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In Vine Station, Alabama, the summer air gave no shits about humanity as it mercilessly increased to an oppressive heat while maintaining a suffocating humidity.
Alaska Young fanned herself as she sat outside on the back porch with one of her mother’s funeral fans, one those round ones with cheesy bible passages printed on them, which the funeral people think make funeral attendees cheer up but instead just makes people feel guilty for wanting to laugh at how cheesy they are.
“Mother nature is on her period today,” she muttered. “At least all the goddamn mosquitos are suffocated too.”
She sighed dramatically and drummed her legs against the side of the wooden porch. The only artificial light source was a glowing bulbed lamp that flickered every time a moth tries to kamakazi slam into the thing, trying to find it’s way home or whatever. “Too quiet,” she muttered. The wooden walls were too thin to muffle the sound of her father’s glass bottles clinking as he tried to remember that he could forget. “What the hell.” She shrugged, doodling nonsense drawings with her fingers on her sweat-dotted skin. Maybe he was finally asleep, instead of drunk rambling in his bedroom.
Alaska slammed her feet into a pair of flip flops and ducked inside to grab a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. “Going out,” she wrote on a little post it note, and stuck it on the screen door. “Won’t be more reckless than usual.”
She let the screen door thwack shut behind her and trotted down the dirt path leading to the main road. The stars twinkled like cheap party glitter in the skies above, and Alaska tried not to flinch as she looked up at them. “Can’t stand it when you’re not there, Mom,” she said.
A sigh escaped her lips. Alaska clicked the flashlight beam on and swung it around, letting the yellow-white circle of light wander wherever looked the least boring. When the circle flashed into a coon’s eyes, it hissed, covering its eyes with its paws, and Alaska hissed back without missing a beat. The coon turned back to scavenging in the knocked over roadside trashcan; excavated aluminum cans tinkling as they landed on the dirt.
The usual midget insects that swarm the night air flicked against the night air as Alaska walked by the roadside. She shrugged, swinging her arms freely, as she meandered along, just following the side of the road. Sweat dripped down her sides, plastering her tanktop to her skin, and she tugged at the fabric, annoyed.
A signpost on the right side of the road said, “Birmingham, 125 miles.” When Alaska passed the sign, she broke into a run, flip flops slapping between the packed earth and the sole of her foot.
Just a little bit father. Just a little bit faster, she thought, as she pumped her legs fast enough that a breeze began to dry the sweat on her cheek. Just enough to get me out of here, away from empty houses full of ghosts.