This was started a while back, and was my first attempt at writing a kind of, I don't know, urban fantasy. I suppose that's the best term for it. I might change up the real-world references to set it in a wholly original fantasy world, rather than a version of our own world.

***

I remember how the good nature slipped from the southern Baptist’s corpulent face when I told him where I was from. “A modern day Sodom!” he said with a wheezy chuckle. I gave a polite laugh and watched as the doctor finished her exam. Since devoting myself to my undergraduate biology courses, I hadn’t given my hometown a second thought. I remembered the mainstreet with its huddle of salvage shops and the winding roads that threaded through the woods. The pastoral idyll found its modern incarnation in the suburbs behind my house, where I once walked with childhood friends, playing games of night tag, paintball, and Pokémon.

Nostalgia threatened to overwhelm me, its undercurrent dragging me from the next step on my path to medical school. Struggling in its grip, I found myself unable to compose my application’s personal statement. I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, recalling the many nights that I had spent poring over texts on organic chemistry and biochemistry. Ah, that **** sense of nostalgia just wouldn’t let go. A voice clawing through the pits of my mind whispered that everyone around me would die, and here I would be struggling to carve out my place in the big, scary world. Experience taught me that a bit of Schadenfreude was the best remedy, and what better place to get a little misfortune than the news? I spent my evening flipping between all the networks: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the BBC.

A parade of ghosts occupied my weekend. Friday morning I found a couple of old friends staring up at me from my newspaper. We had run through the streets and woods once with unwieldy plastic Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers swords and guns, playing at being rangers. One had been arrested for sexual activity with an underage relative while the other had fled across the border into Mexico. Multiple arrest warrants and possession of drugs were attributed to his flight. Sunday morning I saw the headline: SHOOTING AT NEW ORLEANS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

I remembered the solace I’d taken in other’s misfortune and felt like a colossal ****. Laying those sins at the doorstep of the sensationalist media machine, I read on. It had been an inner city school founded in collaboration between one of the state’s few mosques and a non-denominational Christian church. The absurdity of it all: rape, incest, drug running, and children blowing one another’s brains out elicited disbelieving laughter. Laughter turned to hyena’s howls at the local news station’s story: SEX TRAFFICKING HOTBED IN LOUISIANA: OFFICERS BUST THREE PIMPS AND RECOVER SIXTEEN MINORS. Then they flashed the pimps’ mugshots. The undergraduate scientist in me pegged their conditions as a mix of icthyosis, epidermodysplasia verruciformis, and Williams syndrome. Missing chunks of flesh were confirmed by the newscasters as evidence that all three were using their revenue to fuel a krokodil addiction. At the broadcast’s end, an alert flashed across the screen: the truck transporting the three to prison holding had crashed. That evening I took my 9MM—a gift from my father for when I’d be out on my own—and laid it in my bedside drawer. I unchained our Rottweiler and gave him run of the yard. Just in case.

A burst of Tool ripped me from the warmth of my dreams. I hadn’t heard that ringtone in several years. Looking at the phone, I saw that it was Mike. My mind wandered back to those lovely high school years when House Skater, House Hunter, House Preppy, and House Jock ruled the scene. Mike had been the leader of House Skater, head honcho of our bad of edgy self-styled anarchists. The years rolled over me when I learned that Mike had been hired on as a state trooper. He had gotten in touch with the old crew and set up a gathering at one of the numerous old houses littering the swampy, overgrown countryside. Night fell and I drove to the gas station. I left my car there and walked the half mile down the empty road to the old gates. They were rusted and vine grown. Now and again a car would come barreling down the road, kicking up clouds of dust and dirt. Hopping the fence, I ducked into the undergrowth and made my way to the old house.

It looked like someone trying to escape their fate. I saw a flicker of light through a grime-covered window and smiled. Genuinely smiled for the first time since I graduated and got invited to interview for medical school. Within I found them: Mike, Brandon, Casey, and Samantha. Mike had put on some lean muscle and lost the Mohawk from high school. Brandon had the same messy hair and acne scars, while Casey and Samantha hadn’t abandoned their obsession with the occult. Rather, they had refined their wardrobes by ditching the screened T’s, Vans sporting the HIM Heartagram, and Invader Zim bracelets. Casey’s shirt had a Baphomet set against a cosmic backdrop while Samantha’s was of a hermaphrodite with a pair of majestic antlers and a mane of thorns and flowers.

Samantha took a board from her frayed knapsack and laid it out. I expected the old Ouija board. Instead it had shapes whose geometry called to mind the pseudo-Lovecraftian dribble I’d enjoyed as a teenager. Tracing the patterns, I saw an outline emerging: a person staked with little stick fires consuming it while others stood nearby. Then it was gone, my eyes digging out horned shape pulling down something vast and amorphous. All of them were stick figures hidden in the board’s shapes.

“Jack!”

Casey was holding out a hand-knitted doll.

A green moon bathed the landscape in its sickly light. Trees twisted up from the ground, their fat leaves like purple strobes. Their bark felt cold and metallic. A shriek of metal caused me to start, stumbling over a root. The ground had a strong sweat odor that caused me to vomit. Wiping away bile, I saw them emerging from iron-bladed thickets: children from the shooting. I shook my head at the sight of them, searching for a way to describe them and coming up with melted. Features were lumpy, their bodies swollen masses with floppy and withered dragging appendages. A sudden roar as a burst of scarlet split the green light of the moon: brimstone spewing from a sprawling compound of iron fashioned from the strange world’s metallic trees. Clawing at the burning, feeling my fingers digging into the flesh melting from my face, I saw the children mouthing words.

I woke up with a warm sweat and a tingling in my arm. Aw ****, a needle! Still numb, I flopped myself to the side of the mattress. Thank God there were no needles on my side of the mattress. What the hell did we do after I took that doll from Casey? I blinked several times, noticing a reddish-purple patch clinging to my visual field, spreading across the room.

Does the story have an end?

Nah I threw it out.