Armen had heard of Hidden Valley a number of times. He imagined that it must be in a deep, narrow ravine, easy to miss because of the overwhelming flatness of the Sink; easy to overlook like the underground gardens in Fresno.
Hidden Valley, by Gaius31duke
Amid the two-dimensional vastness of the Sink, a highway overpass could seem like a violation of the laws of Nature.
Armen didn’t have any friends that he could trust not to turn on him for the slightest social advantage, except maybe for a schoolmate named Jake who lived near school. Sometimes Armen would go to Jake’s house after school to watch him torture his cat, wrestle a vicious dog, or light a fire in a trashcan.
One day, after Jake returned to school with stitches in his scalp from a recent dog fight, he invited Armen to go fishing with him at Hidden Valley. They dropped by Jake’s house so he could pick up his .22 caliber rifle, then they cut through a walnut orchard toward the fabled fishing hole.
Hidden Valley, it turned out, was not a valley at all, but rather a city park drawn out across a shallow flood course, featuring a muddy reservoir that the city imagined to be a pond, holding irrigation water from the adjacent Peoples Ditch. Only in the Sink could this be called a park, and with such an absurdly ironic name.
Armen looked down into the murky shallows as Jake popped little yellow capsules into the water. Carp broke the otherwise motionless surface and writhed. Pale carcasses floated, peaceful as the muddy water. Armen concealed his horror as Jake enumerated his success. When Jake realized he was being greedy, he offered up the rifle to Armen. Armen declined appreciatively, and Jake proceeded with the massacre. Once Jake was out of shells and had completed the final tally, they parted and each headed home.