Bullseye

I don’t know that if ever settles in, that death can come at any time and from any direction and I suppose that’s the less-than-subtle point of ‘The Bullseye’ which, from ground level, looks like an ugly and impractical field.

Which it is. 

Six wide rings of concrete. Six wide rings of grass. People have found use here, sometimes walking their dogs and sometimes having their elementary classes take to it with chalk under the broad theme of community beautification and a necessary callusing of young minds. For a while it served as a garden for wildflowers, a project that came about through a lot of hard work. The flowers were torn up randomly one night and ‘The Bullseye’ was reset. 

I’m talking like the Guide, now.

This is my research. I see what the book says and I look the place up to make sure it hasn’t gotten any more dangerous in the meantime. When it hasn’t, I schedule it in along my route. When it has gotten more dangerous, I do the same but I prepare. 

‘The Bullseye’ is a tough one.

‘Charged with an almost existential sense of anxiety, ‘The Bullseye,’ which covers many acres, seems to indicate that something will happen (or is happening) in an otherwise unremarkable field in Kansas. This potential is keenly felt, though its effect varies substantially.

Some cannot even seem to set foot in the outer ring of ‘The Bullseye,’ so fearful is the target. Others feel nothing at first- nothing for a while- before the dread builds into something cataclysmic, splitting them like a broken and emotional pressure cooker and sending them running for the interstate. 

Logic says to keep out of ‘The Bullseye’ and it’s defiance of logic that draws people to its center. No sense of the site’s timeline has been uncovered, but it is this Guide’s advice to spend as little time as possible in a place so clearly marked for danger.’

It sets in for me about an hour before sunset and only after I’ve moved to dead center. From here the interstate thrums like an electrical wire, some city’s evening traffic emptying into the countryside. I’m going the opposite direction, thankfully, passing through the city on my way north and I’m wondering about the state of the roads in early Autumn frost when ‘The Bullseye’ begins to itch me and I know it’s time to leave. There might have been a time where I waited it out, hoping to ride the mental breakdown, to take notes in my journal and to edit those notes into something that sounds scholarly, rather than frightened, for those esoteric forums that consider these places. 

Today I’m happy to clock out before the madness sets in too deep.

-traveler