Cycles

Speeding down the highway, Darcy is lost and confused. She doesn’t know where she is going and doesn’t know where she has been. She doesn’t know anything so she just drives straight on old highway 99 as far away from that motel as she possibly can.

A few hours have passed before she sees any signs of civilization. The first town she drives through apparently has no name. The sign on the side of the road says welcome to; there is no name just a blank spot where a name should be. Directly past the sign, there are some old houses. Darcy slows the car down to almost a crawl as she tries to find clues as to where she is.

The houses look vacant with plywood over the doors and windows, the front yards have no grass just a layer of gray dirt that is blowing across the road as Darcy drives by.

After four gray houses that look exactly the same there is a street strangely enough called Park Avenue. Darcy then turns right onto Park Avenue and drives even more slowly looking for some kind of hint as to where she is. There is an entire neighborhood full of these boarded up houses and their gray dirt lawns. There are no cars or any signs of life, but Darcy can swear that she is being watched. Every once in a while out of the corner of her eye she sees something move, but she never quite catches a glimpse of what it is.

Then she sees it. In the front yard three children are running inside one of the houses. They left behind a small child outside that looks like she was about four years old. Darcy stops the car directly in front of the child to get a closer look. The child is naked except for a dirty old pair of shorts. The small girl’s body looks like it is covered in scars but it is hard to tell with all the gray dirt on her.

As Darcy looks closely at the homely child she notices something very strange is happening. The little girls eyes are opening and closing and her head is nodding as if she is falling asleep and waking up. It looks like she is drifting in and out of a dream, or possibly a nightmare.

As Darcy is staring at this strange spectacle she feels herself falling into a trancelike state. She feels as though she is being absorbed into this strange, gray, barren world. This world of plywood covered windows and dirt covered exteriors. She feels as though she was loosing contact with the world and will be stuck here forever, away from everything. Here she would hide and live with these sheltered dirty beings.

In one great push of a pedal, Darcy speeds off in the little Toyota. It takes all of her energy just to get away from this psychic drain of a town with no name. She speeds off with the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floor. There is no looking back; she doesn’t want to be a part of that world. That world of dirty people hiding. That world of dirty people running away. That world of dirty people slipping in and out of dreams.