The nearly-empty styrofoam cup rested on the top of a
strange steel circle which looked a bit like a steering wheel at the end of a
meter-high steel pole that rose straight up from the
small concrete slab with faded red guard rails overlooking the
wide slow waterfall cutting like a slim straight necktie across the neck of the
pond which despite its stillness was fed and drained by a
slow winding river that passed under a
large rusty vertical iron water wheel which (despite being lit well enough to be seen clearly) blocked sunlight from directly hitting
the inside which allowed the growth of a layer of mold which would probably be thick enough to cover a grown man's hand if it was laid against the
central shaft of the wheel which was inaccessible due to the slowly but implacably turning
angle irons that looked too small to support something that heavy but somehow did every time the
hollow wheel carried a lot of water to its apex and dumped it all down the
sloping flat inside like some perverse rusty raincloud whose top covered its bottom in rippling sheets of
mildewy water that over the years had slowly risen along the banks of the river and overtaken the
walkway beside the waterwheel with a "no trespassing" sign on it that rose gently up towards the
series of concrete pits allowing passage to the
smooth flat windows looking in on wide empty rooms in the basement of a
strange old factory which was being repurposed as a gym but still had in its back lot several
stocky concrete structures with no readily-apparent purpose and short ladders going all around them and a
run-down cinderblock shack with a rusted-through steel door on rusted-through steel hinges
dangling pipes with peeling paint which would probably end up in the
shallow dumpster containing dilapidated printing machines and ducting and scaffolding removed by the
loud workers whose tools stuck out of the back window of a
dusty black Chevrolet Blazer with dusty black tires on dusty black asphalt which eventually led to a
robust wooden bridge which was made more of dirt than wood and had a gross axle weight limit of twenty thousand pounds according to the
crooked yellow sign with faded black lettering on the left side of the bridge obscured by a
black chain link fence recently erected along the sides of the bridge for the protection of
pedestrians like me