Monster in the car park

27 November 2013

Car park entrances are yawning mouths. The ceiling height is usually signposted, but still it seems so low I shrug down in my seat, hoping the car roof won't get scratched. Then it's the usual drill: press the flashing button on the bollard, take my ticket and drive past the raised boom gate.

The big question is: where do I put my car park ticket? I could tuck it behind the sunshade or on the spare change shelf, pop it in the side pouch of the door or into the back pocket of my jeans. Then there's the risk of the ticket falling out, becoming crumpled, bent in half or lost among the used tissues, expired tubes of sunscreen and chewing gum wrappers. I choose my jacket's breast pocket.

If I wind down my window, I can hear the echoing sounds of various car park life forms. A baby crying out, resisting restraint in its seat; the high-pitched laugh of girls, laden with shopping bags, giddy from retail therapy. There's a raucous sneeze from an older gentleman, followed by his phlegmy cough and a mucus-laden blowing of his nose. I glance at the used tissues in my side door and shudder. We humans are a disgusting species.

I steer towards the next level down, lumbering down the winding turns at low speed. It's here I see the exposed rock walls are sweating with subterranean moisture, even dripping with oozing pus in some parts. As I cruise past a particularly slimy part, I have to do a double-take because a craggy outcrop seems to shift, like a grotesque potkoorok monster, restless in its sleep. It's just an illusion; light moving across the dimly lit curve of the wall.

The car park is a concrete cave, a holding cell, a sarcophagus. From the outside, car parks look like other buildings, but inside, there are darker, deeper modalities. I wind down to sub level four. Here, the lights are sensor-activated, to save energy. I applaud this kind of economical and environmental responsibility and zig-zag across the empty concrete area, dodging square pillars and luxuriating in the fact that there are only half a dozen cars parked on this floor. Free spaces, empty rows: I savour the desolate and bare space.

Is that elevator music I hear? No, it's more mechanical than that. A low doof doof but the beat is not musical. It's only the rhythms of the

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Monster in the car park

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