SERPENTINE MEWS

You may be lost in an unfamiliar town one night, as a result of taking one wrong turn after another. It’s late, and it’s dark, and the lack of people out on the streets feels a little unnerving which also means that the occasional person you do see feels equally unnerving. It’s not that they directly look at you, or cause you any trouble, but you are unsettled by the way in which they slink around like cats, going about their obscure business.
Fed up of making no sense of the directions you’ve been given, and struggling to get any mobile signal to use maps, you decide to ask the next person that you see for help. But you don’t get it, at least not in the way you think you need it. The man is walking fast, head down, in the shadows next to the buildings. You open your mouth but before you can ask him directions he looks up at you briefly, and says “Not that way.” Before you can process this, he’s gone, along the street and away around the corner as if he was never there. This is where you have a choice. You can follow his advice, and turn back and walk in the opposite direction. Or you can laugh to yourself, half out of absurdity and half out of frustration, and walk on. How could he know which way you should be going if he didn’t even know where you wanted to be?
If you take that latter choice, you will walk on and pass a street sign that tells you that you have turned on to Serpentine Mews, and you will find yourself more lost that you have ever been, as the roads wind round and three times you end up where you first started. If you’re observant, you might realise that each time it takes you less time, and if you’re clever you might realise that is because the streets are winding closer and closer around you, and if you’re neither observant or clever you’ll end up realising it when the buildings wrap around you so tight that you struggle for breath.
Towards the end, you think you hear a cat give out a terrible cry somewhere close, but it turns out to be you making the noise and then quite quickly you stop.