Arium

A small desert town is separated from the world with only a single road heading out of it. However, there is something strange about this road and something even stranger about what happens here.

My mother had been spitting into the same container for years. She always had this chipped, 

maroon colored mug in her hands were she would drop ragged, wet wads of tobacco after she'd 

finished with them. I could only imagine what my father tasted on her gums whenever he kissed her. 

    She usually did it while she was watching TV in the living room. We didn't get very good signal out 

here so often times there would be fits of static floating around through the house and seeping into 

the plaster walls. When it went on for a while I'd even start to feel the buzzing under my skin, 

rubbing against my bones. That's when I'd go outside and join my father on the porch. 

    "You heard anything yet?" I asked. He was rocking back and forth in his chair, leaving me just the 

steep steps to sit on. The sun was pouring down its usual blistering heat that left my skin florid and 

dry like the dirt. 

    "Nah, not yet," he replied. "But I reckon it's only a matter of time." 

    I looked out towards Arium. Sand wafted up from the ground in waves, its grains scraping up 

against the sides of the wood buildings and drenching plants in the only kind of rain they ever saw. I 

could count on my fingers how many times it had rained in Arium since I was a kid some 10 odd 

years ago. God simply didn't find us worth watering. 

    I ran my hands down across the splintered texture of the steps. I knew every corner of our porch 

the way I knew every corner of town. I could tell you how many playgrounds there were with their 

fragile swings threatening to give way any day now. The barber shop with its outdated razors, the 

grocery store that smelled like tomato vines and soil too overused to grow anything substantial 

anymore. Hell, I'd even counted all the venus fly traps with their teeth snapping in the shade of the 

neighbors' homes. 

    "I'm goin' out for a walk," I muttered in my father's direction. From inside the house I could hear 

my mother spitting a fresh piece of chaw out into that glazed ceramic. 

    There was one road, aged and curving out from the edge of town. Degar was its name. 

    Now, Degar was interesting. It led to nowhere. We aren't sure who built it (though it had been 

around since the founding of Arium) or why or what happened to those willing to drive out onto it. 

Everyone who'd ridden along its concrete skin dispersed like water evaporated into the air. Their car 

tires would leave streaks aching on the pavement and rusted metal parts here and there that looked 

like blood soaked steel. No bodies where ever found. Just signs. Remains that served as evidence to 

prove they'd once lived. 

    Jane Ferris, Adrian Cooper, Austen and Elissa Wooten, Karen Jillion, all of them ink in the 

obituary. The obituary was exponential, always growing in violent bursts. It seemed to me like 

Arium's valleys were hungry for blood because every week there was a new death, a new cavity in our 

small population. I found it difficult to believe that every city was like this-- so necrotic. 

    Last month there'd been an illness that had taken three lives, then a robbery that took one more. 

There were the gas leaks, the drowning and the murder that left us with 11 lives less. Every month it 

was like this, some new tragedy, some hostile news filtering through the air. 

    I took a deep breath when I finally arrived at the solitary sign. Degar Road. 

    I put my hand over my eyes to block out the sun and took a long look ahead. From here, it seemed 

to stretch on forever. But I knew that couldn't be. Something had to be out there. Something beyond 

this had to exist. 

    Bushes sprang up along the edges of the pavement. They were the only thing that grew for miles. 

My gaze would flicker between the cracked white lines and the yellow-blue horizon while I walked. It 

was all of it just so.... desolate. I couldn't explain how I felt. There was this mounting feeling of 

discomfort in my chest the further out I ventured. Something inside me was squeezing my ribs 

together and tugging down on my stomach. 

    Degar road felt so bleak. 

    I wiped sweat off the back of my forehead and inhaled to smell the scorched cement beneath my 

feet. I thought I could continue but the burning in my torso grew until I couldn't bare it anymore. It 

wasn't a physical pain. I could have handled that. This was something emotional, something 

spiritually crippling in a manner so insidious I simply had to turn back. 

    I fell down to my knees when I was at the heart of town again. Sinking my fingers into the earth 

calmed me down once more. 

    I belonged here. I always had, I always would. As much as any one of us would deny it, there was 

no point in refusing our rightful places anymore. For miles and miles there was nothing but desert, 

spiked cacti filled with gelatinous blood. 

    My father was still outside when I arrived back home, exhausted and filthy. He glanced in my 

direction while swallowing a sip of beer. 

   "Church's burning," he said. He gestured to the flames rising up in the distance. Embers crowded 

around the crucifix on the church's roof before floating upwards, toward the sky. There was 

screaming, crying. I didn't give it a second look. The door groaned shut as I stepped inside and made 

my way to the kitchen, lowering myself onto the floor. 

    In the room next door static pooled onto the floor. I laid down on the cool tiles and looked up at 

the ceiling, smoke from the fire in town drifting in through the window. It felt dense, this smoke. 

Like something alive. Like something craving our demise.

Author's Note

This is one of the first short stories I've ever written. It's much harder to fit a plot and characters and setting into just a few pages versus a novel, don't you guys think? Thank you for reading.

Reviews

[Robert Parlange]

Great story. I really liked this. It had good imagery and attention to detail. A good personal description of a dying town.

I grew up in a small town like this and it eventually “died.” A highway bypass killed it. My desert was a landscape of sugar cane.

You are talented. Keep writing.

[closed]

i think it's pretty good
stories about small town's are usually fun to read

interested to see where it goes

[Hassan99]

I really enjoyed this, the end is left up to the reader to think about the ending, I really liked it!

[Marie]

This is a very interesting story, but it somehow doesn't seem to have a conclusion.

I would much rather write short stories than a novel; in fact, flash fiction is my preference.