The light of a Dairy Queen and roundabout always lets you know that your in Metwein; especially in the dark.
All you could see was the other headlights of cars ahead; the only streetlights in Metwein are a few around the downtown and the roundabout that had a local war memorial in the middle of it.
Past that, on a lonely sloping road, I wondered what fresh abominations would await me as I stood outside Nick's door. I wasn't disappointed as I walked in to see a lone crackhead spread out on a couch with two fourteen year old girls. Shaking my head, I went up the narrow staircase ahead of me and went upstairs.
I opened the door closest to me and almost stepped in vomit and stale urine as two kids continued to spew all over each other on top of bare bunk beds. Another door by the bunk bed opened and out came Nick. He stood there, shirtless and half crazed, taking a leash, and started whipping it at the two diseased animals before they retreated to the nearby corner.
Nick sighed with exhaustion as he spat on the carpeted floor and rolled his eyes back into his head. He was suspicious of my appearance but relented and came with me and another who came along saying nothing between the cigarette in his mouth. We walked out in the winter night of Metwein.
The streets faded into the darkness ahead, the silence of the winter night only broken by some children with syringes hanging out their veins and a wild madness inside their eyes. The children were vicious street walkers who stalk the sidewalks in packs of five or six.
After passing a closed booze station, we arrived at the local Pizza Ranch down the road. Inside, it was strange, more tavern like than buffet looking, we picked a booth on the farthest corner; just behind, a local family were busy tasking between eating and having infants on their laps as their daughters looked out the window with no life in their posture. The lights were dim, a TV was up in a near corner showing some sports; the carpet looked green as a casino floor. This was the only place that people wouldn't stare at you and that was only because they were too busy filling their own faces.
Back outside, we headed downtown until we could find something interesting.
Outside was a slow blizzard. The wind was howling and blowing everywhere; the buildings outlined in dim neon. We walked by the storefront windows and gazed in the dark windows. The streets were empty and the lights blinked in the dark. The cold was just starting to get to me when I noticed an old movie theater. It was showing the new Star Wars film and it was all only five bucks; country living.
The theater was the old hole in the wall joint with a box office, concession stand, and red carpeting; out of the small bathroom in the lobby came a grinning child that was proud to have desecrated their facilities. We sat up close to the movie screen, the sound system was antique but still reliable, and we waited as the theater barely even filled the first two back rows.
Nights in Metwein are oddly quiet; it's the kind of place you'd expect to be stopped in the middle of the sidewalk by a local drug dealer and robbed. It's a place where the moon shines clear and the junkies howl in the distance.
''If you think that's bad you should see this'' said Nick as he led me and the other down to his basement. It had a dirt floor, a washing machine, and a bare mattress in the corner. The mattress was stained by all kinds of unidentifiable bodily fluids and substances. It belonged to the crackhead who was still laid up with the two fourteen year old girls; he was known to come down here and scrape the resin out of marijuana pipes until he had enough to function or sleep. I knew then that this was the drug den that was in almost every Metwein household; even the license plate of the car outside read ''666''.
I figured I'd better get comfortable so I plopped down on the pus filled bed and took out an Ecuadorian cigar that I had kept for the circumstance. The small, dirt, floored basement slowly filled with smoke as I puffed long and hard on the tobacco log; someone mentioned that the countdown in New York was over. It was a new year.
Part Two: The Obelisk
I didn't get any sleep. The floor was too hard and I checked my phone; four in the morning. I got up and blindly walked over to the friend who had taken us down; a tall fellow with a habit for anything indigestible, depressing, and that he could lay next to at night. He was known solely as The Inch.
The Inch always muttered in his sleep about some woman; it never made sense, but the names always seemed familiar. I shook him up with my foot as he perked up with glazed eyes saying ''what in the **** man''.
I eyed him and told him that it was the time for food. He got out his phone and dialed the nearest Casey's gas station; famous for pizza and robbery.
After confirming the order, he got up and we headed outside. The morning air stung with a cold touch as we shared a cigarette.
When The Inch got into his rickety machine, a pickup truck affectionately labeled The Inchmobile; the thing didn't start. He kept giving it gas until he could hear the engine fill. All The Inchmobile could manage was some skidding and sliding across the small road with it's two back wheels; squealing out smoke and all.
He hopped out pissed then pointed out that the tires were completely bald and that the street had a very thin layer of black ice. Shrugging, he casually reached into the truck bed and took out what looked like two wooden blocks connected by a chain like a clunky pair of num-chuks.
I thought of beating both him and the wretched machine with it but he tossed the num-chuks under the tires like a couple of country boys having a bit of fun with the pet trash panda. I laughed and continued to double over until the machine came to life; using the num-chuks like a ladder over the ice. I hopped in and blasted some theme music to the Casey's.
The Casey's was real quiet at five in the morning; sunlight brimming on the horizon as two old truckers read the local papers and drank watered down coffee inside.
As Inch browsed through the extensive booze, I came up with two jugs of chocolate milk and the pizza. We walked back to Nick's and huddled into his little room as we shared the pizza between us three.
Part Three - A Midsummer's Withdrawal
Days in Metwein are a bleak grasp on what remains of a life around you. All around, the houses are either riddled out from junkies, abandoned, or in disrepair. A garage could either be where you build a car from completely nothing or brew meth.
The following summer was exceptionally hot. Inch and I sat on the musty floor of Nick's bedroom, sweating, and staring at each other until we decided to get groceries at the local store, and watch the Amish (and their women) looking back at us like aliens.
We, then, chose to see where Nick had graduated from which was just up the road. Surprisingly, it was clean and seemed to be in functioning order. We decided to venture in the back, it had a medium sized playground and two large fields for sports by it. Passing through the playground, a crowd of small children quickly enveloped around us, I wasn't sure if I was safe or destined to be shanked by a circle of preschoolers. They eyed us with curiosity, touching our clothes, commenting on our appearance, ''That one is ugly'' one of them said while pointing at me; a small woman hoarding them around couldn't care less as they herded by us. This peaked my own curiosity, it was a Saturday, so where they coming from?
My investigation was interrupted as I looked towards the back entrance of the school and spotted a soccer mom coming in with her minivan. She drove slow and lowered her windows, squawking, ''What are you doing back here? What do you want!?! I'll call the cops!''. She was in hysterics as she foamed at the mouth; hints of cocaine under the nose.
We walked out of there for our own protection but she didn't stop trailing us. We went and hid in the stands of the nearby football stadium; the soccer mom driving slowly with phone in hand as she aggressively wiped her nose. Clouds had started to form out in the clear stretch of sky ahead of the field; the Metwein water tower gave the darkening clouds a strange backdrop.
As we walked out of there, we hit the other side of the town to get downtown; the other side of the tracks.
The Inch must've been getting skittish from the soccer mom because, as we past the empty streets, he took out his phone and tried to call a local girl to party with. I didn't pay much attention until a pack of rabid children started forming on the street corners, I tried tugging on his sleeve, but he was locked into his mission.
A cocky looking kid approached us, after dismantling a whole television that was left on the corner, saying ''Oi! Step outta the way foreigner!''. The Inch couldn't care as he got dangerous when his stakes got low and brushed right past the kid; making him look like the seven year old that he was.
Before heading downtown, we set up shop at the local McDonald's, The Inch and I chewed on dollar menu food as Nick looked like two steps away from passing out. He said he'd meet us later at his house.
The Inch and I walked him back home then wandered down the street. After walking back and forth, in the middle of the road, we passed a small abandoned building.
It's windows were dirty and were covered in spiderwebs. It sat there in the rising heat of the afternoon, looking relatively new, the front of it had wheelchair railing where we sat and figured out what to do next.
My eyes scanned around the quiet streets, some were paved with bricks, some with asphalt, some went up, some down, and I watched cars occasionally pass through alleyways. It all seemed familiar but I had never been here before. I envisioned a whole adolescence spent wandering up and down these streets. Going nowhere but constantly walking, going, and living on these sidewalks. The thought felt warm and fuzzy like a nicotine buzz. After a while I turned, noticing Inch sweating quietly in the heat, and saw a large park past the back of the building and decided we should go there.
We got up and walked to a park that expanded into a baseball diamond, playground, and public swimming pool. Inch walked slow in the heat, I watched him take each step like it was his desert walk, he eyed lazily around, and walked over to the baseball dugout and stood upon the rows of bleachers. He stopped, in thought, exhaled harshly, and said; ''Do you know what's bulls***, man? These girls. I don't get it. I look at it from every perspective and it still doesn't make sense like what in the f****''. He balanced on the bleachers and jumped down.
I followed him in silence. We continued, the diamond connected to the swimming pool, and we walked along the fence which connected around the whole pool.
I watched the lifeguards getting ready for work. Two, slim and pretty, lifeguards walked around; grinning and laughing at each other. I couldn't hear their conversation.
They looked careless. A Ken looking dude came over and smoothly joined their conversation like something out of an Axe Body Spray commercial. What did these people's conversations consist of? Was it strictly bound to their little existence in this throw away town or was it something else? Did they care? Did I care?
The sun beamed down hot, the sky above was clear, and I had noticed that The Inch was behind me and in la la land. I shook my head and got to the front of the place.
The fence was still locked and there was a price for getting in. I laughed and considered using their bathroom until I remembered how disgusting these bathrooms can be. I waited for The Inch to finally wrap around the building.
When he did, he walked faster, you could see the vindictiveness in his eyes. ''Hey man'', he said; ''Did you see that? I was five feet away and I tried waving at those girls. They didn't even acknowledge me and the dude looked pissed. I can't stand these b******. It's like I don't even exist and I might not as well by the looks of it''. I patted his shoulder and let him sulk. I stared off in the field behind us until the bright green of it was starting to burn into my eyeballs before I mentioned that we could still go downtown.
Downtown Metwein may be more alive in the daylight but just as quiet. Cars cruised around the street; going nowhere and sometimes causally slowing down to scream out racial slurs and other insults at random people on the sidewalk. We must of looked like tourists by the way we were wandering around looking in every direction.
We headed into a local antique store, the walls were lined with cheap red wallpaper with an according carpet. Also on the walls were shelves with racks of Neil Diamond records, local election pins, and guns fixed upon wooden racks. The Inch found a fifteen inch katana behind a print of the famous Marilyn Monroe nude. The rooms of the store were small with tight hallways and had some cute girls wandering around.
As we headed out, we spotted a hollowed out row of window stores that now housed vintage Cadillacs. Ogling the cars, an old man approached me and asked what we were up to. He was friendly and perked up once we told him that we were looking for something weird. He told us a story of a house that was shucked out by a fire last week on the other side of town; past the old railroad station.
The old railroad station was only a couple of blocks away. It looked like a concentration camp with its cattle cars and barbed wire fences. The track led to the newer station still in use, over an old bridge, off into the distance. The train cars stretched out for what seemed like forever but we had a mission; so we found a path covered in discarded clothes and got down under the old bridge that marked the other side of town.
It was a five minute walk through the old bridge; inside, it's sides were scarred with polluted water stains and the noise was like someone starting their motorcycle in the middle of your bedroom.
The other side of Metwein marks the end of businesses but not abandoned places.
After a few blocks of abandoned houses and a grocery store; it was only fields and a few houses by then. I sat on the ledge of the abandoned grocery store smoking a cigarette. The day was slowly wearing away; the orange of the sky was just beginning around the edges of our view. We turned back. Some local kids drove past on motorcycles; laughing at our pitiful situation.
We were just barely towards downtown (passing the old bridge) when, in the clear path of lonely road, came a shirtless man on a riding lawnmower. He drove slowly, eyeing us with his John Deere hat, and Busch Light in hand. My mouth hung open. It was time to leave the cesspool.
