You will wander up to an abandoned house, small with odd angles and chipped-off paint. Approach cautiously. Yell hello? Nothing. Sneak quietly around the back. You will find a small door with a padlock. Another building off to the side, rectangular with two more doors, side-by-side with similar locks. You step carefully onto the creaking porch, testing a patch slightly darker than the rest, littered with miniscule oak leaves. The old wood will bend under your foot like a tall tree in the wind, and you will step back and find a safer route.
Continue. There is one small, fogged-up window, but keep going. Another follows, clear and large with an open shutter, inviting investigation. You peer inside and see a large plastic child's pool, inflatable and still inflated. Then, a pile of rope, some illegible publication draped over the edge of a small table. Then one long yellow piece of fly paper, mottled with insects. It is as if this place sits waiting for its owners to return. The pool is ready to be inhabited by both water and child, and the flies are carefully preserved for the caretaker to dispose of. The porch groans in anticipation.
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