The ruins loomed at the edge of a sprawling, self-similar suburb. Boxy three-bedrooms painted in the same shades of rust, grey and olive marched endlessly away in all directions from the massive and crumbling edifice of red bricks.
Like a factory out of the world wars, the building looked like a cross between a fortress and a red stone steamship. Three majestic smokestacks rose from behind the shabby facade. The roofline was crenellated with age, looking as though the place had been bombed out. The bricks had fallen in large bites to the rubble and debris below over many years. This exposed the bones of the old building, iron girders bracketing fragments of nighttime sky.
I slipped between two identical houses through dewy grass and up the embankment behind. There was a sagging chainlink fence haphazardly thrown around the property, but even this token gesture lay flat against the rubble where it sagged too far between bent poles. I stepped over it at one of these places and easily hopped the low concrete wall within.
I could smell wood smoke and hear a low radio within the abandonment. As my questing eye scanned the brick edifice I caught flickers of light across some high girders, a fire burned somewhere inside. This was certainly the place I was supposed to go, that was sure. It was a particularly singular structure, and the signs of occupation were also familiar. I was in the right place. I followed the wall until I found a door frame, and there I entered a open roofed hallway.
This place had been very large, but was divided into many halls and rooms with more of the same red brick as the streetside facade had been. The floor was dirt in most places, cracking tile in others. Along the edges of the hall little weeds and small grasses fought for a scraggly existence. The outer walls were easily 40 feet tall, but the inner walls were of varied height. Some was of sheetrock and paper, others of cinderblock, plywood and more brick. They were all incomplete. Each had holes a man could walk through and edges worn down. There was no place you couldn't see some bit of the open sky. At fairly regular intervals there were barrels, half full of burning bramble and paper trash.
This story continues here...
Like a factory out of the world wars, the building looked like a cross between a fortress and a red stone steamship. Three majestic smokestacks rose from behind the shabby facade. The roofline was crenellated with age, looking as though the place had been bombed out. The bricks had fallen in large bites to the rubble and debris below over many years. This exposed the bones of the old building, iron girders bracketing fragments of nighttime sky.
I slipped between two identical houses through dewy grass and up the embankment behind. There was a sagging chainlink fence haphazardly thrown around the property, but even this token gesture lay flat against the rubble where it sagged too far between bent poles. I stepped over it at one of these places and easily hopped the low concrete wall within.
I could smell wood smoke and hear a low radio within the abandonment. As my questing eye scanned the brick edifice I caught flickers of light across some high girders, a fire burned somewhere inside. This was certainly the place I was supposed to go, that was sure. It was a particularly singular structure, and the signs of occupation were also familiar. I was in the right place. I followed the wall until I found a door frame, and there I entered a open roofed hallway.
This place had been very large, but was divided into many halls and rooms with more of the same red brick as the streetside facade had been. The floor was dirt in most places, cracking tile in others. Along the edges of the hall little weeds and small grasses fought for a scraggly existence. The outer walls were easily 40 feet tall, but the inner walls were of varied height. Some was of sheetrock and paper, others of cinderblock, plywood and more brick. They were all incomplete. Each had holes a man could walk through and edges worn down. There was no place you couldn't see some bit of the open sky. At fairly regular intervals there were barrels, half full of burning bramble and paper trash.
This story continues here...
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