Out behind the shed, there was a shallow pond that used to be decorative. These days it was more functional than pretty, with algae on the edges and leaves floating in the water. It wasn’t filthy—but it wasn’t filtered either. And that was fine. He wasn’t after pristine. He was after memorable.
Clarence spent the next day quietly preparing. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Jordan, the kid down the street who sometimes helped him with yard work. He wanted no witnesses, no gossip. Just results. The fewer people who knew, the better it would work.
He rigged the old irrigation tubing to a pump line that drew directly from the pond, feeding it toward the mulch border where most of the shortcut traffic passed. He checked the valves, replaced the rotted pieces, and tested the flow. The water came out cold—and faintly murky, just enough to stain a shirt or leave streaks on expensive gear.
At the far end, he installed a motion-activated sensor—nothing fancy, just a deer deterrent he’d used once to keep raccoons away from the tomatoes. When triggered, it opened the valve for four seconds, spraying a fan of high-pressure water from nozzles carefully mounted beneath the flower bed’s edge.