Pre-Halloween Scare

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

Sometimes we scare ourselves by seeing things that aren't there. Or sometimes, we are scared by the lack of a crowd. This applies to me, particularly in a new parking spot.

In the middle of this week, instead of driving to my usual MRT parking spot, I decided to park at the one in Bandar Utama. I had planned to meet up with former college mates there the next day and thought I could save time on traffic by taking the train straight from my office to 1Utama. The rush hour jam is particularly bad these days because its usually exacerbated by evening thunderstorms.

Anyways, I left my house earlier than usual in case the journey to this new parking spot revealed some surprises. After I made the left turn leading to the parking spot, I slowed down as I wasn't sure where the entrance was. It turned out to be at the end of the road. The parking was a basement parking which I am not fond of. As I descended further down, I noticed there was another car behind me which kind of gave me reassurance since I wasn't the only driver going in there. 

Once I reached the level for visitors, I was disconcerted by how empty the parking was. There were only a few parked cars. This was in stark contrast with the other parking spot I usually go to. It didn't make sense to me that the parking would be empty at the time people started going to work. I felt chills, even more so when I saw the driver behind me had parked and the driver was a man. He seemed to be watching me. Alarm bells inside me started to ring and although at the back of my mind I knew it wasn't a good idea to get out of the car in a deserted parking lot when there was a man in a car nearby, that was exactly what I did. I parked my car and quickly got out to pay the parking ticket. It cost me a steep RM4 for the mere few seconds I parked there. Obviously the developer of this parking had not heard of a grace period.

After hastily paying the parking ticket, I rushed to my car and quickly drove out of there. I felt like a cartoon character that left so quickly I left a cloud of smoke. My rapid heartbeat gradually slowed to normal as I finally exited the basement parking. 

I had often thought of visiting this parking spot to see if the rush hour evening jam from here would be shorter than my usual route but something always held me back. Somehow when I tried to look for comments on Google for this parking spot I couldn't find any recent, useful comments. My intuition turned out to be on to something. That parking spot felt creepy the moment I descended into it. The lack of users and the unfinished construction look does not strike confidence in me. The good thing is that now I know that my current parking spot, despite the heavy rush hour jam I have to endure during my journey home, is the best one for me at the moment.