Nothing Town
By Cherie Mitchell
All Rights Reserved © 2019 Cherie Mitchell
Check out Cherie Mitchell’s website and book gallery at www.hotfromthepen.com or visit her Facebook page HERE. There’s always a new book in the pipeline!
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Epilogue
Chapter One
This rictus grin has been on my face for so long that my cheeks are beginning to hurt. I’m waiting, apparently interminably, for the moment when that red eye blinks away. It’s almost hypnotic to stand here and stare blindly into it. Peaceful. Calming. Or it would be if I wasn’t forced to keep up with this ridiculous grinning.
“And that’s a wrap.” Michael steps back from the camera just as the red “In Session” indicator light shuts off. I rub at my cheeks and suck in my mouth to ease the muscle cramps, not caring that I’m ruining my caked-on makeup. This is the last news report for the day and it doesn’t matter what I look like now that there’s no living room audience gawping at me from the comfort of their own homes.
Yeah, I’m a reporter now. Ellie Friedlander, Roving Reporter for KLR-39 TV. The station is part of the very same group as our long ago rescuers in that TV van, those people who saved my family from Cemetery Hill all those years ago. Funny how things work out. I like my job, too. It’s not quite the role of builder that I envisioned for myself but it certainly has its moments.
Michael begins rolling up the electrical cables, coiling the snake-like lengths with practiced ease and stacking them in the van. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?”
“Not much. Shoes off, face mask on and a plate of cheese and crackers by my elbow while I binge- watch a mindless TV series.” Just another riveting night in the white-knuckle life of Ellie Friedlander.
“You could always join us. I’m sure the boys won’t mind you lowering the tone of the evening by tagging along. We’re heading over to Corny’s for some beers and a few laughs.”
Michael always thinks everything he says is hilarious. I duck my head while I unclip my mike so he doesn’t see my face. Honestly, I can think of nothing worse than joining Michael and ‘the boys’ at Corny’s. The bar is basically a poor man’s Hooters without the hooters, wings, or innuendo and I’d rather suck on a wet sock than have to sit there all night while the guys make stupid jokes and get themselves steadily drunker.
Hey, it’s not as if I’ve forgotten how to have fun. I do have a life but it’s just that it’s not really the life I thought I’d end up with. Not gonna lie, there haven’t been too many high points over the past couple of years. I get up, I go to work, then I go home. No boyfriend, no husband, no partner. Liam and I broke up a few months after escaping from Pannier Street. He had trouble coming to terms with what went on inside that house and I guess I just didn’t have the patience to spoon feed him through it. I expected him to bounce back, same as I did, but he just couldn’t do it.
There’s been a few men since Liam, but not many. I’ve been told I’m difficult to get along with but I’m prepared to argue that point. I prefer to think of myself as resilient. Independent. Feisty.
My good friend Dave ended up marrying Jennifer. She was nicer than I’d thought she’d be, but I should’ve known that Dave would choose someone pleasant to be his wife. He had to give up the foot modeling gig when his feet got too old and he retrained as a cop, of all things. I still have my moments when I find that a bit too hard to deal with. As you know, I don’t have a good history with cops.
Mom and Roger broke up, too. Can’t say I was sorry about that one. She’s hooked up with a guy named Morris now. He’s dull and drab but he looks after Mom and I guess I couldn’t ask for anything more.
“You’re not coming?” Michael is sitting in the van now and looking out at me expectantly from the driver’s seat.
“Nah, I’ll give it a miss. I’ll catch an Uber from here and go home.”
Michael looks around dubiously. The van is currently parked in a large industrial area where we’ve just finished filming a fill-in news piece concerning the environmental hazards of toxic waste. “You sure? This isn’t a great part of town.”
“No part of this town is great. Haven’t you ever noticed? Look, if it makes you feel any better you can wait with me until my Uber arrives and I’m safely inside.”
“Uh.” He peers at the clock on the dash. “It’s about to rain and I told the boys I wouldn’t be late.”
I can’t even look at him, can’t bear to see him sitting there with his selfishness clinging around him like a poisonous green shroud. He has no qualms over leaving me alone in this desolate place. I remind myself that he never pretended to be a gentleman so I don’t know why I expected anything more. I turn my back on him and concentrate on ordering a car on the app.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he calls cheerfully and then he’s gone, with a slam of the door and a squeal of brakes.
According to the app, the Uber service is experiencing a high peak period and my car will be here in 15 minutes. I wander over to wait beside the toxic stream, idly watching as a skinny-tailed rat scurries along the drain and disappears into an open pipe. The thing is, I’m not scared. I’ve been through too much in my life to be scared. I’m just annoyed. People are always so anxious to put themselves first and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better as I get older.
My phone rings then and I’m surprised to see the call is from the station boss. Elmer Tweek, with his pink, round, bald head and greedy piggy eyes never personally calls me. He never personally calls anyone. He generally has one of his minions perform those minor tasks for him. “Hi, Elmer.”
“Ellie, I have a proposition for you.”
The bile rises in my throat. Elmer has had several propositions for me over the past few years, all of them as luridly unappealing as the first. I threatened to report him to HR the last time he did it, until he reminded me that he was the Head of HR. He rambles on at the other end of the phone, saying something about the need for expansion and a wider dearth of news stories, as I check the progress of my driver on the app and watch the storm clouds gathering.
“So will you do it?”
“What?” I snap the word at him, hoping my abrupt tone will deter him from pursuing whatever creepy suggestion he’s just made.
He doesn’t bother to hide his sigh. “Weren’t you listening? I just offered you a two-month reporting assignment in a small country town that goes by the name of Euthanasia. Accommodation supplied and an extra half-month’s salary as a bonus for working away.”
I consider the surprise offer. A half-month’s bonus is not to be sniffed at and besides, I’m tired of buddying up with the egocentric Michael. A solo gig might be the career stepping stone I’m looking for. My brother Reece has a birthday coming up, his 21st and I’ve promised him a party. It could be fun to hold it in a sleepy little town. It’s not as if Reece intends on inviting a bunch of friends anyway.
“I’m a busy man,” Elmer prompts irritably as the first crash of thunder rattles across the early evening sky.
It doesn’t take me long to make up my mind. “Yes,” I say firmly. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter Two
You’re waiting for me to mention Obidiah, aren’t you? Obidiah, that dark, evil presence who has lurked on the periphery for much of my life. To be fair, I haven’t seen him since we left Gypsy Creek but he’s a lot like a chronic yeast infection – you know he could come back at any moment so you make the most of your time while he’s gone.
It’s been seven years now since we crawled through that tunnel and escaped the burning house on Pannier Street. We left Gypsy Creek the following morning and we didn’t look back. I flew back with the kids to stay with Mom for a while, until she nearly drove me nuts with her crazy expectations, and then KLR-39 TV found me and I’ve been working for them ever since. At least I’m making the most of my Communications Degree. My Dad would be so proud.
Reece works for a library now, in the archiving department. It suits him down to the ground to spend all his days working with books and filing systems. He works alone or remotely, which suits him too. Reece never did manage to develop a fondness for people or socializing. He might be on to something there.
My sister Organza is now an Instagram Influencer with over 3.1 million followers. As you can imagine, she’s in her prime element with that job. She makes good money too, from what I hear. We don’t have much to do with each other these days. She’s apparently far too busy to check in on her big sister and to be frank, I was all Organza-ed out years ago.
To be honest, I know I’ve fallen flat lately. I think I lost the essence of Ellie somewhere along the way but I’m hoping this assignment proves to be just the fork in the road that I’m looking for, a reigniting of passions long since lost. I jumped into the idea of the assignment boots first as soon as I gave Elmer the thumbs up, which is something I’ve been known to do before. I immediately made a mental note to give up the lease on my apartment and I told Elmer that I’m more than happy to do another assignment in some random location after this one is done. I figure I might become one of those globetrotting journalists who you sometimes glimpse on TV - lean, hungry, and about to get on a plane to somewhere new and exotic.
Not that I’m expecting Euthanasia to be in any way exotic, not by a long shot. I’m picturing just another hick town like Warren’s End and Gypsy Creek. You’d think I’d be done with those kinds of places but the truth is, you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl. I’ve never felt entirely comfortable with big city life and I don’t think that will ever change.
I even agreed to the assignment without asking him what it was all about. I guess I thought it would probably be another community service kind of project, perhaps following the everyday trials of a small town as the earnest citizens band together to fight against some big conglomerate building a factory or superhighway on their doorstep. The type of news story that pads out a slow news day with lots of on-the-spot interviews with baggy pants Al who’s run the gas station for the past forty years, Grandma Elsie who’s going blind but still wants to have her say, and enthusiastic Terry the Town Mayor who’s planning on leading his flock to victory. However, as it turns out it’s something a little different from the usual bland small town stuff.
I meet with Elmer in his office the next afternoon to find out the details of whatever it is I’ve agreed to. Elmer Tweek has one of those offices that manages to double as a sleazy gathering place for the fawning, sycophantic group of plebs he calls his middle management team. In fact, a person walking into his office for the first time might think they’d walked into one of those so-called ‘gentleman’s clubs’ of the ‘70s given the riot of red velvet furniture, the multiple wide screen TVs, the low lighting, and the darkened wood cocktail cabinet in the corner.
“Drink?” Elmer asks as I walk in, already out of his chair and waddling in the direction of the cocktail cabinet.
“Yes, thanks. I’d love a glass of water.”
He snorts at my request but he does as I ask and pops the top on a bottle of Evian. He passes the bottle and a glass to me, making sure to brush against my skin with his fat, creepy fingers. “Busy day?”
“Not bad.” I pour myself a drink of water, watching out of the corner of my eye as he serves himself a hefty whisky on the rocks. He wanders back and lowers himself down, sitting far too close to me on the red velvet sofa. I quickly get up and walk over to sit in the straight-backed chair opposite him. “It’s so much easier to hold a business meeting when we’re facing each other, don’t you think?”
He scowls at me for few seconds before he allows his eyes to slip down and linger on my breasts. My skin crawls as he sticks the tip of his pudgy slug of a tongue out and moistens his bottom lip.
“I guess you want to tell me about the assignment?” I ask politely, hoping he’ll get the hint and move the meeting along. I’m due to meet my landlord tonight to discuss the rental termination and I have a hundred and one other things to do. Relocating is a pain in the ass.
“Yeah.” He lifts one butt cheek as he leans back on the sofa cushions. I’m one hundred percent certain that he lets out a fart but his expression remains fixed and impassive. “There’s been some strange things happening in Euthanasia.”
Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of this. My visions of a cushy small town assignment rapidly start to dissolve into a murky puddle, joining all my other lost hopes and dreams. I wonder if it’s too late to cancel my appointment with the landlord. “Those strange things don’t have anything to do with old cemeteries or corn fields, do they?” The cheesy odor of his potent fart has reached me now and I’m struggling not to gag.
He looks at me curiously. “No, why would they? When I say strange, I’m referring to the large number of single men in the town. Thirty-odd years ago, the mothers of Euthanasia, for some inexplicable reason, collectively gave birth to only boy babies. For a full five years after that, not a single girl child was born and births have favored baby boys ever since. There’s now a distinct shortage of marriageable young women in Euthanasia.”
“How fascinating.” I love all this kind of stuff. Bizarre facts get my blood pumping. “What do you want me to do while I’m there? Investigate whether there were any major chemical spills or agricultural fertilizer drops in the area at the time? Determine if there were any local government testing going on when the female shortage first started?”
Elmer waves away my suggestions. “No, no, nothing like that. Experts have already conducted those sorts of tests ad infinitum and not come up with any satisfactory results. Investigations have been done to death.” He sits forward eagerly, his wobbly stomach bulging over his thighs. “No, I want you to go out there to date some of the men. Chat to them. Get to know them. Get their personal point of view on what it’s like living in a town that has no eligible local females in their age bracket. You’re a young, single woman – I’m sure you can handle a few dates.”
“You want me to date them? That’s it?” I’m missing something here and I’m generally fairly quick when it comes to working out what goes where.
He dips his chubby finger into his glass and swirls it through his drink, making the ice cubes clink musically against the side of the glass. “Of course not. I want you to date them and make a story out of it. Ellie, this could be your chance. It’s the kind of story that has the potential to grab the world’s attention. It’s topical, intriguing, and mysterious. Could turn into something big for both you an
d KLR-39 TV.”
Shit-a-roonie, that news perks me up. I can’t keep the smile from my face as I walk out of Elmer’s office and begin to clear my desk and it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s added an expense budget to the perks of the job to help ‘facilitate my dating activities’.
Two days later, I’m waiting at the airport for my flight to Euthanasia. Most of my worldly possessions and a small handheld video camera are tucked into a suitcase at my feet and I’m raring to begin this assignment. I’m feeling optimistic and it’s a good feeling. I’m ready for this. I’m ready for the real Ellie Friedlander to re-emerge from her webby cocoon.
I’m ready for life to be fun again.
Chapter Three
As it turns out the closest airport to Euthanasia, population 23,500, is around 50 miles away from the town. Luckily, some old guy offers to drop me off at my new home after he strolls up and asks where I’m headed. I guess he must’ve noticed me standing outside the airport with a face like a wet week while I wondered how I was going to get myself from here to there.
The old guy peers at me with cloudy, cataract-blurred eyes and introduces himself as Sid Kenworth before leading the way across to the airport parking lot. As his 1955 model pickup bounces along the cobwebbed radio sitting on top of the dash gives out sporadic bursts of old time Merle Haggard songs. Sid is a regular Chatty Cathy as he tells me about his life on his farm a few miles out of Euthanasia. He confirms that he knows about the female shortage, says that he and his dear departed wife had three sons but no daughters in the middle of the girl drought period, and he commends the TV station for sending me out here to do a story.
A big, smelly livestock freighter overtakes us, the second one in the last ten minutes, filling the cab with the pungent stench of fresh cow poop. I mention it to Sid and he says that this is a farming region and there’s always stock shifting around.
We take a moment out from our conversation as his favorite song comes on and he leans over to switch up the dial. I join in with the few lyrics of Mama Tried that I can remember and it’s all fun and cozy in the cab of the pickup until the song ends. Sid rattles his dentures and confides that it holds a special place in his heart due to how the words remind him of his own life. As we’ve just finished singing about a guy who ends up in prison with no hope of parole I’m slightly worried now, especially as Sid starts cackling hysterically.
Nothing Town Page 1
