Category: Short Story Starts

The world was ending, yet the Prius sped down the empty highway, the twangs of banjos and guitars erupting from the vehicle. Towering maple trees surrounded the waving stretch of road. Skeletal branches pointed down towards the car, damning the occupants to the same fate. Of course, the apocalypse had just begun. Word hadn’t gotten around that roadtrips were futile, as no one could outrun, well, outdrive their fate. 

“Which one of you bitches took the last Oreo?” Cecilia hissed from the backseat, clutching the plastic container. A few black crumbs fell from the package onto the grey seat as she shook it angrily at the other occupants. The driver, Mary, glanced back at her enraged friend in the rearview mirror. 

“You sure it wasn’t you?” She asked, but immediately regretted it as her seat jolted forward. Cecilia thrust her legs against the seat harder, giving one last kick as she made eye contact with Mary. Mary rolled her eyes, annoyed, but not surprised at her friend’s attitude. Cecilia had a chronic case of being hangry around 3pm. She checked the clock on the dashboard. 2:46. 

‘Close enough,’ She thought. A shuffling next to her caught her eye. She found herself smiling as Gideon sat up, their short, feathery hair sticking up in every direction. 

“Where are we?” Gideon yawned, wiping the sleep from their eyes. 

“We’re close to Montpelier,” Rowan said from the backseat. She handed Cecilia a pack of fruit snacks to calm her hanger. 

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Cecilia interrupted as she tore into the fruit snacks, “Who ate my Oreos?” 

No one spoke for a moment. Although she focused on the road in front of her, Mary caught a glimpse of Gideon rubbing away black cookie crumbs from their lap. 

“Look,” She said, “How about we find a place to stop? We can get some food and freshen up a bit.” 

There was a silent agreement between the four friends as Mary gassed the Prius well above the speed limit. She had noticed the lack of traffic miles back, but said nothing to her friends. Well, lack of traffic is one thing, but she hadn’t seen a single car since they crossed the border into Vermont. Mary thought against mentioning this, especially to Gideon. They would begin to worry too much, advise them to pull over and call someone-anyone– about the sudden disappearance of half the population of Vermont. She loved Gideon, loved the silly, crooked smiles and the vocal impressions they did, but Mary had never met anyone who worried as much as the person next to her. 

“Do the trees always look like that?” Gideon asked, as though Mary had summoned a question from them by merely thinking of their existence. The friends looked from their windows, staring at the corpse-like trees around them. A pit grew in Mary’s stomach. 

She found herself very, very worried.

The first paper I ever delivered was ‘The Springster Tribune’ on August 13^th, 1962. It was a sweltering Monday morning as I pedaled my chipped green bike down the dirt road to Mr. Kennedy’s trailer. The pathway ended a few yards away from the busted old thing. The trailer was originally white, with a thick, striking red line wrapped along the midsection, but age had weathered the color to a pale cream and sections of the red paint had flaked away. There weren’t any tires holding the trailer above the ground. Instead, day after day, the camper sank deeper and deeper into the earth. I distinctly remember ditching the 1936 Schwinn Aerocycle on the yellowing grass near the towers of frying rubber tires and thinking about what game my school friends were playing that moment. Maybe Scott and Robbie were racing back and forth along the courtyard, their rubber soles slapping against the asphalt with sweat running down their backs. The chain-linked fence would rattle as they slammed against it. As I pounded against the metallic camper door, I grinned at the thought of riding my bike over to Scott’s house after the last paper landed on the last porch. A grimace took its place as the door wobbled open with a creak, revealing Mr. Larry Kennedy.

            “Well, if it ain’t Allan Nash,” His southern accent was prominent, despite the fact that he had lived in Springster, Ohio longer than I had been alive, “Got a lot of nerve showin’ your face here after what you and that—”

            “I’m just here to deliver your paper, Mr. Kennedy.”

            I rarely interrupted adults, my dad had made sure of that. He was a sergeant during the second world war before he met my mom, but some of his training in the army held fast through the years. More than two hands were needed to count how many times Ralph Nash whipped my backside for speaking out of turn. Dad would’ve snatched his belt off right then and there if he’d seen me cut off like that, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear more of Mr. Kennedy’s slurs.

            “When’d you start bein’ a paper boy?” Mr. Kennedy raised a bushy grey brow at me, his brown eyes fixated on my face, “Those little ladies at the school makin’ you do this?”

            “Nah,” I answered, thinking about how I wouldn’t call the teachers at the school ‘little ladies’, “It’s just a part-time gig for some extra cash, that’s all.”

            It wasn’t exactly a lie, but I doubted that dad would appreciate me blabbing about our financial problems to everyone and his brother. The newspaper found its way into the withered, boney fingers of Mr. Kennedy, who promptly spat in the direction of my bicycle.

            “Don’t need to tip you, do I?”

            “No, sir.”

            “Good. Now get your damn bike off my lawn.”

            I thought about how I wouldn’t call the overgrown weeds around the dilapidated camper a ‘lawn’, but I figured it would bring me more trouble to argue with him. Besides, the faster I got the papers out, the longer I’d have to gawk at the new model at Eddie’s shop.