#lambstown

     But so too do many stories start when filled with wayward teenagers and boring little towns surrounded by nothing, stuck dead center in the middle of nowhere.  Young things struck with boredom feel dangerously susceptible to darker events.  Adrenaline comes and goes.  Goes, mostly.  Leaving just about any teenager hungry to chase that rush over and over again.  But what makes this a distinction from other tales you may have read, other stories with feral children and the emptiness within with they live, is a single word.

     Accidental.  

     For when two children climbed into a rusted out, smoke spewing car within their home so fondly nicknamed Nowheretown, Arizona, they did not intend to end a life.  There was a hunger for excitement, but not brutality in their hearts at the creeping hour of midnight.  Or was it one am?  Or earlier even than that, simply somewhere within the twilight hours?

     Ah, well.  It doesn’t matter, does it?

LAMBSTOWN, a wip introduction.

you’re wearing ichor stigmata right on your palms.

GENRE: coming of age horror POV: third perscent omniscient, present tense THEMES: small town, religious horror, coming of age, fuck the rest of em when you have found family, an incessant itch to sacrifice yourself for everyone else, baring your teeth at fate and god and also your parents, growing up is the worst so why do we all have to do it? WARNINGS: violence, mental illness, drug addiction, body dysphoria, homophobia, religious intensity, mentions of death, suicide and self harm

In the last eighteen years, only five children have been born in the town.  This isn’t uncommon.  Maybe it’s the water, maybe it’s the air, or the land itself that townsfolk cut their teeth on.  People come here to get lost from the jungle of society and sink deep into the town life.  Childless and brittle until the grave sucks them down.  It’s a nothing happens kind of town, a drive through without stopping on your way to bigger and better things town.  Hellhole Arizona, population small enough to have a hospital next town over instead of anywhere nearby.  

So it would figure that the angels would choose here to enact the end of everything.  All the regal demons are locked in serpent chains.  The two big voices have been absent long enough to leave everyone antsy for big change, and what’s bigger than the end?  One set of angelic claws will catch the throat of Baphomet’s child and, with their blood spilling onto the ground, the under gods and elder things will wake up with a hunger.  

Except that every one of those five kids in nowhere, Arizona -- Levi, Billie, Zion, Scout and Kennedy -- have something distinctly tilted-cross about them.  The holy host only has one chance to slit the right throat, and there’s no way in hell that these kids will make it easy for them.  

Fuck the world, but also fuck dying to end it.

THE LAMBSTOWN FIVE, oc lyric challenge

BILLIE G: psalms 40:2 KENNEDY: autoclave LEVI: cry for judas SCOUT: this year ZION: white cedar

LAMBSTOWN CHARACTERS, scout scarlett.

raise boys and girls the same.  or, fuck the patriarchy.  or, if he puts his hands on you, cut them off.  scout wears her personality for the day on the shirts that stretch over her skin, tan and brutalist in the shameless way she displays the injuries patched there.  but those are the only two parts of scout -- phrases that speak for her and bruises brighter than the arizona sun.  at least in this way she was honest.  the type of person to read marxist books and then spit the dialogue word for word at anyone who comes too close to her.  a manic prophet drinking liquor that stains her insides, vomiting it back out for more room in her guts to swallow the bottle back down again.  

scout wasn’t stupid.  just destructive.  she hated everything in the tiny town around her and lacked the sheer ---pathy to burn it all down with genuine lighter fluid and matches.  in her mind she was probably picking everyone off one by one.  knives and scissors, the occasional nuke when faced with someone she really hated.  

in other words, home.  kennedy can’t fucking blame her for it either; he sees a lot when running laps on his invisible trails throughout the helltown.  more than anyone probably thinks.  but the bitter hollowness in her mother’s eyes and dark rage in her father’s sticks to kennedy’s ribs and refuses to let go.  he can’t imagine what it feels like to live there.  a house imposing in its normalcy.  framed by scout’s car, a beat up piece of shit that feels more like a body abandoned in the driveway than anything else when she leaves it alone.  

here’s the thing though.  no one talks about it.  

maybe it’s because of how scout wears the bruises and the cigarette burns, flags that seem to dare a wandering eye to say anything, absolutely anything, that shuts people up.  or they just don’t want to talk about it, period.  her personality invites no kindness.  scout is never kind, never soft, not unless she’s tucked with other hopeless and damned creatures that can’t talk back.  and those aren’t people.  

and shit, people don’t put in work unless they get that energy back.  so she’s fallen to the cracks.  an angry flash of teeth and foam at the mouth, of knuckles that can’t stop popping.  fake one dimensional girl that no one has the time for.  the real question that kennedy has no answer for is if she hates it.  or does scout live for the ignorance of this shitty town?

LAMBSTOWN CHARACTERS, kennedy jackal.

seems like there’s no problem that kennedy thinks he can’t solve by taking to the race track.  a bad grade, an argument with his employer or that constant itch under his skin that leaves his jaw tensed into one long line.  they all guide him to the race track.  old, cracked pavement of sun faded crimson with chipped white paint.  dandelions and thin strands of wheat like weeds peeking out of the wounds throughout the pathways.  he stretches out on aisle three and aisle three only, not so much as veering into the other pathways no matter how exhausted he is or how much he’s stumbling.

kennedy never struggles beneath the arizona heat.  only halts when called away or bored -- has he ever actually been exhausted before?  any waver in his step fades away when he swallows deep mouthfuls of water.  spits some down his front until his shirt is damp, stuck to his skin until his chest is covered in faint friction rashes that have never been allowed to fully heal.  

     “i’m so sick of this fucking place.”  he says at lunch, blowing bubbles into his capri sun and licking away the drops of juice that pressure forces out around the straw.  "want to go back to san diego.  that’s a good sun, good temperatures.”

no one argues with him.  no one dares to point out that kennedy himself never went to san diego -- only his mother many years ago, long before she carried baby weight and the baby that comes with it.  he wears one of the shells she brought back in a pocket no matter the outfit, day or hour.  in moments of silence he brings it to his ear.  usually irritated.  still beyond a faint tremble and that jaw tension, all of it melting away the longer he listens in on the reverberations that the shell offers him.

apparently you can hear your own blood rushing when you listen into a shell like that.  scout’s been told that that’s the important symbolism -- blood and the ocean sound the same.  connections with nature, all that crap.  kennedy has offered the shell out to them before, rare moments of tenderness in the way he cradles it, a sacrifice to uncertain local gods.  

except that she’s never heard a damn thing in that shell.  a hollow, tinnitus ringing amplified that grates her teeth together until she hands it back.

     “nice, right?  sounds just like the ocean’s foam, yeah?”  he asks, every time.

     “yeah,” scout lies, “for a fucking stupid shell.”

LAMBSTOWN CHARACTERS, billie gorden.

there’s no one more passed over and revered in equal, cataclysmic measure than billie g.  

maybe it’s her dark and solemn eyes that brought an uncomfortable amount of age to her brutal bone structure and permanently down turned mouth.  ever since kindergarten, billie always looked like there are acidic secrets laying down her tongue until her jaw is locked tight.  it pops and cracks open every time billie tried to speak.  

if the noise didn’t distract away from her words, the very tone she used would instead.  melodic and profoundly incorrect.  she, levi thought, sounded like the most beautiful vinyl skipping over every other note.  sometimes it grated on her ears until she was listening to just about anything else.

none of the adults seemed to be able to pull themselves away from her, though.  not in the same way at least.  they’d drift by billie unless she caught them.  her small fingers on their wrists or pulling at their sleeves, drawing them closer to the low thrumming of her voice.  when she spoke to them they would begin to waver in place, rocking back and forth from the balls of their feet to their heels.  child like.  crawling under levi’s skin if she forced herself to take the time to watch them.

no way to call it spying, not really.  billie always knew if someone had their eyes on her that weren’t her parents, dark silhouettes that rarely left their home or mr. hollinger.  drama teacher for one, all laughter and bright smiles when welcoming billie into class.

upon her leaving he would sit at his desk, pale and distant eyed.  fingers tapping uneven rhythms across the old wood that sometimes, just sometimes, sounded like a cheap mimicry of a song billie could be caught singing when she headed towards her tennis games.  smiling down at her racket with an ease she only carried right there and then.

LAMBSTOWN CHARACTERS, zion aldridge.

it’s an every-meal sort of thing.  that is to say, there’s only two and a half restaurants in town; two that are always accessible to underage and one that turns adults only when the sun goes down.  thus, two and a half.  a diner joint, a half fancy place that uses low lighting and the smell of spicy candles to make everything just a shade more fitting, and the bar-not-bar.  sliding in and out of each of them is easy as pie for billie, but the diner gets her attention more than anyone else.  not a matter of price.  it’s a matter of waitstaff.  

where else can she find someone like zion on such raw display?  the mask that he wears is profound beyond anything, simplistically shaped to entertain the masses of their nowhere and nothing town who in return, barely tolerate the kid.  watching the evolution -- what zion can’t hide with a fake bubbly personality and bright smile -- with wide and wary eyes.  it’s chaos to them.  but it’s art to billie.  

when zion still went to school, alone for so long in every classroom, there was an aura of falsehood in the kid’s existence.  well cultured but grating beneath any attention, every passing day.  back then, zion still had hair.  loose and brittle from a lack of care falling down past shoulders and the swell underneath the front of loose shirts.  

back then, zion was a she with no question or hesitation in anyone’s minds.  there she goes wearing a name that doesn’t suit her, there she is staring at nothing again.  look at her, picking up garter snakes from the desert ground and carrying them as living knots around her fingers until the teachers make her release them into the sand again.  

now a lot of them aren’t sure.  things changed quickly for zion after graduation, as dismissive and dismal of a thing as it was.  first a head was stripped of hair and kept that way, bare, reflecting the sunlight.  then the ink appeared.  not cheap and poorly done; instead an elegant brutalist sort of pattern that made no sense to anyone.  poor taste, they called it.  that’s the thing killing zion’s poor mother, frail thing that she is.  

every job offer came out of pity.  almost every person clucked in distaste as zion lashed down her, their, his chest until every shirt hung even looser on that body.  what would happen, billie wondered, when sickness finally took zion’s mother away?  would all those jobs be suddenly filled?  the barely there kindness, would that dry up too?  towns like these weren’t made for odd silhouettes wearing snakes like bracelets and haunted, gaunt expressions when no one is supposed to be looking.

she knows it’s not a question of anything but how long.  and just who zion will be when the world collapses around him.  

LAMBSTOWN CHARACTERS, levi carpenter.

trying to find levi without her head in the clouds was as impossible as catching the dreams she was chasing in your bare hands.  she was always thinking.  always following wayward thoughts and concepts around with the fervency of a brainwashed soul and their cult leader.  thing is, it’s not like zion can blame her.  back when he was in high school that was life, scraping through classes before they brought the younger kids in for less hours to pay less teachers.  daydreaming saved his life from sickening boredom more than once.  a lot of the students follow that way or find a hobby -- but the difference to him is just how effortlessly levi can combine them both.  

with the notebook in her hand and pen behind her ear she stares upwards.  seeking answers to her silent questions from the sky before she coos, clucks, makes some sort of sound as a prelude to the scraping of ink across paper.  notes more than paragraphs.  he’s caught a glance of them before when serving her -- cheeseburger, pickles and hot sauce, onion rings on the side with a banana malt -- not spying.  just curiosity, itching under his nails until he wants to chew them down to the quick.  it’s never something specific enough to feed the curiosity though.  

notes, every time.  dozens of them, all concepts for a yearbook produced by that tiny little school they all belonged to at one point or another.  

that doesn’t make the idea any less astounding to him.  she’s singularly dedicated.  spilling into handwritten excel sheets on notebook paper and photographs that she takes, prints, and pins into an entirely separate book.  organized into sections.  more concepts.  some of the photos are facing her, that misty aura to billie or the bared teeth that scout offers anyone and everyone coming near her presence.  

most are candids.  distant enough that zion would bet his measly paycheck on levi never being noticed, tucked and hidden away from view.  burrs sticking to the rolled cuffs of her overalls, leaves and twigs in her messy curls of hair.  she photographs them more like a distant stranger than the final student that belongs to their class, the one creating books to cradle every single memory for them to keep.  

he doesn’t really get it.  never finds a point in asking her when she lacks the focus, the interest in anything but her own careful interior world.  if he fucks up levi’s kindness she’ll stop giving good tips.  maybe not even come anymore, and zion knows far too keenly how gossip can spread in a shit hole town like this.  so he stays quiet.  eyes down, attention elsewhere, just sneaky looks and rapid glances when her drifting attention allows it.

except that levi’s ever appeared in her own photos.  not one that he’s seen has a shred of her existence revealed in the image.  she’s a vision of a girl, and yet in her own art appears as virtually nothing.  

that’s the biggest question that he’ll never get to ask.