Front Royal Blues

             It was a Friday night, and I was bored. I'd already come back from the river, where I'd had five or six beers, and I'd finished a bottle of gin with a friend of mine in his dorm room. After that, my friend fell asleep on the couch, and I left to wander the campus. I wasn't tired yet - even on weeknights, I don't usually go to bed until 1 AM, and it couldn't have been later than midnight. Everyone else I hung out with was asleep, or drinking somewhere. I was tired of drinking, but, as often happens, drinking had made me hungry. I decided I would drive off to buy some hamburgers.

           I waited until the security guard left for the girls' side of campus, then started my car and drove off. Just as I came into town, I saw a pair of police cars up ahead: one parked on either side of the road. I decided they were a sobriety checkpoint, and turned down a side street. A few seconds later, I heard a siren and saw a 'NO TRESPASSING' sign on a fence alongside the road. I had turned into a warehouse driveway, attracting the cops' attention. I started to speed up, then slammed on the brakes, just in time to avoid hitting a brick wall. I looked out the window - two parked cars were on either side of me. Then I realized where I was - in the warehouse parking lot, with a good chance to evade the police.

           I quickly killed the light, turned off the car, and jumped out. I ran across the parking lot to the warehouse, looking for an door, a crawlspace, a ladder - anything to get me out of sight. Finally I found a unlocked door with EMERGENCY EXIT stenciled on it. I paused a second, wondering if it was connected to an alarm - then saw headlights entering the parking lot. I pulled the door open and jumped behind it, relieved to hear nothing from the door but a loud creak, drowned in the wail of the police siren.

           As soon as I closed the door, the siren stopped. I was too drunk to wonder why it did, and focused on finding a lock on the door I had just opened. Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I noticed the knob of a deadbolt, and locked the door behind me. At this point, I felt quite safe. The police wouldn't break into the warehouse to look for me, and odds were they had not seen my license plate. I enjoyed a few moments of relief and self-satisfaction, until another thought came into my head: all they had to do was check the hoods of the parked cars until they found one that was still hot. There wasn't anything I could do about that. But the most they could prove from that would be trespassing, which was better than a DWI. 

           The next thing I knew, I was waking up, sober, but still leaning against the warehouse door. After some mental triangulation, I decided the police cars had been at the intersection of Happy Creek and Royal Avenue, and the parking lot I pulled into was for a furniture delivery service, one I'd driven past countless times. The only problem was the lack of windows: I'd seen plenty of windows on the side of the warehouse facing the road, but there was no light in the building at all. I decided it was still nighttime, and blessed my luck in waking up before the warehouse opened. To my surprise, I opened the door and was blinded immediately.

           I walked out, blinking and squinting, into a bright, cold, noonday sun. I was indeed in the warehouse parking lot, but now the lot was empty except for my car. Relieved, I got into the car and started it up, and took the absence of any ticket as a sign of my good fortune. I drove out of the parking lot, and set out for my original goal - the nearest fast-food restaurant.

           It wasn't until I reached a Wendy's that I realized something was the matter. There were no other cars or people on the streets of Front Royal. No cars at the intersections, no cars in the parking lots, not even any cars parked in the driveways or streets. On top of that, I couldn't recall a single time I had gone to Front Royal without seeing someone walking around, or more often darting across the street just ahead of an oncoming car. Today, there was nobody. I ignored that strange fact for the time being and pulled into the drive through. Even before I rolled down my window, the loudspeaker barked at me:

 

  "WelcometoWendys! CanItakeyourorderplease?"

 

           Whoever was behind the microphone must be impatient for customers, I thought. "I'll have three Junior Burgers and a large lemonade," I replied. "Istthatall?" "That's all," I replied. "ThankyouverymuchThat'llbethreefingersPulluptothesecondwindow!"

 

           I had worked at a Wendy's back home, and as I pulled up to the window I recognized the cashier's smile: it was artificial, but not disturbingly so, and small enough to maintain for hours. "All right, sir, that'll be three fingers, do you want any mustard or ketchup for your burgers?" "I'll take both," I told him, as I pulled three dollars out of my wallet and handed it over. "I beg your pardon," he replied, returning my money, "We only take fingers here." 

           "I .... uh, why do you want fingers?" I asked, and his smile became wider and more artificial. "We've only ever accepted fingers, sir, I'm very sorry for any inconvenience." "What do you do with the fingers?" I asked, and the smile disappeared, instantly replaced with a genuine look of puzzlement. "Well, I put them in the cash register, what else would I do with them?" 

           We both paused for a moment, and I started looking into the Wendy's, for someone or something to explain the cashier's behavior. Finally I saw something next to the cash register, a boxy container marked BLADE DISINFECTANT, with a knife handle protruding from the top. "Um, nevermind, sorry to trouble you," I said, and drove off before the cashier could object or apologize for anything more.

           I took a left turn at the light, and drove slowly down the road, looking at every sign I passed. Everything looked the same as it had the last time I went into town, except for the lack of people and cars. I found myself expecting the ads for pizza, gas and tattoos to be charging by the finger, but to my relief they were still "$9 LARGE 1 TOPPING," "$3.199 REGULAR," and "1 TATTOO ANYWHERE $18 - CUSTOM DESIGNS." I parked in front of a florist's and got out, hoping to confirm the existence of other sane people. However, before pushing open the door, I looked through the window to check for people. Despite the neon 'OPEN' sign, there wasn't anyone inside. I knocked on the door, to no response. I opened and closed the door, shaking the door chimes, and still nobody came. In a panic, I turned and ran to the car, jumping in and locking the doors. I checked the back seat in a panic, half expecting a grinning florist armed with shears, but nobody was there. 

           Suddenly it occurred to me that this might all be a bad dream. Nobody, including myself, was acting rationally, and everything around me looked a bit unreal - enough evidence for me to dismiss everything as a nightmare. I got out of the car again, relieved, and immediately tripped over my own feet. As I got up, my relief turned to frustration - I'd bruised my knee in the fall, and between the knee and the gravel embedded in my palms, there was no doubt that I was awake. I got back in the car and turned it on, telling myself "I'll go back to college. The people will be sane there."

           They should be, anyway.