Short Story (True Story)

    The crickets were chirping. We were a good distance away from the bustling Halsted Street, which was so bright from the lamp posts and cars it almost hurt my eyes. It took my eyes a minute to get used to the darkness of the rest of the area. Aron was wearing his usual Cookie Monster cap and Robert was listening to his iPod. We were on our way to the Halsted Orange Line Station. About halfway through the park, there was a smell of barbeque pork, probably coming from one the dimly lit houses on the block. All of a sudden, Robert stopped and just stood there. We noticed and asked him what was wrong. Then we heard it too. A sound, like the ringing of a home phone, seemed to be coming out of nowhere. The three of us just stood there, looking for where the sound was coming from. Next to me, There was a box made of metal that I had seen many times before. It was connected to the telephone poles and I had always thought it provided power for the phone lines. While Robert and Aron kept looking around for the sound, I started walking towards the generator, thinking maybe there something stuck inside. After around fifteen rings, a women's voice replaced the sound of the phone. When that happened, we were so scared we ran as fast as we could toward the Orange Line. After a block of running, we stopped and Robert told us that he saw a flash, that Aron and I didn't see (probably cause we both have bad eyesight) before the noises started. Robert convinced us to go back, and we saw something that looked like a speaker (we couldn't tell because it was so dark out) attached to a lamp post that we didn't notice when we were walking by. Aron recalled that he heard the voice say "park" and "leave immediately". We guessed that this was a security camera, and that because it was past curfew, it would take pictures of people who it saw past that time, and tell them to leave.