''We did tell them...the small...whatever...small....watch the smalls be like that'' Said The Jaffer as he tried to laugh off the traumatic experience which had just unfolded as I sat stuttering in disbelief.
In one hundred miles, we hadn't seen one restaurant. There was nothing either around or in Aredale so obviously that was not possible, and even better, it had seemed that we had been doing circles around a gas station with an Arbys.
Admitting defeat, we drove through, took our orders off the value menu, and waited for the price. My eyes almost popped out of their sockets, like gag gift glasses, when I heard the woman squawk out the price ($34.19); these nazis were obviously out here, in the middle of nowhere, in their bunker, for a good time.
''Yea, it better taste good, Inch...oh, it will...better go down good...it will...34.19''. I shuddered. ''He hates hearing that'' said The Jaffer. The food was dealt, five chicken sandwiches, three shakes, and three large fries; ''I already feel so defeated'' I said. The bag deteriorated in my hand as I tried passing everything.
The day wore on, endless driving; feeling yourself conform into the seat you'd been sitting in. There is a point, in driving like this, that you sit in silence. Zone out. Your thinking about the next place to go. Watching the road warp below the tires. You daydream, letting your thoughts get ahead of you, forgetting where your at. Disassociating from yourself out of boredom.
It's difficult to tell when you start paying attention again because you don't really care what was happening until then. It's exactly then when you sit up and pay attention again.
''So what is this town?..Carollton...or just Caroll?..looks like..Carollton...is...nonexistent....it's...a green sign in the middle of a corn field...and it points you out here and you find a couple of roads....that tell you a weight limit for a truck....aaannnd..speed limits and that's it...and there is nothing out here...'' said The Jaffer and I, as we sped past a farm of angry cannibals; the town nowhere to be found. ''Yea, I think something happened to it, I really do'' said The Jaffer as we drove out of the plot of cornfields.
That night, just past the highway, another town, Beaver, looking like an alternate version of Aredale; just that you couldn't see anything this time.
Dirt alleyways were mostly the streets of the town, shats prowled up and down in packs of ten; another grain mill overlooked the town, train tracks behind it, as the Christmas star on top fizzled out in the night.
I tried getting into a house but the weeds were taller than me and I could hear (and see) the grass coming alive with snakes and trash pandas. I walked down the road, past the house, and found an old gas station that had the same problem. The Jaffer pulled up in The Inchmobile saying ''There's a car waiting down here, I went down this road, (driving past the gas station) there's nothing on it. This next road I went down? It's filled with water''.
I couldn't find the abandoned schoolhouse, I'd been looking for all this time, in this complete darkness.
In the main road of the town, the grain mill and railroad (now alive with the sound of a passing train) behind it, lay a tiny post office and a few abandoned business buildings. With the train behind me, chugging softly in the dark, the business buildings were dilapidated; windows smashed out, one had it's entire floor caving in. The air was cold by now and all I could hear was the sound of the highway.
''You could feel their spirits touching you and **** while you're there, apparently...where's that?...when it existed...yea, they were saying something about....um...Carroll, I think....no, that was the town we were in, Carrollton...yea, I could tell when I drove into that ****** cornfield. Just somethin'...somethin' just didn't feel right...it just felt off...as soon as I saw the flowers, and then after that, just everything not existing past that, I was like, this is a pretty clear, like, indicator...respect for the lost, don't **** with em...like if you're here, you're here for a reason.''
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