Alice Isnât Dead is a new serial fiction podcast from the team behind Welcome to Night Vale.
A truck driver searches across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman.
This sentence meme could not have been complied without the use of @alicescripts. Â
THIS SENTENCE MEME IS NOT SPOILER FREE. And, as always, feel free to edit to better suit your needs. Â
part one, chapter four: Â the factory by the sea
âIâll try to forget what I saw there, butâŠI wonât be able to, will I, ____? Iâll never forget what happened.â
âThe sea is crystalline. Itâs seductive. But the land feels angry and lost. There is no harmony here. The tranquility of the lapping waves sputters out and the land slumps into place. Itâs buggy as hell, too.â
[heavy sigh] âWhatever.â
âIs this the world you left me, leaderless and spinning?â
âThe farther south you go on this coast, the worse the drivers get. Theyâre old, and theyâre mad down here. Why are they so mad? Why are they in my lane? WHY ARE YOU IN MYââ
âShit. Sorry, ___. I know you hated it when I yelled. Hate it. You hate it when I yell.â
âI couldnât tell much from the shape of them.â
âCool, cool. This is perfect. Hey, help me with this, would you?â
âCome on in, I have to sign off on the delivery inside.âÂ
âHmmâŠtempting, but I am not going to stop.â
âOoh, the popcorn store! Even more tempting! An entire store of popcorn! Mm-mm. Not gonna stop for that either.â
âI shouldnât judge. No one should. We all do lots of things we shouldnât, though.â
âYou know that green that isnât right, that is off from what it should be? It was that green.âÂ
âOh, sure, sorry. Just have to get the paperwork settled.â
âI didnât know what to do, I pinched and pinched, but every time it hurt.â
âIâve been thinking lately of our pizza nights. Dough from scratch, sauce from scratch, cheese fromâŠwell, from the store. Not goinâ that far.â
âI loved the making of bread, the dough for the crust. Flour and water in your hands, first separate and then merging into a silky whole. The yeast and gluten making it a living thing. It moves when you poke it. It breathes into your hands.â
âOur hands covered in flour, we open a bottle of wine, and we eat the pizza we made, andâŠwe just watch whateverâs on TV and fall asleep in a wine and bread coma.â
âI think love is cooking together. I think itâs making something with each other, thatâs what I think, ____.â
âI donât know what you think. Turns out that I didnât know what you were thinking at all.â
âMetal hands building metal things, and no human beings in sight.â
âMachine after machine, Alice. Imagine the scale of them! Picture it for me.â
âI didnât say anything more.â
âOnly one more stop now. Come on, then.â
âCrossing inland now. Grassland and canals. There are supposed to be alligators here, right? Thatâs the whole thing with this area, gators, or whatever?âÂ
âI havenât seen any alligators, but I saw a cow drinking from a stream, looking like the first part of a scene from National Geographic. The second part didnât happen. No gator leaping from the water with its jaws open. Cow just drank.â
âWhat is a cow doing in a swamp? Are there wild cows? There are, right?â
âI stood there watching as it went out further, and further, and then was gone.â
âThere was no one in sight. It smelled like the sea, and it smelled like smoke and steel and it smelled like algae and murk.â
âAnd thatâs where I am now. Driving, as I always am when we talk.â
âWe?â [Chuckles]Â âOf course âweâ donât talk. I do. You vanish. You arenât. You are a â a gap, a nothing. And I talk into that nothing. I let my words float away. I let my words vanish, and I just keep driving.â
âFlour on our hands, sauce on our hands, our hands on our hands, something forgettable on the television, leg upon leg. That was a life! ____, thatâs what itâs made of! Hand upon hand upon leg upon heart upon couch upon a day where we made bread together.â
âFuck it, right? Thereâs a Dennyâs in two miles anyway. Thereâs that. ____, honey, thereâs always that.â