The wind never stops blowing.

When it does, you wonder if it's a dream, or if it's a nightmare. The world around you begins to scream without the wind to mute it. When it blows again, your sigh of relief is unheard over the howling.

[montana-gothic]

Night Driving

You know now why they said not to do it. When everyone else is asleep, the world turns into a quiet place. You are not supposed to be awake. Your headlights cut across yards and you keep your eyes on the road, just in case you see something you shouldn’t.

Streetlights are dim.

The lights on the main roads flash yellow or red, blinking, bathing your car with their eerie, soft light. They urge you to get home. 

Get home before it’s too late. 

The radio in your car plays your favorite music station. You’ve heard these songs before, but right now they are different. They want you home too. You can’t sing along. The words don’t exist, and speaking is not allowed.

You flee town, pushing your car past the speed limit, though it feels like crawling. Houses are dark. Their outside lamps are off. Stars stretch out in the skies around you, but you don’t dare look. 

Is everyone else dead?

The radio crackles, an ad plays for an event that happened the month before. 

You arrive home, park your car, and run inside, locking the door behind you as quickly as possible. You go to bed in your clothes, and do not check on your family or pets.

You hope you won’t be the only person on earth come morning. 

[montana-gothic]

Buried

Your hands dip into the snow. Searching. Digging. The hole you’re digging grows deeper and deeper, the edge of the hole up to your knees, your hips, your stomach, your shoulders. The pile looms, blocking out the sun, if the sun is still out at all. 

Grass tips show above most of the snow, but not where you’re digging. It isn’t supposed to be this deep, is it?

How long have you been digging?

You have to know what’s under the snow. 

You keep digging.

[montana-gothic]

“The water’s great!”

You smile up at your family with a huge grin, eyes empty, hair drenched. The water is not great. It’s cold. Ice floats just upstream, and barely melting snow swells the river. Your skin prickles. Your feet and fingers are numb. Tingling. Blue.

You tremble as you paddle farther in, the gravel of the river slipping into nothing. River plants grab at your legs. Your hips and shoulders ache with the effort it takes to move in the water, to fight against the ever stronger current. 

It’s July. You’re swimming no matter what.

The water’s great. 

[venividipikachi]

Montana Gothic

you are driving on the highway and see a field of cows. soon you see another field of cows. then more. the cows are endless. they are everywhere. they are everything. even the people are cows. suddenly all your loved ones are cows. there is no escape. there are so many cows. 

there are so many small towns. maybe three or four cities, depending who you ask. you wonder how the people live in these small places. how they have grown up here. and have never left. you have seen so many small towns but you never learn their names. you have never visited the small town where your grandma grew up. you wonder if it even exists. 

it is the weekend and all the stores are filled with people from wyoming. they come here every weekend. they spend hundreds of dollars every weekend. they say they shop here because montana has no sales tax but you suspect otherwise. you wonder why they have to escape wyoming every week, but dare not think too hard about it

you have to pick a side, are you a griz or bobcat? you dont care about football, but you have to pick a side. you fear the repercussions of saying the wrong team around someone. are you a griz or bobcat? neither

you drive under a bridge that says THIS IS CAT COUNTRY, GRIZ STAY OUT graffitied on the side. but you are not in bozeman. you are no where near bozeman. you are hundreds of miles away from bozeman. you wonder why this nameless small town cares so much about a football team and how they chose their loyalty.

the sleeping giant in helena has been there your whole life. sleeping. sometimes, you swear, that you have heard him snore. you know that mountains cant, you know that, but you lie awake at night while he sleeps. and snores. and waits.

the butte pit continues to fill with poisoned water. you like to joke about it, saying “welcome to butte, dont drink the tap water!”, but you fear it. you fear the pit that was created out of man’s desire for wealth. the pit that is full of a town’s lost hopes and dreams. it keeps filling. filling. what will happen when it is full? you dont want to find out.

[montana-gothic]

Big Sky Country

You lie on your back, eyes open. The blue of the sky swallows the horizon and slowly fades to a purpley black, converging into the center of your vision. The world spins around you. You are still, frozen. No sound. No thoughts. Maybe if you look long enough, you can see something else, staring back.

You blink.

The sky is blue.

It’s been three years.