Road Trip

This town is dust. Wooden buildings turned to half sand-submerged memories. Rusting train tracks to nowhere, empty, their iron horses like so many beached metal bones. Wind whistles between gaping doors, across barren frames.

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Lights blaze up and down the Highway, islands of illumination standing proud against so much desert emptiness. We pass them one night, surprised how crowded the emptiness has suddenly become, but we’re too keen to stop and press on. Maybe later, we say, laughing. 

We pass them again the next four nights, the exact same buildings. 

Their lights are harshly bright, glaring. 

On the fifth night, shadows of backlit forms stare out from their windows. The radio hisses with hostile static and the sun refuses to rise. We can’t see any stars. There are no stars. Just the lights, the shadows. 

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“Any volunteers?” implores the Man on Stage. His grin is big and white, almost leering. 

Hot, dry wind blows. There are words there, like someone pressing a secret into your soul but they’re snatched into silence as quick as they came. 

“Any volunteers?” ,says the Man on the Stage again, but now is looking down into an unfamiliar face, his grin like a crescent moon, an omen. Hands sloughed by merciless winds and scorching sun reach out, fleshless, tender. 

The crowd is all looking. Watching. Bottomless sockets so empty, and so hungry. 

The noose sways, inviting and open as the blue sky looming. It fits around your neck like it was all meant to be.

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There are smiles on all the billboards. 

The teeth are fangs, caked and smeared with redness. 

There are smiles on all the billboards. 

The mouths are opened to black gullets. 

There are smiles on all the billboards. 

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