UPDATE: https://www.reddit.com/u/OperatorDunbar/s/DafdAXgAiC
So, hi. I’m not really sure how I should start this. I’m not even really sure why I’m writing this in the first place. I guess I just need somewhere to put everything going on in my mind down. There’s a lot rattling around in there right now. My brain has been a jumbled mess the last couple of days, though, I can’t really remember a time when it wasn’t, to be fair. I’m gonna need to give a lot of context, but I promise, it’s necessary.
Life has always been a little fuzzy for me. Growing up, I would frequently get the somewhat backhanded compliment, “oh, you’re just in your own world aren’t you?” Looking back, that might have been one of those uniquely southern-coded ways of calling me autistic, but I was too young to catch on. I grew up in an older family in the Bible Belt, Louisiana to be exact. Older relatives know how to sugar coat the most brutal roasting ever thrown onto a human soul. A comforting kiss with just enough venom to numb you to the pain. It isn’t until you’re older and subconsciously using their sayings yourself that you realize how much they were shit talking you to your face. Bless their hearts.
I grew up in Widowsbrook, Louisiana. The biggest small town in the world, roughly a hundred miles from anywhere in particular. A colorful and historic town that’s surprisingly diverse for what it is. In a 10 mile strip, it disgusts you with vulgar displays of poverty, wows you with pristine opulence, and boggles the mind with finding absolutely any reason to host a festival. If you can legally kill it, and have the necessary paperwork to hunt it, then we’ll put up a Ferris wheel and see who can cook it the best.
My memories of my childhood are that it was fine. Every time I think about my life before I moved away, I see everything through a vibrant, fuzzy filter like you’d see in a home video in an indie coming of age movie. The grass was greener, the sky was bluer, the winters were biting, and the summers were suffocating. My fondest memories of my hometown were in the fall. The coldest it would ever get was a brisk 65 degrees (18 degrees C) for about a month before dragging you through the dark and desolate winters.
Widowsbrook is the only real “town” for at least an hour in any direction. Mostly just a couple highways going nowhere, and endless stretches of dense, unforgiving forest with unofficial little towns wherever they decided to cut. My entire time living in Widowsbrook, I’ve lived on the outskirts of town, only barely being counted on the census, so I’m pretty familiar with the woods.
Whenever I think of the nostalgic moments of my childhood, I think of running through the woods in Autumn. The crips air stinging my lungs with quick jabs and I frantically run through the trees with my brother. The rapid-fire snapping of twigs and under our trembling feet pop through the dense fog of leaves like hundreds of firecrackers. Spending hours upon hours observing the wildlife of my home. Everything from squirrels, birds, snakes, and some of the gnarliest looking bugs that I’ve never seen again in my life. It truly was a magical place to explore my burgeoning imagination and childlike sense of wonder.
We moved away from Widowsbrook when I was about 10. My family went through a series of events that I’d rather not get into right now, so my mom wanted to give us a fresh start somewhere else.
I don’t remember any particular feelings towards leaving my hometown. I guess I just figured it was what it was. I’ve never had problems making friends and I was decent in school.So the proper goodbyes were said, promises of keeping in touch were inevitably unfulfilled, and Widowsbrook was now a former place of residence. A temporary pit stop whenever we needed something from it that the increasingly smaller towns didn’t provide.
We moved to a quaint little town for about 7 years. I obviously lived several different lives in that time. Going from a preteen to a maliciously compliant 17 year old delinquent, the new person I was becoming slowly lifted the veil of childhood of what my hometown really was.
Obviously I didn’t know at the time, but Widowsbrook is one of the worst cities in Louisiana. It’s in the top 5 of; violent crime, property crime, and disappearances. Drive down any street and you’ll pass one of the top funded private schools in the entire parish, half a mile later you’ll be driving down a desolate “road”, more akin to a wagon trail, with potholes the size of craters and some of the worst ghettos outside of the gutters of New Orleans.
After a while, I stopped claiming my hometown. I had grown my identity into the town I moved to.
I begged my mom not to move back. My view of my hometown was that of a desolate and dying city. The bad was starting to outweigh the good. But, alas, not much I could do to dissuade her. Her job was in Widowsbrook and I had graduated early, not much holding us to the place I had come to see as my home. So we picked up our lives and moved it back to Widowsbrook to enter my new chapter of young adulthood.
To be fair, my previous assumptions of the town were slowly disproven. The city started to make a concerted effort to grow the city. The darkness is still there, it’s not something that goes away overnight, even over a couple thousand nights, but you just learn the parts of town that you have no business being in, and you stick to where you know.
The darkest part, for me, is the missing persons board at Walmart. It’s right in front of the store. You walk past it whenever you’re leaving the checkout and heading towards the exit. A constantly changing roster of whereabouts unknown. Every age, race, and religion. At first you notice the new additions, but after a while, they kind of just fade away into the mush of your peripheral vision, only to be replaced by the next picture.
I’m a creature of habit, so I’ve never felt unsafe in my life as a legal adult in Widowsbrook, and have even grown fond of my somewhat quaint little town. I mostly stick to my same few routes. I work as a cook in a bar and grill, so some shifts don’t start until later in the day, leaving me with a little bit of free time to run a couple errands before getting ready for work.
Quick admission, I’m a crippling nicotine addict. I was running low one day on my vape rations. I had some time before my shift, and I wouldn’t be out until hours after the vape shop closes, so I decided to reup for the pay cycle.
The road I take to get to the store feels like its own little world. Like a separate part of our reality. It’s overgrown with trees and wilderness, creating an enclosed tunnel of foliage. In the daytime it’s beautiful, but at night it’s a nightmare, no natural or artificial light outside of your headlights, windy roads with sharp turns covered by bushes and trees, leaving you unable to see more than a foot into the road you’re turning on.
The roads are broken and jagged, chunks of dark concrete lay in the deep ditches on the shoulder of the road. Your car jolts and jumps driving down it, causing you to drive slower so you don’t destroy your tires or the actual car. Any time on that road after 6 pm is best kept short.
This particular drive was at 1 pm, somewhat more visible. The first of many windy turns was coming up, so I had my eyes planted on the road ahead of me. You never know when you’re gonna have to share the narrow road with another car, that’s when I saw it…
It was an orange dot just up in the distance, 100 yards away. It looked like it was vibrating, like that little speck in your eye you can never quite get a good look at. Iwas a dog. I don’t remember what breed. It was orangish gold. Like hair that had been bleached wrong. It’s not uncommon to see dogs running around on this road, looking for something to eat. They usually eat whatever roadkill they find.
The dog was eating. It wasn’t crouched down eating a flattened animal off the road, it was standing up on its fours. As I pulled up closer, I could see it clearer. It was eating out of a ribcage.
It was too small to be a bigger animal like a deer or even a dog, but too big to be a smaller animal like a raccoon or a possum. I could see it from the road. It was shallow. Maybe like a foot from the rib cage to the spine. The spinal cord was still attached, the neck wasn’t. The dog was devouring what was left of flesh. What he wasn’t feasting on had already been picked dry by nature.
My car slowed to a crawl, and eventually came to a stop. I stared for what felt like minutes, but could’ve maybe been less than one. Enough time to fully look at what was in front of my driver side mirror. I tried to rationalize it anyway I could. I thought of any excuse or explanation, but I couldn’t, so I just went about my business.
I guess I’ve never felt unsafe in my town because I always felt like I was in a little bubble. All the evil is over there, that doesn’t happen here where I am. On that drive, my bubble popped. I drove by it again on my way back home from getting my vapes. I decided to stop again and look, hoping to see that I was just being paranoid. Too much true crime.
I stopped my car on a little dirt patch on the side of the road and slowly approached the ribcage. My stomach sank deeper the closer I got. The dog was gone. Everyone was gone. There was nothing around us except me, my car, and a ribcage. Picked so clean of any edible speck that it looks bleached. I couldn’t deny it anymore, I couldn’t gaslight myself into thinking anything else other than the cold reality in front of me.
Laying in the dirt in front of me, was a human ribcage.
I didn’t know what to do or how to process that information, so I just walked to my car, drove home, and sat on the couch until it was time to go to work. I’ve had a couple days off since then, so I’ve been sitting here stewing. I couldn’t see it the other night when I drove home from work, but you can hardly see anything on that road at night.
I don’t know what I’m meant to do with this information. I don’t know who to tell, or how to explain why it bothers me so much. I guess that’s why I wrote all of this. I don’t know who to turn to with all of this, and I don’t know how to verbalize why it’s a big deal to me.
I guess for now, I’ll just send this out into the void, and hope that I can find some sort of peace of mind in the end. If you made it this far, thank you for reading my ramblings. If anything comes up in the matter I’ll be sure to update which will probably be on my personal account. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Until next time.