The first time I saw the old ruins outside of town was actually the first time I saw the town. My parents had thrown around words like “quaint” and “history”, but all I saw at the age of seventeen was another small, boring town that I would be trapped in until they got bored and decided to move again. This happened almost every year, now, and I was counting down the days until I could go away to university and have a place of my own for once.

But back to the ruins.

I’m not really the sort of person who’s normally interested in that sort of thing. It comes from having a family obsessed with history- when it’s all you hear about, you just stop caring, and you definitely don’t want to go seeking it out in your spare time. But for once, as we passed the crumbling old group of buildings, my parents weren’t going into raptures over it, or wanting to stop and take pictures. As a matter of fact, I actually saw my mother glare at it as it disappeared in the rear-view mirror.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” my father muttered.

“We don’t want you going in there, Mark, you hear?” my mother told me. “It’s a dangerous place.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, but my mind, of course, had started spinning with plans on how I would get in.

In the end, it took me a couple weeks. I got distracted; sue me, I was seventeen. I was a little more interested in getting my room set up the way I wanted it and trying to make at least a couple friends than I was in defying my parents when their patience was already wearing thin from the long-distance move. It worked out, though.