Sleeping in my car for five years was... an experience to say the least. You don't get the struggle of finding a decent parking space overnight until you find yourself checking to make sure it doesn't have barriers (in case you need to Get Out Fast), the office has a sympathetic attendant (you bribe them a little, they watch your back... mostly works) and most importantly - park in the darkest corner.
The trick is making sure only the right people know where you are, make your car look beaten enough to not be worth breaking into but not so beaten that some bored little shit will think they can take it for a joyride. Not doing that one again.
For a good few weeks I thought I found the perfect place - a midsize multi storey car park by the town's exit road, connected by a pedestrian bridge that was still closed after the last jumper made a less-than-neat landing. The road's still stained and if that wasn't off-putting enough, the closest bar was closed down three days after I "moved in".
It was basically a dead zone where the occasional drug deal took place in the basement levels while I parked up on the fourth floor under the ramp leading to the next level. You'd never spot me unless you were looking and that suited me just fine until the moment it didn't.
The moment I became predictable.
Turns out car parks like this are some kind of liminal space, somewhere not quite anywhere but just somewher enough for things to slip in and out of reality, soundless and starving. Sometimes I'd catch glimpses of odd shadows scuttling about in ways shadows shouldn't be able to move but I put it down to the early hours and lack of sleep.
It's a bit harder to do that when the shadows are tapping on your windows with hands that are inhumanly small and big and not even hand-shaped all at once, their bodies twisting, retracting and reforming in less than the blink of an eye while all their eyes are Fixed On You.
They all knew my name, whispering it like a mantra while they tried to open the doors.
Needless to say I kept to better places after that, bribing a colleague to let me sleep in their disused garage. I had to clear it all out first but at least the shadows there are smaller, domestic in a way that the car park creatures couldn't possibly be.
They still knew my name.
The trick is making sure only the right people know where you are, make your car look beaten enough to not be worth breaking into but not so beaten that some bored little shit will think they can take it for a joyride. Not doing that one again.
For a good few weeks I thought I found the perfect place - a midsize multi storey car park by the town's exit road, connected by a pedestrian bridge that was still closed after the last jumper made a less-than-neat landing. The road's still stained and if that wasn't off-putting enough, the closest bar was closed down three days after I "moved in".
It was basically a dead zone where the occasional drug deal took place in the basement levels while I parked up on the fourth floor under the ramp leading to the next level. You'd never spot me unless you were looking and that suited me just fine until the moment it didn't.
The moment I became predictable.
Turns out car parks like this are some kind of liminal space, somewhere not quite anywhere but just somewher enough for things to slip in and out of reality, soundless and starving. Sometimes I'd catch glimpses of odd shadows scuttling about in ways shadows shouldn't be able to move but I put it down to the early hours and lack of sleep.
It's a bit harder to do that when the shadows are tapping on your windows with hands that are inhumanly small and big and not even hand-shaped all at once, their bodies twisting, retracting and reforming in less than the blink of an eye while all their eyes are Fixed On You.
They all knew my name, whispering it like a mantra while they tried to open the doors.
Needless to say I kept to better places after that, bribing a colleague to let me sleep in their disused garage. I had to clear it all out first but at least the shadows there are smaller, domestic in a way that the car park creatures couldn't possibly be.
They still knew my name.
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