the bushes and I am so damned naive I assumed he would just go away again.

The guy just kinda circles around me and practically provokes me to acknowledge his existence.

He's also sort of shyly holding a long thin piece of scrap metal with jagged bits on the end, but not really trying to hide it.

Also known as brandishing a deadly weapon, and explicitly threatening with how he did the little circling behind me.

I was like, oh so this is the fucking serial killer I get? My angel of death is a grownass little boy who needs his toys taken away? FINE.

Fucker disappeared but almost immediately after that the cops showed up. Fortunately again I clocked them arriving immediately and I left.