The air cut away quickly as he rode past, snakes of of vapor floating torn. Almost slithering too fast, the rider’s face enclosed within a pitch-black helmet and visor, among snakes of the morning mist. The sun was rising softly, but brightly across to his right along a desert stretch into the distance. The red-orange glow reverberating from pale cliff and rock now in the morning. Even that small detail, though quickly dismissed, disappeared quickly as he rode down the unhindered road. It always seemed this way, in this early. Cutting through a desert landscape with pain preeminent in the wings.
The only sound filling the background of his thoughts was a noise echoing back at him from the acoustic mirror between open sky and desert plateau, the thunder of his rumbling motorcycle. A low, almost percussive pitch following, and then fading, quickly in his wake. His mind spread before him like a map of past destinations and second thoughts. A strange familiarity taking him into his thoughts, and there he would be for the rest of the trip, impossibly focused yet detached about the whole thing.
The people he has been, flashes like beacons in the rising mist, and the people he has met. All scarred by his reach into their lives. Some dead, others more than in love with the idea, fond of ideas of death leading to peace. All these reminders, however, tossed aside by the rumbling and all-too mechanical reality here in the middle of nowhere. Whispers of random apocalypse notions, maybe more of the same, in an already too real world. It was only a matter of time until Arizona, and then a short trip to the true destination, into the heart of the quarry doomed-to-be.
Though the town itself, Biblical (Pop. 1400), wouldn’t be very welcoming. It made no difference in this particular voyage. Destiny was down to the very hands and minds of the few people in this no-horse town. In the past, Biblical was a burgeoning outpost of religious sanctum, but too soon in an era of lawless motion, it would all disappear. The residents themselves seem to vanish, the wish to disappear sometimes becoming so terribly true, even though truth seems entirely relative to those who know it as their own. Maybe one of those waking ghosts was his next to be taken away.
The Wild West was gone, and now paved over with thick black asphalt. A few people tried to resurrect whatever wealth this place held, back in the Fifties, but where ideals collided with concrete reality lay the crux in which Biblical was doomed to fall again. Not to roving packs of desert pirates, but to big business tycoons ruining the American dollar. More wasted lives to build their faltering foundations. Withering away the population through unemployment. Finally, an overt emptiness drowned, and enveloped the citizenry into a deep despair. Moving some parts into disrepair.
Which brings this tale to the current residents of such a colorful place. First, among those few, an older, married couple. They moved down from the northernmost regions of the central United States. Once their children had grown-up, they seemed to know where to go, or was it perhaps mere coincidence that drew them here? They would tell the people new to town, occasionally muttering their versions of the same story over again in light of boredom, that they moved to Arizona because they met Bigfoot. A tale knowingly fabricated by the seemingly sincere couple.
They sometimes mutter that he had lived with them as well, but only a few “elite” people know that story, even fewer seem to care. They have had two children and numerous pets, and both of them appear to be in good health. Upon moving to Biblical, in particular, it seemed as though life changed for the more serene. A life fed with various diets and exercises through the natural terrain of the Southwest. Regular bouts of exercise were an extensively pursued hobby to the fullest capacity.
Hiking the natural landscape became more than escape. It had become a way of life.
In the confines of town, they drive around in a nice yet beat-up little minibus near relentlessly from place to place. Before the end of last month, she was just entering menopause, but still enjoys an irresistible spirit of adventure. Though he would seem to match her as quite an outdoors aficionado himself, with a gun collection, and various hunted trophies since their time wed. They are owners of the bed and breakfast on Park Street, Mary and Dean Stanton, they are Mr. and Mrs. Henderson as the rest of town has come to acknowledge them. Both of them have grown very comfortable in their routines and habits, some of which are less puritanical than others in a sense, but nevertheless keeps them from killing each other.
The Montgomery couple are a quiet man and woman. She is a nurse, and her husband, the town’s only mechanic. His first name is Jimmy, like his shirt implies, but he’s a well-spoken person with a collegiate background. Angela, his wife, works at the hospital in the nearest large city. Where she works, though, is of no concern except in relation to her experience. Which has come in handy for a few occasions of outdoor strife, and will always be a commodity somewhere in this world. Together, the couple are almost inseparable, and they have enjoyed each other’s company very much in this tiny place.
Her skills a reflection of her cool-headed calm under stress, and over ten years knowledgeable, most specifically in emergency settings. She has had varying experiences in Operating and Emergency rooms all across the Southwestern states, but settled in Biblical shortly after meeting her husband in a bizarre set of circumstances. A three month courtship that she had felt rushed through, but after getting engaged to each other, she began to realize what she felt for the man was real. Their abilities to heal through almost any tragedy has been their strongest link together so far.
Jimmy’s life has a way of being a little more harsh before they settled in Arizona. He was raised by a domineering mother, and his father left them both within a few years of little Jimmy’s birth. His mother, in fits of rage, would scream and cry herself to sleep regularly. As he neared his teenage years, James grew very anxious under his mother’s dominance, and had sneaked away from home. Her rage at being abandoned was utterly boundless with Jim the only victim after he was picked up by the cops, and taken back in errant haste, doubtless the victim of painful memories.
A long, hard life of booze and drugs became his activity not long after he left for good. Guilty and confused, he hitchhiked back home three years after, and returned to find his mother gone. She had died in a car accident shortly after the clock struck twelve on a Friday two days before his return. Weeping absently, as the various persons-in-charge told him the facts, through everything and all throughout. Beyond traumatized, beyond rational, and totally inconsolable. He packed what few things remained for him, putting it all into storage while he drove deeper into depression.
The occasion, being as unexpected as it was, led him to leave the area and the home he knew no longer. He drove fast and drunken into the storm. His mother’s lonely death, smashing her brains against the wheel of her car as another driver struck her from the side, the flowing blood draining the color from her face. Now, in her image, feeding all the addictions he ever had known. Some dim ideas about meeting her in another place giving him the drive he used to get beyond his own limitations, charging into the storm hoping to find peace, and silence. Though he did not die from this pain.
His guilt teasing a sore and open wound in his heart. He began taking harder drugs as the months of depression wore on. Buying time with fear, and making his way to California. In one of the last drug-induced fits he would ever commit to, he drove headlong into the side of a vehicle stopped at the light, going sixty-five mph while smoking speed. The tragedy was very seriously lost on him for a few months more, but would linger on longer than expected, with no real anchor to him.
His mind locked inside of itself in a coma. His soul drifted into others. He never realized where he was. He was floating with angels somewhere deep into the night. At least as he had believed it to be real. He truly thought he had died, and Angela doesn’t tell him otherwise. As this is where they met. Intensive care inside the Loca Vista Emergency Room in California, and Cupid struck.
After he had crashed his car into that other one, and against the law but another story still, he was taken into the same place she was working. Match made in Heaven, eh? As the doctors repaired the light damage to his body, it was then that she fell in love with his bloodied and bruised face, a tender moment amid the chaos. A short time there afterward, Angela was assigned as something of a nurse-on-call, but she relished the work.
It gave her interaction with him. She spent all her time with him. Well, all the time that she could have freed. She would even visit him on her off-hours. Sitting by his side, and making sure he was taken care of. Near to the three months it took for him to recover consciousness, she begun to start questioning her feelings, and saw him less than before. Her questioning thoughts echoing madly within her, and forcing out guilt.
It was on her first date in six months that she had gotten the beeper message. She left abruptly, and rushed herself to the hospital, making very few excuses. Going about sixty-five down the highway, and she got there in little under ten minutes, not bad through the traffic. The other nurses were telling her that he was waking up, and with that, the news fueled her ascent to his room. She had to see him for herself, and to feel the truth.
She could see a few nurses and a doctor in the room. She strained to get a good look at him, and as they began to file out, she stood aside and waited to pass. Her enthusiasm and excitement was built into its’ own nervous frenzy. Tapping her foot as she nodded at all the smiling nurses walking out, but stopping the doctor at the end of the line. “Is he alright?” she pushed, intent on his answer, her pleading eyes.
She stood in anticipation, looking the doctor in the eye, but also thinking over the potent moment of his admission. The fast-paced surge in the Emergency Room, and one moment spent falling in love. The doctor’s reply was positive. He told her that he would recover completely in a few days. After asking if it was okay to see him, the doctor nodded, and she opened his door to his curiously handsome face. A fluttering inside her stomach.
The rest, you could say, was history. They got married soon after getting to know each other, in a small chapel just outside of Reno, and conducted by a justice of the peace. It was there she confronted his past, and came to a roadblock. They spent two weeks of intense time with each other, searching and caring for one another, the passion of those moments would trail them to this day. He feels his mother would have approved of his wife.
The only occupation that has stuck with this small desolate town on the edge of civility has been the local undertaker, whose skills have been passed down from father to son since those days of the Wild West when a skilled mortician was highly necessary to any situation where citizens were gunning each other down every day, and the man in Biblical put money away for his family as the bodies dropped in case even his occupation dried up eventually.
With each sequential generation, the population of Biblical died out more and more, and people started leaving the town for larger social horizons in some of the cities like Phoenix and Flagstaff. The boom was ending to fast for the remnants of Biblical to keep up, and though the Verde river stayed true, the town was quickly becoming less and less frequented. Nestled somewhere between the towns Camp Verde and Cave Creek in a small piece of verdant land that began drying up like the population during the Fifties, and soon only a few families and businesses were left to keep the land from completely shriveling up.
Eventually, the strain and stress of trying to maintain the mortuary business took its toll on the family, and especially after the patriarch died shortly before the Fifties. He raised the only son he would ever know with his wife, and he taught his only heir the trade that he had learned from his father before him, this time the young man benefited from attending a school for mortuary sciences. It was losing most of the stigma that it had gained through to the Fifties when his father died, and distraught, he chose to live in other parts of the States then go back to Biblical.
After ten years or so of living outside of Arizona, occasionally visiting his childhood home with his wife, it wasn’t until his mother was dying that he settled into Biblical permanently. Her last wishes were for her son to take over the house and funeral parlor after she was gone, and to keep her family alive through the business. After the burial, his wife and he moved into the house and began renovating both the house and the parlor for his new family. His wife was going to have twin boys just before the assassination of President Kennedy, and putting Biblical off the map.
The only sound filling the background of his thoughts was a noise echoing back at him from the acoustic mirror between open sky and desert plateau, the thunder of his rumbling motorcycle. A low, almost percussive pitch following, and then fading, quickly in his wake. His mind spread before him like a map of past destinations and second thoughts. A strange familiarity taking him into his thoughts, and there he would be for the rest of the trip, impossibly focused yet detached about the whole thing.
The people he has been, flashes like beacons in the rising mist, and the people he has met. All scarred by his reach into their lives. Some dead, others more than in love with the idea, fond of ideas of death leading to peace. All these reminders, however, tossed aside by the rumbling and all-too mechanical reality here in the middle of nowhere. Whispers of random apocalypse notions, maybe more of the same, in an already too real world. It was only a matter of time until Arizona, and then a short trip to the true destination, into the heart of the quarry doomed-to-be.
Though the town itself, Biblical (Pop. 1400), wouldn’t be very welcoming. It made no difference in this particular voyage. Destiny was down to the very hands and minds of the few people in this no-horse town. In the past, Biblical was a burgeoning outpost of religious sanctum, but too soon in an era of lawless motion, it would all disappear. The residents themselves seem to vanish, the wish to disappear sometimes becoming so terribly true, even though truth seems entirely relative to those who know it as their own. Maybe one of those waking ghosts was his next to be taken away.
The Wild West was gone, and now paved over with thick black asphalt. A few people tried to resurrect whatever wealth this place held, back in the Fifties, but where ideals collided with concrete reality lay the crux in which Biblical was doomed to fall again. Not to roving packs of desert pirates, but to big business tycoons ruining the American dollar. More wasted lives to build their faltering foundations. Withering away the population through unemployment. Finally, an overt emptiness drowned, and enveloped the citizenry into a deep despair. Moving some parts into disrepair.
Which brings this tale to the current residents of such a colorful place. First, among those few, an older, married couple. They moved down from the northernmost regions of the central United States. Once their children had grown-up, they seemed to know where to go, or was it perhaps mere coincidence that drew them here? They would tell the people new to town, occasionally muttering their versions of the same story over again in light of boredom, that they moved to Arizona because they met Bigfoot. A tale knowingly fabricated by the seemingly sincere couple.
They sometimes mutter that he had lived with them as well, but only a few “elite” people know that story, even fewer seem to care. They have had two children and numerous pets, and both of them appear to be in good health. Upon moving to Biblical, in particular, it seemed as though life changed for the more serene. A life fed with various diets and exercises through the natural terrain of the Southwest. Regular bouts of exercise were an extensively pursued hobby to the fullest capacity.
Hiking the natural landscape became more than escape. It had become a way of life.
In the confines of town, they drive around in a nice yet beat-up little minibus near relentlessly from place to place. Before the end of last month, she was just entering menopause, but still enjoys an irresistible spirit of adventure. Though he would seem to match her as quite an outdoors aficionado himself, with a gun collection, and various hunted trophies since their time wed. They are owners of the bed and breakfast on Park Street, Mary and Dean Stanton, they are Mr. and Mrs. Henderson as the rest of town has come to acknowledge them. Both of them have grown very comfortable in their routines and habits, some of which are less puritanical than others in a sense, but nevertheless keeps them from killing each other.
The Montgomery couple are a quiet man and woman. She is a nurse, and her husband, the town’s only mechanic. His first name is Jimmy, like his shirt implies, but he’s a well-spoken person with a collegiate background. Angela, his wife, works at the hospital in the nearest large city. Where she works, though, is of no concern except in relation to her experience. Which has come in handy for a few occasions of outdoor strife, and will always be a commodity somewhere in this world. Together, the couple are almost inseparable, and they have enjoyed each other’s company very much in this tiny place.
Her skills a reflection of her cool-headed calm under stress, and over ten years knowledgeable, most specifically in emergency settings. She has had varying experiences in Operating and Emergency rooms all across the Southwestern states, but settled in Biblical shortly after meeting her husband in a bizarre set of circumstances. A three month courtship that she had felt rushed through, but after getting engaged to each other, she began to realize what she felt for the man was real. Their abilities to heal through almost any tragedy has been their strongest link together so far.
Jimmy’s life has a way of being a little more harsh before they settled in Arizona. He was raised by a domineering mother, and his father left them both within a few years of little Jimmy’s birth. His mother, in fits of rage, would scream and cry herself to sleep regularly. As he neared his teenage years, James grew very anxious under his mother’s dominance, and had sneaked away from home. Her rage at being abandoned was utterly boundless with Jim the only victim after he was picked up by the cops, and taken back in errant haste, doubtless the victim of painful memories.
A long, hard life of booze and drugs became his activity not long after he left for good. Guilty and confused, he hitchhiked back home three years after, and returned to find his mother gone. She had died in a car accident shortly after the clock struck twelve on a Friday two days before his return. Weeping absently, as the various persons-in-charge told him the facts, through everything and all throughout. Beyond traumatized, beyond rational, and totally inconsolable. He packed what few things remained for him, putting it all into storage while he drove deeper into depression.
The occasion, being as unexpected as it was, led him to leave the area and the home he knew no longer. He drove fast and drunken into the storm. His mother’s lonely death, smashing her brains against the wheel of her car as another driver struck her from the side, the flowing blood draining the color from her face. Now, in her image, feeding all the addictions he ever had known. Some dim ideas about meeting her in another place giving him the drive he used to get beyond his own limitations, charging into the storm hoping to find peace, and silence. Though he did not die from this pain.
His guilt teasing a sore and open wound in his heart. He began taking harder drugs as the months of depression wore on. Buying time with fear, and making his way to California. In one of the last drug-induced fits he would ever commit to, he drove headlong into the side of a vehicle stopped at the light, going sixty-five mph while smoking speed. The tragedy was very seriously lost on him for a few months more, but would linger on longer than expected, with no real anchor to him.
His mind locked inside of itself in a coma. His soul drifted into others. He never realized where he was. He was floating with angels somewhere deep into the night. At least as he had believed it to be real. He truly thought he had died, and Angela doesn’t tell him otherwise. As this is where they met. Intensive care inside the Loca Vista Emergency Room in California, and Cupid struck.
After he had crashed his car into that other one, and against the law but another story still, he was taken into the same place she was working. Match made in Heaven, eh? As the doctors repaired the light damage to his body, it was then that she fell in love with his bloodied and bruised face, a tender moment amid the chaos. A short time there afterward, Angela was assigned as something of a nurse-on-call, but she relished the work.
It gave her interaction with him. She spent all her time with him. Well, all the time that she could have freed. She would even visit him on her off-hours. Sitting by his side, and making sure he was taken care of. Near to the three months it took for him to recover consciousness, she begun to start questioning her feelings, and saw him less than before. Her questioning thoughts echoing madly within her, and forcing out guilt.
It was on her first date in six months that she had gotten the beeper message. She left abruptly, and rushed herself to the hospital, making very few excuses. Going about sixty-five down the highway, and she got there in little under ten minutes, not bad through the traffic. The other nurses were telling her that he was waking up, and with that, the news fueled her ascent to his room. She had to see him for herself, and to feel the truth.
She could see a few nurses and a doctor in the room. She strained to get a good look at him, and as they began to file out, she stood aside and waited to pass. Her enthusiasm and excitement was built into its’ own nervous frenzy. Tapping her foot as she nodded at all the smiling nurses walking out, but stopping the doctor at the end of the line. “Is he alright?” she pushed, intent on his answer, her pleading eyes.
She stood in anticipation, looking the doctor in the eye, but also thinking over the potent moment of his admission. The fast-paced surge in the Emergency Room, and one moment spent falling in love. The doctor’s reply was positive. He told her that he would recover completely in a few days. After asking if it was okay to see him, the doctor nodded, and she opened his door to his curiously handsome face. A fluttering inside her stomach.
The rest, you could say, was history. They got married soon after getting to know each other, in a small chapel just outside of Reno, and conducted by a justice of the peace. It was there she confronted his past, and came to a roadblock. They spent two weeks of intense time with each other, searching and caring for one another, the passion of those moments would trail them to this day. He feels his mother would have approved of his wife.
The only occupation that has stuck with this small desolate town on the edge of civility has been the local undertaker, whose skills have been passed down from father to son since those days of the Wild West when a skilled mortician was highly necessary to any situation where citizens were gunning each other down every day, and the man in Biblical put money away for his family as the bodies dropped in case even his occupation dried up eventually.
With each sequential generation, the population of Biblical died out more and more, and people started leaving the town for larger social horizons in some of the cities like Phoenix and Flagstaff. The boom was ending to fast for the remnants of Biblical to keep up, and though the Verde river stayed true, the town was quickly becoming less and less frequented. Nestled somewhere between the towns Camp Verde and Cave Creek in a small piece of verdant land that began drying up like the population during the Fifties, and soon only a few families and businesses were left to keep the land from completely shriveling up.
Eventually, the strain and stress of trying to maintain the mortuary business took its toll on the family, and especially after the patriarch died shortly before the Fifties. He raised the only son he would ever know with his wife, and he taught his only heir the trade that he had learned from his father before him, this time the young man benefited from attending a school for mortuary sciences. It was losing most of the stigma that it had gained through to the Fifties when his father died, and distraught, he chose to live in other parts of the States then go back to Biblical.
After ten years or so of living outside of Arizona, occasionally visiting his childhood home with his wife, it wasn’t until his mother was dying that he settled into Biblical permanently. Her last wishes were for her son to take over the house and funeral parlor after she was gone, and to keep her family alive through the business. After the burial, his wife and he moved into the house and began renovating both the house and the parlor for his new family. His wife was going to have twin boys just before the assassination of President Kennedy, and putting Biblical off the map.
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