How do you get from there to here?

Across the asphalt, pools of it everywhere, dark as tar with the sheen of obsidian it reflected the light of the waning moon back at me menacingly, as a murderer might brandish a knife. It seemed unfathomable that other children would play in it, splash it at one another, and most disturbing of all leap right into the middle of a lake of that caustic substance. How could they jump in when they couldn’t see through it? How could they trust that it was only a few inches of water when in darkness it became something so much more? How come no one else knew, as I did, that at night they ceased to be simple puddles and became insidious dark water portals waiting roil over and consume the careless child who stepped in when no one was looking? I have no idea how I got here.