We're of some relation. I just finished school, and you've finished something as well, but you have to defend a thesis of some kind on Friday. We decide to go on a little trip to celebrate. I think it's Wednesday. After casually packing a few things, we drive deep into an imaginary Missouri. We drive and drive until the landscape changes, rather abruptly, from the dead, flat cornfields into Gothic backwoods, where huge willows drool Spanish moss as if transplanted from some nightmare of the deep South. I'm excited. We see a sign for the No Hope Hotel. No one's around. We try to find somewhere to stay, but the roads we follow change from asphalt into dirt, from dirt into mud, which gets thicker and thicker. You're resentful about something to do with work and seem to spend most of your time complaining about it, while I notice with some concern the increasing difficulty of the roads. We drive until the car gets stuck in a river of peat. Or perhaps it's still mud, thick enough to be impassable and thin enough to drift along, carrying with it clumps of black soil. The car drags along until finally we spot a little dreary clearing, where we park. The marshes slowly churn behind us like dark, clogged arteries. There's a huge barbed wire fence blocking a little road that exits the clearing. My concern turns to fear. Two black dogs approach us, seemingly unaffected by the thick mud. They're clearly supernatural in some way, and their fur is clean and lustrous. Friendly at first, sighting them nonetheless fills me with immense dread. The sky is gray and low like a cement ceiling in an unfinished basement. I try to convince you that the only way out is to take off and try to wade through the marshes back to a nearby town, but you don't want to abandon the car. "Let's just take the papers and go." We're poorly prepared. I'm scared of cold hands in the mud, under the mud, dragging us down, but a little hope remains while there's light. "You're being stupid. We can come back for the car." Perhaps with a guide. I climb a soggy tree and spy a man just standing in a clump of grass, still as a painting. We call him over to us. He's dressed like an officer and, when he arrives, he smiles. His teeth are sharp. We ask him for help, but he only laughs. Mocking us, he suggests that we try to squirm through the wire. He has friends nearby, he says, and they like watching. Suddenly angry, I throw a stone at him, and it strikes his head, knocking off his hat. There's a sound like a log falling into deep water, but no blood. He returns to his feet, the side of his head looking a bit like a smashed cake. "Thank God we don't have any bones!" He grins madly I see the black dogs reappear in the distance. Once Alsatian shadows, now they look like charred slugs.
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
kianamaiart
stormborns
