The Chronicles of Burntown, Pt. 1

by Peter von Harten

  ###

  I stormed through the back screen door of my aunt’s house soaking wet, tearing off my shoes and peeling off my shirt before heading straight for the phone. I’d forgotten my keys, so I was lucky she liked to leave the kitchen door open to listen to the rain. It had been pouring like mad, so that mile of running home hadn’t been too comfortable. I decided to call Johnny first since I knew Mike was heading home around the same time I was. Maybe they’d seen something I missed. My nerves were still reeling from freaking out, so I grabbed a cigarette from the open pack my aunt kept on the table. She came through the doorway from the living room a couple seconds later to grab her tea when it started to whistle.

  “Mark, do you really gotta be smoking all my cigarettes? You know I can’t afford this habit for the both of us.”

  “I’ll give you one of mine, Johnny’s dad gave me some last week.”

  “Hello?” He finally picked up the phone.

  “Dude, did you see what’s going on in the fields?”

  “Yeah, Mike just called a couple minutes ago. We’re seeing red flashes all over, even through the weather. The lights are pretty bright, do you know when they started?”

  “A little bit after I left your place,” I said, still trying to catch my breath from the run back. A few flashes of lightning cut across the sky as a boom of thunder came. The power flickered.

  “Aw, don’t tell me we’re gonna lose electric now!” my aunt whined. “I’m trying to watch the damn news for once! And Mark, try not to drip all over my floor.”

  “Yeah yeah,” I rolled my eyes.

  “I’ll get you a towel. You okay, you’re not freezing your butt off on me?”

  “I’m cool Aunt Marjorie.”

  “I’ll pour you a drink too, you look like you need it.” She patted me on the chest and walked out. “Vodka and Coke?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Man, you’re aunt’s so cool,” Johnny laughed.

  “Yeah, for being a cranky old drunk.”

  “I don’t see what’s bad about free booze.”

  “Hey, I see you pourin’ one for yourself too!” I called over to her.

  “Bite me, I been sick!” She flipped me off. The lights flickered again. More rumbles of thunder permeated the air as rain battered the kitchen windows, the winds descending in a howl. I went up to the screen door and looked back on the fields. The red lights were still there, blinking in the same rhythm. The closest ones were about a quarter-mile from us.

  “Did you hear them beeping?” I asked Johnny.

  “Yeah, there’s definitely something going on out there. Like I’d go check and all, but to be honest with you, I’m pretty freaked out. It’s not just the rain either. Mariah came over early this morning and gave me some shit, so like…” he switched his voice above a whisper so his dad wouldn’t hear, “I kinda been rolling since you left. Bad time to do it I know, but I got a few bottled waters in the basement so I’m gonna wait it out down there. Damn, I’m sorta breakin’ a sweat too,” he panted into the phone.

  “You sure you’re gonna be okay man?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes I wonder what the hell she has in those things.”

  “She got ‘em from her cousin a few months ago. I don’t think she even knows.”

  Mariah is one of our best friends and she’s almost like a sister to me. Gorgeous as a supermodel, long dark hair, undercut on the sides. She’s kinda tall, built in all the right places, half Italian and half Cherokee Indian. She lives with her grandfather on her mom’s side, a man who migrated off one of the reservations a couple states over and came to take care of her when her folks split up and her mom passed away.

  He’s kind of a stubborn old codger with a Trail-Of-Tears mentality who blames the white man for everything he ever went through, so we stay out of his way. He tried pushing his views on Mariah too, but they’ve never gotten along particularly well. It’s not like he really knows much about her anyways, though he does his best to reconnect her with her Cherokee side. She’s a bit spiritual and takes part in a few small traditions here or there, but it’s not something she gets too serious about.

  What her grandfather doesn’t know is that Mariah keeps a whole shitload of ecstasy in a box under her bed. Her cousin Jake had been in a crime ring smuggling drugs all over the southern states from Florida to Oklahoma or something, and I guess he figured the best place to send it so he wouldn’t get in deep shit was out in Bumblefuck, Mississippi. Nobody here complained.

  It was still good top-notch city stuff, but Mariah ran into a few problems when her customers kept coming back. A few of the kids turned into addicts pretty quick, which at first wasn’t really a problem until we found out that one pill packs the punch of two and that it’s not regular ecstasy. Normal X speeds you up, but a regular dosage of this throws you for a slingshot around the universe and sends you crashing into a brick wall, which is why we decided to split them all up into halves so we won’t kill anyone. Controls the doses and curbs the addiction. Mariah does it maybe once a month or so. She did manage to save enough of it up through the year and now distributes it sparingly at parties, usually in quarters to keep things mild.

  “Whoa, so I’m feeling pretty good right now,” Johnny laughed. “Every time that thunder rumbles, it’s like this wave, my god…rave wave, haha! Anyways, um, you still coming by tomorrow, right?”

  “If there’s no rain,” I sighed, taking a drag off my cigarette. I hate talking to high people when I’m sober.

  “Okay, right…you wanna like, check out those things in the, uh, fields?”

  “Yeah dude, we can do that.”

  “Call me around ten, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry, I know this is weird, it’s really hitting me. And the sound of your voice is just vibrating through my whole body, I don’t know what to think right now, I just want to fuck something-”

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t get gay on me. Just drink a ton of water and I’ll call you in the morning, okay? We cool?”

  “Yeah yeah, sorry. Talk to you later man…”

  “Night.”

  “Goodn-”

  And that was the end of the last phone conversation I had with anyone. The power flickered a couple seconds before going out completely, and suddenly we were left in the dark along with our entire town. My aunt had just come in and set my drink on the kitchen counter, and we both froze. It took about a minute for us to really register what was happening. She stood there with her own drink in hand, taking a hopeful sip in the expectation that maybe the power would come back on. It didn’t.

  We were stuck in almost pitch black. The screen door of the kitchen flew open really wide, momentarily sending in the whistling wind and rain before blowing back shut with a loud slam. The only light left was emanating from far out in the fields, the blinking red sequence seeming all the more eerie as it flashed in waves over the darkness of the kitchen. This was also the first time my aunt really took notice, and she backed against the wall gasping for breath until she worked up the courage to speak.

  “What! Wha…w-what the hell is that…” she breathed. I didn’t answer. A lump caught in my throat and I tried to think of what to say, but nothing came out. Picking up the drink beside me, I took a really long swig and nearly vomited from how much alcohol she’d poured in. It was at least three quarters vodka.

  “I don’t know,” I managed. “I saw them on my way home, they were just out there turning on. Thought it was cops or something, I didn’t really see what they were, I just ran home ‘cause-”

  “Close the door and lock it please,” she whispered. Lightning suddenly flashed through the sky in almost the exact same sequence as the red lights it drowned out before they became visible again. Another roll of thunder followed, reverberating through the kitchen. This one was louder than the rest.

  “We don’t know if they do anything bad, I mean-”

 
“Just do it!” she shouted. When my Aunt Marjorie started drinking, there was no reasoning or arguing with her. I quickly dashed over and slammed the door shut—making sure to turn both locks—then ran back and took care of the front door too, knowing she’d probably go off about that sooner or later. I made sure to check a couple windows on the way. When I got back to the kitchen, I found her slumped down in the doorway chugging down half of her drink and sucking mercilessly on a cigarette. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just sat down to join her.

  “I only wanted to watch the news…” she trailed off.

  “I can get the emergency radio, put it on AM and see if there’s anything,” I offered.

  “No,” she shook her head. “Just sit with me a minute and smoke.”

  I nodded, grabbing my cigarette from where I’d left it on the edge of the counter and sat back across from her against the doorframe. Neither of us said anything for several minutes. We just kept listening and watching for any change, intrigued and yet terrified of what those flashing lights could mean. Every second, they defined the silhouettes of the table, the chairs, the glass vase with flowers, the refrigerator, the appliances, and the sun catcher hanging in the window. Even the shadows themselves seemed threatening as they took on a new meaning through faint shades of red.

  Here or there, the lightning from the storm along with its thunderous roars would bring them to life. The whistling wind outside continued to whip ever harder, rattling the window panes of the tiny kitchen and the glasses in the cabinets. All the while, my aunt and I just sort of stared at each other, wondering if maybe this was the end of the world, a government conspiracy, or a foreign attack. Of course those were all silly thoughts being that this was Mississippi and we were all out in the country, but it was certainly enough to leave us freaked out and shuddering at every single movement. I dug my lighter out of my pocket and flicked it on so we could see, but my aunt didn’t want that either.

  “Mark, don’t…” she uttered.

  “Shouldn’t we light some candles?” Again, no answer. I was getting a bit anxious and fed up with waiting, so I reached my arm up and opened a drawer to dig out a flashlight. I took a deep breath before turning it on and setting it on the floor to point up at the ceiling. Even that seemed a little creepy given the circumstances, but I kinda wanted to draw our attention away from whatever was going on outside. Marjorie took a deep breath before dragging off her cigarette again. She looked to me as I did the same, and in that moment I think we began to relate to one another better than we ever had in the past twelve years.

  “I don’t really want to move from here tonight,” she sighed.

  “Me neither.” We both ashed on the floor.

  “Think we should say our last words? You know, just in case Jesus is coming or whatever.”

  I smirked. “Never been to church.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” Another drag.

  “Well I guess it couldn’t hurt,” I shrugged. The pulsing of the lights kept going, forcing my heart to beat faster.

  “I’m sorry,” Aunt Marjorie said, shaking her head. “Really, I am. For whatever I did or didn’t do over the years, and that guy Carl who almost molested you. I know we haven’t been the best at understanding each other, but-”

  “Don’t start,” I cut her off, taking out my lighter again. It was a nervous habit, but I didn’t want to hear what she had to say anyways. What was done was done, and there was no changing it. Besides, I’ve never been big on apologies. I always figured that if you’re truly sorry, you won’t say anything. It’s just easier to move on and forget it.

  “So what if we die tonight? I thought that’s what you wanted to hear. That I’m sorry, that I admit I haven’t done the best with raising you after that accident. It’s not just you who lost someone, you know. I mean I was never good at keeping in contact ‘neither, but I still loved my sister, and-”

  “Nah, just stop.”

  “Fine then…” she trailed off. I started to feel sick from the vodka since I hadn’t eaten much that day. I didn’t want to offend her or anything, I just wasn’t comfortable with hearing a stupid drunken apology that wouldn’t matter for shit the next morning. She had done it before a few times, and it was always the same.

  “Want me to grab some pillows?” I asked, chasing down the last of my cigarette before tossing it on the floor. She paused a second before thinking of an answer.

  “Are those your last words?” she chuckled.

  “Shut up and finish your drink,” I smiled, pulling myself up to get the tattered old things sitting on the living room couch. They were these brown ugly pieces of crap I was pretty sure she’d kept from the 80’s, but they were comfortable enough. When I came back through the doorway, I found her already passed out with her head on the hard linoleum floor. Her drink was spilled in the other direction toward the living room, so I grabbed up the glass from her hand and set it on the counter.

  “Hopeless old cunt,” I sighed, shoving one of the pillows under her head. I grabbed one more cigarette from her pack on the table and lit up as the thunder and winds continued to rage on outside. The glass rattled every so often, further distorting the images through the rain like a flickering flame. Lightning still flashed here or there, and all the while those things kept blinking out in the distant fields. They wouldn’t stop and they never wavered even once. 1, 2-3, 1, 2-3.

  What the hell is going on?