(yes I've edited and reuploaded this multiple times)

2 AM. Silence roars at the edge of the treeline, just beyond the invisible concrete line protecting her from nature and civilization. If she listened closely though, he could still hear the distant crack of a gun barrel and a loud thud.

Sitting behind the wheel, behind other wheels, her hunger growled, a long anticipated meal after a day of neglect. His stomach threatened to crawl out from inside her, ready to turn inside out and eat itself.

The trip was temporary, she told himself. Her ears flicked at paranoid intruders, red eyes just about to jump from the hills, to surround her, to trap him there. He hadn’t been here in over 5 years, something she told himself wasn’t a long time, but felt like a millenia ago. He looked up at the architecture, what was once a tacky 80s corporate design now something modern, homogenized. Reinvention, reinterpretation, renovation, renewal, rebirth, regression.

She gets closer to the window. He remembers being in the opposite position. Loud mouthing at anyone who loud mouthed him. Backtalk, backslap. She remembers the anxiousness and tapping, the urge to jump out of his own skin. She had so much to do, she talked endlessly of her plans, her goals, the adventuring and spelunking she wanted to take. Tackle the endless expanse of the frontier. He remembers the chance encounter with a coworker, the close proximity of that janitor closet, the pinning, hickeys, the biting, scratching, clawing, arguing. Eventually, she jumped out that drive-thru window like a V-2 rocket into the first convertible she saw and abandoned everything and everyone known, escaped.

After this late dinner, she’d be off again. She had another 700 miles to go, from one edge of the earth to the other. But that treeline scared her, and he jumped at the sound of a familiar voice.

“How are things? What’s new with you? How have the last 5 years been? Still at the same spot? Oh, I’m doing well. You should see all the landmarks I’ve been to. Say hi to Michael for me.” He scratches at a scar left on his neck.

He leaves, high speed, air whizzing. She devours that burger. Pants covered in crumbs, hands covered in ketchup and grease, threatening to slip from the wheel and wrap her car around a telephone pole. As she reaches the end of the line, she sees his old home, now abandoned, consumed by kudzu. She wants to keep driving, but he sees the further treeline, the darkness and red eyes. It’s too scary, she’s petrified. He slows down. She wants to bolt, but he can’t, the anxiousness.

He struggles open the door of his old home, screen door unhinged. Tearing through plant matter, his socks and shoes soaked as he steps into stillwater. It’s total darkness. He uses a lighter, and illuminates old photos, crosses, American flags. An old rifle still hangs on the mantle. She looks out the window at the treeline beyond, and closes the blinds. He sits in the old recliner with his father’s rifle, and stagnates.