212 Westbound
Three weeks before she plans to leave, rural convenience-store clerk Marlee encounters a shaken westbound traveler. He claims US 212 is haunting him with visions of the childhood home he spent his life trying to escape. When he decides to go back and burn it down, Marlee is forced to confront what it means to leave a place without learning to hate where you came from.
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2 parts / In orderBehind the story
This story was inspired by a quick Labor Day weekend trip to my parent’s farm. While I was in the middle of a different piece, the idea of writing something about the seeing visions alongside the road was just too good to ignore.
Given this and other recent works (“Trial of Remy D.”, “Signal in the Draw”, “Milkmaids”, etc.) a name was in order; something to capture these grounded, near-future, and humanistic stories. After some brainstorming, “Midwestern Slipstream” was born. Will that always describe what I write? Probably not. But it feels good to have a handy shorthand for these kinds of stories.