everyday gothic

Things aren't quite where you remember them being when you go back to visit your hometown. It's not that anything has changed—nothing ever changes in this town—but streets seem to be in a slightly different order, just switched here and there. Stores are one block over from where you thought they were. Everyone assures you things have always been this way. Have you simply forgotten?

On the drive out, there was an abandoned gas station just off the road. You remember because you stopped to take a photo of it. On the drive back, you look for the gas station, feeling like you are waiting to spot an old friend. But you drive and you drive and you never pass it. You check your photos to make sure you know what it looks like. There are no photos of a gas station on your phone.

The car speedometer says you are going 80mph, but the dotted white lines at the edges of your lane are crawling by. The scenery around you is as distinguishable as if you were standing still. And the music on the radio is garbled, as if you were listening to it at half speed. The mountains in the distance have not gotten any closer.

The interstate is straight and flat. The mountains behind you and ahead of you never seem to change position. You will put your car in cruise control and let your thought stray. But be careful. When you break out of your daydreams, you may find that you car has taken a turn that did not exist and you are now very far from the interstate.

The sun sets slowly in the west, seeming to hang in the wide open sky for long hours. You almost don't notice when it finally transitions from twilight to night. In fact, you only realize it is dark when you look around to find yours is the only car on the interstate and your headlights are the only light in a black desert. Ahead of you, a coyote runs across the freeway.

The line between public road and private driveway is thin and always shifting. The difficulty is that if you find yourself on a private county road, you will not be able to turn around. You will have to go wherever it leads and there is no telling where that might be. Do not try to turn off the road. What lies in the dark fields on either side is worse.

A desert moon rises over the distant mountains in front of you. It is impossibly big and strikingly orange where it hovers over the horizon. You can almost believe it is the most beautiful moonrise you have ever seen except for the fact that you are facing north and the moon is climbing towards the south.

A car has been driving behind you for at least an hour, its headlights in your rearview mirror on a straight, flat road. There have been no turn offs or detours for nearly 30 miles. So why have the lights of the car behind you suddenly disappeared?

When the wind gusts during a storm, you can hear voices. Sometimes they sound almost harmless, like children playing. Other times, they sound more like cruel laughter. But what is most unsettling is that the nearest house to yours is five miles away across the fields.

This doesn't stop the ghosts.

You've just heard Haley and Will have broken up. The scandal is the talk of the school, and you are deeply invested. Of course, you did not know Haley and Will were dating. You do not know Haley and Will. When you ask friends about it, they describe Haley and Will down to the most complex detail, but no one by that description goes to your school.