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American Inferno
by Stephen Rowe Halfway through my life, I'm in the middle of a dark wood in twilight. Something compelled me to leave my big fancy house and hike down the trail that links the HOA to the nature preserve. I've left the trail and made my way down a steep embankment. I'm next to large tree overlooking the tangled valley of the creek. I hear an odd sort of cricket. It's my phone ringing in my pocket. My wife has just left the city. She's checking in with me. Where are you? I say: I'm sitting in the woods. Why are you in the woods? I came here to escape the President. Her laugh tinkles from forty miles away. She says: It's awful. I say: I really think we're in hell. Or at least purgatory. After I hang up I think: maybe heaven and hell are all wrapped up in one place. We don't go anywhere, because we're already there. We're all just where we are, in the middle of a wood in twilight. The voices of the crickets might be angels calling us home. |
Stephen lives happily-ever-after with his family in Happy Valley, Oregon.
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