Limbs in the trash cans, eyeballs in the gutters, mass graves in the sewers-as the atrocities climb, so do the chances of winning a spot on Sixty Minutes.
Orchard never made it to the six o’ clock news.
Had the population been slaughtered, the headlines would have exploded. The more carnage unveiled, the more reporters would swoop, like half-starved vultures, upon the crime scene. Limbs in the trash cans, eyeballs in the gutters, mass graves in the sewers-as the atrocities climb, so do the chances of winning a spot on Sixty Minutes.
Orchard never made it to the six o’ clock news.
Orchard never made it to the six o’ clock news.
It boasted zero survivors, but couldn’t claim an exodus of grisly details or a storybook of hackneyed horror stories. Only a phone call cut short and an undelivered newspaper betrayed the complete and utter vanishing. On June 13th, the town sang the roaring showtunes of modern industry, shop doors slammed open and shut, children danced upon the jungle gym in the midday fog, and every telephone line was alive with vital conversation; on June 14th, nothing. Silence swamped Orchard’s immortal Mayer Hawthorne’s stone feet. The following morning, another town vanished. The morning after, another. And another. And another.
Fearful Farmers fled to cities-the Great Disappearance spurned agriculture-and their crops to the wilderness. Urbanites fresh and stale starved, but nature bloated until its stomach dragged across the dirt. The great Mayer Hawthorne was sixty years too dead to draft an agricultural reform act, but Blanca Dove likes to think he would have tried.
Fearful Farmers fled to cities-the Great Disappearance spurned agriculture-and their crops to the wilderness. Urbanites fresh and stale starved, but nature bloated until its stomach dragged across the dirt. The great Mayer Hawthorne was sixty years too dead to draft an agricultural reform act, but Blanca Dove likes to think he would have tried.
Blanca Dove also likes to think that he rose at the same ungodly hour as she does, and that he, like her, preferred nightingales to any modern melody. She believes he tended a small garden in his front yard, and tried not to look in his neighbor’s windows unless he heard the dishes break or, in the spirit of suburban melodrama, a firework shotgun blast. Like Blanca, he was a private man.
However, Mayor Hawthorne chose to keep his curtains closed to neighborhood gossip. Marooned at lonely nineteen, Blanca is the only citizen in his jurisdiction. No words travel through her town. No schoolyard rumors knock at her door-she arrived twenty years too late for Orchard’s once widely acclaimed public education. Despite her truncated education, Mayor Hawthorne would have approved of her relentless productivity.
Her daily commute consists of her bathroom (for obvious reasons), her front lawn (for the vegetable garden), the pond (for the fish), and the crumbling community garden (for free food-every teenager’s prize motivation). Some days the mold shatters. On those days, she dives into the world in a flurry of inspiration and bikes ferociously past each empty home to the graveyard-to imagine the people that ceased to be.
Her daily commute consists of her bathroom (for obvious reasons), her front lawn (for the vegetable garden), the pond (for the fish), and the crumbling community garden (for free food-every teenager’s prize motivation). Some days the mold shatters. On those days, she dives into the world in a flurry of inspiration and bikes ferociously past each empty home to the graveyard-to imagine the people that ceased to be.
Each memorial whispers a different tale. Kidd Mugg drank coffee at every mealtime. He rarely slept, except on weekends when the trees hung low and the only heat slightly above them. On these restless nights, Kidd remained relentlessly productive until he collapsed into a caffeine coma at age sixteen. He never woke up. Kenneth Tucker believed in time travel.
His dog drowned in a puddle when he was only eight years old, and he, scientifically mad, strove to rescue his pet from its predestined fate. He locked himself inside his refrigerator one evening, thinking it the key to the past, and froze as the clock struck twelve. Wilhelmina Leaf couldn't work a wrench if it came with an autopilot, often causing mysterious malfunctions in every appliance she came across. Her can opener proved the final, gruesome straw.
The vanished leave no tombstones. Only traces of their breath in the beauty salon mirror, remnants of garbage lining the derailed train, and their memories in every corner of every empty home memorialize their existence. Blanca thinks they must have been peaceful people. The dead ones usually are.
It’s the living she’s afraid of.
His dog drowned in a puddle when he was only eight years old, and he, scientifically mad, strove to rescue his pet from its predestined fate. He locked himself inside his refrigerator one evening, thinking it the key to the past, and froze as the clock struck twelve. Wilhelmina Leaf couldn't work a wrench if it came with an autopilot, often causing mysterious malfunctions in every appliance she came across. Her can opener proved the final, gruesome straw.
The vanished leave no tombstones. Only traces of their breath in the beauty salon mirror, remnants of garbage lining the derailed train, and their memories in every corner of every empty home memorialize their existence. Blanca thinks they must have been peaceful people. The dead ones usually are.
It’s the living she’s afraid of.