Blessing
A young writer takes his boyfriend and his cousin on a road trip up to the pristine waters of Canada, a perfect vacation with the intention of starting his novel and patching things up with his lover. But things happen, things that had begun many, many years ago and have no intention of staying forgotten.
Out of all of the older stories, this is one that I really want to continue, and likely will after my current series.
Blessing
The people living in the little rural town of Blessing will tell you that their problems began back in 1953, when the MacGunn gang broke into nearly every shop there was and stole all that they could carry, painting profanity on the walls and breaking up people's windows. This was during the summer, when the tourists come up from the cities to mingle with their country-bumpkin counterparts. But the old folks--the ones above seventy who can still hear and speak legibly without lapsing back to when they were riding their bicycles down to see the county fair--have a different story to tell.
They'll tell you that the real trouble began some two hundred years ago, back when the town consisted of a few Dutch and English families, with a handful of Finns thrown in for good measure. They hewed their houses from the trees that surrounded them, and they did it together. They hunted and they farmed, slowly turning the land into a pasture for their farms, and they did it together. They made their beds, and they slept every night after a long and toilsome day's work...and many will tell you that they did that together.
Twenty or so years after the first people began to farm and work their land with the kind of devotion only they could understand, something crept into that little town. Something dark and subtle like a pestilence, falling over the scattered little group of houses like a black shroud, unseen yet felt all around.
The people who lived there at the time didn't notice any kind of change. There was no clear difference in the water, no change in the air or soil. Not even when the town physician started wandering the tiny streets late at night, armed with a knife and a shotgun, preying upon anyone and anything that he saw. The local lawman, a man who would eventually fight and die for the Union at Vicksburg, shot the poor physician dead. "Out of his misery," he would later tell his friends at the logging mill.
The physician's death was attributed to rabies, or hydrophobia, as it was called then. It wasn't uncommon at the time, but it didn't explain the odd markings that the lawman saw on the physician's face before he put the bullet between the doctor's gleeful eyes. People mourned the doctor, and the four people he had killed, and then they went about their business of making their town.
Life goes on, and so must we.
The thing that had gotten to the poor physician was no disease. Nor was it an infection, a fractured mind, or demonic possession. It was something that was just there, waiting and watching. Something that couldn't be seen, and had no intention of being seen, yet always found the time for some fun in the setting Minnesota sun. But it was a stranger, and it knew that it could not openly indulge itself without being noticed. It had to wait, and it waited just long enough for its hunger to overtake its burning mind.
1
It is easy to assume that a clever plan is the result of heavy thinking and a clear mind. Nobody would have guessed that when Jason Frenez won five hundred dollars for his contribution to a NorthFuzz Writer's Contest, he had been smashed on cheap wine offered to him at his brother's wedding. When asked about how he had come up with such a story, he'd say to them "How did Iron Butterfly get famous?" and he'd leave it at that.
When asked what he'd do with the money he had won, the nineteen year-old coyote said he would put it into his bank account. Always the jokester and chain-yanker, what he really had in mind was going on a road trip up to Canada with his boyfriend, and nothing, not even a nuclear holocaust could stop him from enacting his plans.
He had been dying to go to Canada ever since he was seven years old and had seen a photo his father had taken of him and some friends sitting in a boat, each one holding up a fish that was easily as long as their arms. After that, fishing became his life, and when he had gotten a job and found out he could hardly find the time for his hobby, he took to something much less time consuming: writing.
He soon found that what seemed a tedious and mentally excruciating task for school instead became an interest. He took to it quickly, and the passion for writing blossomed into a zeal that would eventually reach a level of competitiveness. He'd write for contests, tournaments, challenges, even for lost bets (although the value of these stories were more or less short-changed).
His dream was a novel, but his goal was a forty pound muskie.
But he wasn't being entirely selfish. Jason knew that in a few weeks it would be Nathan's birthday, and he wanted to do something that would break the wall that seemed to come between them.
He had it all planned. He knew that his cousin Jeremy had vacation time stored away from his job as a physician's assistant, so he could drive them over the border in his blue Pontiac. He wasn't worried about anything affectionate that might slip between him and Nathan because Jeremy was a very broad-minded guy all the way, even though he wouldn't dare say so in front of other people. There was a lodge right next to a lake facing the West, and there the fishing and the kissing would happen. Nathan would have a wonderful birthday, he would get the prize fish, and everyone would basically have an awesome time.
Jason smirked when he remembered how he had imagined the contents of his dream vacation, blissfully unaware of the hitches (hitches and bitches, his mother would say) that could happen on the way. His stomach heaved as the Pontiac drove over a rise in the paved road, probably made from the winter ice that seeped into a crack and pushed it out until it became a laceration that ran the width of the road.
It was no coincidence in Jason's mind that the sign posted next to the road, right beside the fissure, marked their way into Minnesota.
He looked over his shoulder at Nathan. The grey mouse was asleep, his head lolling off to the side, his dark brown hair falling over his eyes. He was wearing a red jacket over a t-shirt, and blue jeans over what Jason was sure was a pair of sky blue cotton panties. The long pink tail rested over his lap, wrapped protectively around a bulky black case. Inside of it was a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, which Jason took to be a euphemism for "fucking expensive plastic."
He smiled at Nathan's sleeping figure. He remembered how nervous they were, how lost they felt when they started going out together...almost a year ago now. He remembered going through so many precautions to avoid attention. It was funny, though, because everything just seemed so--.
"Goddamn roads," Jeremy grumbled. Jason glanced at him, and then to the notebook he held in his hands, the notebook that was filled with twenty two pages of step sheets for three stories. If he was going to find novel material, it would more than likely be right here.
"We could've gone through North Dakota."
"And add an extra hundred miles? No thank you. Besides, I remember you telling me Nathan was from Minnesota. I thought he wanted to see a little bit of it."
Jason nodded. It was true that Nathan was from Minnesota, he just didn't know where in Minnesota. Actually, he couldn't remember if the mouse had ever even told him.
No matter. The gears of fortune were turning, and all Jason needed to do was pour some oil on them to make the dreams come true.
"Thanks," he told his cousin, feeling slightly incompetent that he hadn't thought of the idea himself. He went back to his notes, taking out the black Red Creek pencils he had stored away in his own jacket pocket. Tucking one behind his golden-brown ear and twirling the other between his dexterous fingers, he promptly delved into the current story on the page. Giving a short minute's thought, he started writing.
Four hours later, he managed to dissociate himself from the story long enough to look out the passenger side window. A faint trickling rain was coming down from a gunmetal grey sky, the shrubs and hedgerows that dotted the side of the road were swaying in a mad dance to the apathetic rhythm of the wind.
"Tell me you have the map."
Jason gave his cousin a befuddled look. Did he just say map? They hadn't needed to use the map since they started out from Kansas City, Missouri.
"Uh, yeah, I have the map. I just don't know why we need it right now."
"Because I don't know where we're going."
"Oh, is that all..."
"Yes, that's all. I have virtually no fucking clue where we're going. Would you mind putting the pencils down and get the map?"
Jason sighed through his nose and put the pencil he had in his hand back in his jacket pocket. Opening the glove compartment with the tip of his shoe, he scrounged inside the space with one hand as he continued to stare casually out the window. The sky was growing a little lighter, now being the shade of wet cotton as the sun peeked through in some areas. He felt a length of paper in his hand, so he whipped it out of the compartment and held it out for Jeremy.
"What the hell...map! I said map! I don't care about the warranty."
"Well, damn it, man," Jason muttered to himself as he scrounged in the compartment again. "Where's the map?"
"I don't know. I'm asking you to find it, 'cause I'm a little busy right now, what with the driving and all..."
"God damn it, I don't care! Where did you put it?!"
"Me?! You were supposed to get the map..."
They bickered and accused each other until Jason unclipped his seat-belt and lurched into the back-seat to look for the map. He effectually bumped Jeremy's elbow, which made the older coyote swerve on the road. He might have been able to regain control of the vehicle had it not been for the rain on the road. The car began to fishtail, throwing its inhabitants around like ragdolls. Nathan woke up with a jerk to Jason's canine muzzle inches from his own, yelling and spitting flecks of saliva as his waist twisted painfully against the seats.
Finally, the car gave one final swerve and dove into the ditch, flipping on its front wheel and landing on its side. A handful of glass shards embedded into Jeremy's face, and Jason only suffered a mild back sprain, but Nathan, who had been asleep for most of this and had no idea of what was happening, caught his leg between the side of the driver's seat and the door, crushing it.
This was how the three entered Minnesota and, as the sign two miles past suggested, eventually the quaint town of Blessing.
2
They managed to fasten a splint for Nathan out of some twine they had and a pair of straight diamond willow sticks. All Jason had to say was that he was thankful for those four weeks in the boy scouts. Surveying the wreckage of the vehicle, they scrounged what little things they knew they couldn't do without (Jason silently panicked, knowing that he couldn't be without anything), and they started walking back down the road, supporting Nathan on either side.
It took them twenty minutes to shrug off an event that would have emotionally shattered a less provisioned group. Perhaps it was because they were already shocked that what had happened had just happened. Jason glanced at Nathan, who was looking straight ahead, trying with some success to ignore the agonizing pain that pulsed from his left leg. He had to hand it to the mouse, though; if it was him that had his leg caught, he'd probably be shooting his lunch all over the place.
The sky was clearing up a little bit, but a small, angel-piss drizzle still fell from the lightening clouds as the three struggled down route 110. If any of this was part of Jason's plans, it hadn't gone through his express permission. His scowl deepened when he realized that they had ten days to reach Canada before Nathan's birthday. Barring any other problems that could spring up, the plans will continue unhindered. That much he knew was certain. If Jeremy or Nathan complained, he'd explain it to them, and they'd concede. That's the way it has always been for Tony Frenez's third son, and likely always will be.
The tired rumble of a beat up pick-up droned into their ears. Jason turned and saw a large black truck barreling toward them. He guessed that it was black, since only the hood of the truck wasn't encased in reddish-brown mud. It slowed until it came up next to them, pulling up on their side of the road just behind them. A female otter with the tired, punched-in face of a Manhattan boxer leaned out of the open window and called over to them.
"Hey! You guys need some help?"
No, we're looking for another guy to help out with our three-legged race, Jason thought angrily.
Jeremy was more calm and lenient with other people. He explained what had happened, and that their friend was hurt. The otter said that she saw their car in the ditch and that she looked to see if anybody was there. She said she was glad to see that they were alright, and that she would happily drive them into town.
They pulled down the door to the trunk and hopped in, everyone except Jeremy, who found it necessary to occupy the passenger's seat next to the otter girl. Nathan had to be carried up, which he said was humiliating. Jason, in a fit of poetic brilliance, said "tough shit" and hoisted the mouse into the box. He had to push aside a shovel and some rope to make enough room to sit, and it was in the bottom of a spare tire, but at least he wasn't getting his pants dirty. The truck's engine revved up, hesitated, then revved again, belching black smoke as it took off down the rain-slicked road.
Jason breathed freely of the open air as it rushed into his nostrils. His lungs filled up to the brim with that fresh, unfiltered rural scent of the north, mixing good-naturedly with the coarse smell of gasoline from the otter's truck. He had always thought about writing a story about a young vagrant fox running away from something, maybe a past that he couldn't put up with. Beside that inner conflict, Jason wanted external conflict...a strange town? Something out of the Twilight Zone, maybe? Like, it was stuck in a different time or something. It sounded good, but could he get anywhere with it? Probably, with some proper thinking and a step sheet map (and with such weak ideas, it would have to be A LOT of thinking and A BIG map), he'd undoubtedly have something worthy of publishing. He reached into his pockets for his pencils and grabbed two. He stuck one in his ear and kept one in his hand, and then realized with a heavy sinking feeling in his stomach that he had left his notebook in the Pontiac.
Resigned to the unavoidable fact that he has to sit for the rest of the ride without getting any progress done, Jason slumped down in his seat. He glanced at Nathan, who hadn't spoken one single word all day. The mouse was watching the trees pass by with a blank look on his face, practically oblivious to everything else. He lay across the box with his feet resting on the edge.