Jaime Allison Parker

“He was a stranger here. The people who might remember him would certainly not welcome him. His old gang had cast him out, along with all of the former friends and parents. The suburban landscape of hypocrisy, so hated in his youth, beheld again and with it, old feelings that motivated him through life more than he would ever admit. Every turning point in life, already decided by all the events here”

“Steffy risked a glance at her fellow neighbors and townspeople. She often looked for kindred spirits in the crowd. None were ever found. Just once, she wished to see someone trying to hide a smile, a snicker, or plain sighing at the absurdity. The rowdy outcasts among the community were not welcome in the church. They knew better than to show their faces.”

“The place was a truck stop town. Large 18 wheelers lined the sidewalks and cafes. Giant diesel motors roaring their exhaust into the cloudy night skies. Wearied looking truckers climbed into the cabs like captains of gigantic steel ships. She could not imagine anyone trying to maneuver such large metallic beasts all over the roads of the nation. While the idea of being behind the wheel with nothing but the comfort of the radio, and the isolation were appealing. The thought of fighting all the congested traffic in smog infested industrial waters of choking vapors killed any pleasant dreams of the occupation.”

“October air, complete with dancing leaves and sighing winds greeted him as he stepped from the bus onto the dusty highway. Coolness embraced. The scent of burning wood hung crisp in the air from somewhere far in the distance. His backpack dropped in a flutter of dust. He surveyed dying cornfields from the gas station bus stop. Seeing this place, for the first time in over twenty years, brought back a flood of memories, long buried and forgotten.”

“A ten-year-old Amanda wandering around the sights and sounds of a carnival. Trying to take it all in as such an event was much larger than the backroads of isolated territory from whence she grew up. She could not imagine this many people assembled in one place. It was made more disturbing by the fact none of them seemed familiar. Short for her age, she wandered unnoticed among the crowds and began to feel the first stirrings of fear. The loud talk, the screaming children, the long lines of procession, along with the myriads of odors created a miasma that she wanted to flee. The laughter and the faux expressions of joy on the faces of people, took on the maroon tones of a nightmare. She could imagine underneath the laughter, were horrid screams about to erupt.”

“Most of her friends owned laptops and seemed to spend more time with their phones than anything else. Steffy kept her latest playlists and apps updated frequently. She was a member of what Peter called, The Gadget Generation. She could not imagine what it must have been like before such a time. The unbearable isolation that must have been present. How did people deal with it? When she asked a few older people in the town, they simply said she had too much spare time on her hands. It appeared thinking was a crime in the world she lived”

“The Sunday morning choir raised their voices to fever pitch with another gospel tune. Slurring voices filled with thick drawls of the local accent. The choir a mix of young girls her own age, alongside elderly women, with a few men thrown in for good measure. The old ladies wore tight gray buns and librarian glasses. Could they have ever been young? Could their husbands have?”

“She wondered how many towns like this existed all over the country?Bucolic scenery on the outside, with its own private soap operas, gossips and hells on the inside. She wondered if the suburbs in huge cities were merely a collection of small towns, piled on top of each other and each place was ultimately the same. The thought struck her as exceedingly depressing. However, her spirits were not in their best shape.”

“He was about to cross a point of no return. The place separating him from the imaginary line in the sand. The one society demanded no one cross. He crossed the point on many occasions. This would be different. This could land him in prison or the electric chair. The prospect filled him with sexual energy he normally lacked”

“Jam jamming,” Meghan chanted in a sing song voice. “I like the idea, the feel. I KNOW what you are getting at. Where does a sound end? Has the Earth been pumping billions upon billions of horrendous noises into the depths of space since the time primates began walking? Can you imagine all the noisy concerts, explosions of war, and thundering of bombs, all drifting endlessly into empty darkness? Can you imagine? For infinity? Frozen glaciers, devoid rocks, suddenly illuminated to be crushed by all that deafening din, waking the inhabitants of other planets. Jamming alien satellite signals. If there is life out there, it wants to destroy us....I must be really stoned to see this so clearly”