We burned through the skeleton town of Sumter, smoke wafting from our windows, a cacophony at 200-beats-per-minute blarring from our speakers.
Wrinkle-eyed old men in yellow check short sleeves pruning hedges finger their pocket knives nervously. The electric gaze of their wives send telepathic Hells-Angels paranoia to the sherrif's office. Kill this infestation; kill the chickens before they get their dirty hands on them. A snake is flattened out in the road, baking in the sun.
We come upon a house in the swamp and exit our cars with bags of explosive candy and cans of cheap ethanol body fuel for our demise.
Later in the evening, I retire to a simulated wood-grain paneled room to read under urine-haze yellow lights, red carpet seeps between my toes like tiny bursts of blood.
I hear gun shots and laughter. I forsee a bullet slicing through the cheap wall and lodging into my ribcage as rebel yells shriek into the mossy murk. I listen to the frogs.
What am I doing here and who are these people? Why did I agree to join them to go swimming in the swamp? Just hours ago I was nestling into a brilliant cup of coffee at the local time-waster and now I'm clutching mildewed sheets in a no-man's land somewhere in the low country of South Carolina.
David