HAPPY TOWN

HAPPY TOWN

Two days on and still she couldn’t help giggling, not that anything funny had happened, she was just elated; that’s how she showed it; by giggling. He loved the way she giggled; he turned to her and smiled. She had on a short top, denim shorts and flip flops; enjoying the sun as the jeep sped on the lonely road.
As rich as their parents were, this was what they had chosen for their honeymoon; a road trip to the country towns everyone back home thought they were insane; they liked to think so themselves. The town they were heading to seemed very far, a sign post pointing towards this direction they had found after getting lost; that was about thirty miles back.
The long grass beside the road would be nice to lay in he thought as he turned to his wife. She had her hands between her legs; at the hem of her short shorts. She was still giggling. Not very smart she was, not very stupid either; they were birds of a feather. Her hand was now on his groin. The grass looked nice, she said before giggling again; he understood.

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Their heads’ shadows were on their knees when they got to the town, she was still giggling; her hands back on the hems of her shorts. Though there were people – couples actually – walking up and down the single street , the town was very quiet there was no honking , no stores playing loud music, no nothing; it was just quiet. The people on the street were happy; right in sync with the towns name; this made the girl in the jeep’s smile and giggles fade. Her name was Becky and their faces scared her, scared her to bits, scared her pale; no one person spoke to the other and yet they all smiled; smiled as if they were all sharing the same silent joke; maybe they were it.
If she hadn’t read about certain horrifying towns like harmony, she probably wouldn’t have noticed – as her husband parked the jeep between two cars- that they all were very clean yet none seemed to have been used in the recent past; the cobwebs connecting the wheels to the body and the dust beneath the one to her right told their stationery tale.
“I warned you about reading too much horror, didn’t I?” Peter asked before clasping her head between his palms. “There are no such towns darling; if there were we’d have read about them in the papers.” He added before giving her a big grin. “Ok?” he asked kissing her lightly as from the corner of his left eye he saw one couple strolling towards them.
“Ok.” She said then giggled uncomfortably.
“Hi.”
She started; she hadn’t seen them.
“Darling?” Peter said placing an arm over her shoulders. “She thinks this is one of the spooky towns she’s read about.” He added, now addressing the two strangers; they were happy; maybe a little more so. “I’m Peter” he said, extending his hand the arm still on his wife’s shoulder. “She’s Becky.”
Their hands were cold, but only Becky noticed the intensity; Peter was too happy to meet the two to. Their perfumes were strong; a little too strong maybe and their eyes seemed to glow only with life they once had. They wore turtle necks, the whole town’s folks did, their colors being either black navy blue or grey; all dull. She had caught the woman who had introduced herself as Nancy staring at her legs with eyes that seemed to wish she could put on such a short. She wondered why she couldn’t. Beneath the woman’s grey turtle neck was a big bust. There was something wrong with it. Something it was supposed to be doing but wasn’t. She wondered what.
“What do you say, we show around happy town?” The man, Jack invited cutting off her thoughts. Another strange thing; no one had volunteered to show them around the other towns. That she didn’t note though; she wasn’t that smart.
He helped her off the jeep- Jack did- and shudder she did when his hands cold as ice held her elbow and brushed against her bare side.
They’d be the odd ones out she observed, the rest were also wearing closed shoes and denims; their shorts, flip flops, her top and his white t-shirt would seem way out of place.

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The town wasn’t big; just one street; much more like a truck drivers’ kind of town, only with no trucks. In all the shops they had entered, she had been searching for souvenirs; something to take home but these shops didn’t have much to offer. All they had were perfumes, preservatives and more perfumes and it wouldn’t be because they were made here since they weren’t. The bottle of preservatives she held then had been made in china with its label reading ‘make your pet last longer’; she was yet to see any pets around here. The perfumes were strong; unnecessarily so for someone who’d only want to camouflage his body odor. These were what their guides wore.
Through the window at the counter’s edge she could see the cars’ shadows elongating, in an hour or so, it would be dark and oh how hungry she felt; she remembered she hadn’t had anything since breakfast.
“People don’t eat much here,” Jack said as if having read her mind. “If you’re planning on having dinner, you better go order a dish, the hotel’s next door.” He added, to which his wife nodded.
At least she thought to herself after exiting the shop, people doing something different she sighed as she watched a couple walk down the street towards the garage with gas cans which seemed full, a pipe hanging from the man’s left hand.
The hotel was deserted she noted but very clean, there were no signs of any cooking going on, so Jack hadn’t been joking. ‘Eat like you never will again’ and ‘order the meal you’d love to have on your dying day’ were written in broad red letters on the walls.
“That’s funny” Peter shared, chuckling as Becky put her arms around him. Their guides exchanged glances and smiled; as if agreeing with peter.
“What can I do you for ladies and gentlemen?” queried the black man who had just emerged from the inner rooms. Jack explained. Peter made the orders.
His mouth breaking into a smile as if he had just remembered he should have been he said, “Name’s Morris, Morris Freeman.” The last wasn’t so true now he knew. It had once, but not now, not anymore. “It’ll all be ready in twenty.” He said before sauntering to whence he had come.

************************************

Twenty minutes he had said; he hadn’t lied. She had needed hot sauce but they hadn’t had any so she had gone to the jeep to get a can of the stuff that she always had in her bag. As she did, something had attracted her attention to the fuel gauge. Something had been wrong with it she had felt. She had known not what then but now an hour on- the moonlight dimly lighting the closed shops which she could see through the window- she did.

Peter saying he was full as he put down the remains of his second burger had triggered the realization. She tagged at his T-shirt’s sleeve.

“We have to get out of here” she whispered into his ear but with one leg on the table, he was too comfortable to want to leave and so ‘why’ he asked. “We simply have to.”
“You can’t go.” Jack said at which the two turned. “It’s too late, don’t you think?” This came out more as an insult than the innocent question he might have wanted it to sound like. “Further more, he went on. You don’t have enough fuel to get you out of town.” How he knew that, she had no idea but leave this place they had to.
Peter was no longer comfortable; Morris and his wife Martha had just appeared with knives. They were smiling, not because they were about to get their pay but because they wanted the two dead and maybe because they weren’t the ones to do it.
“It’s your turn,” Morris said as they handed the knives to the other happy couple as the scared one bounded out of the restaurant.
Their direction undecided, Peter ran right into cold hands which readily accepted him as Becky ran between two cars to the road; he screamed. His captors were as white as snow and as cold as it, they even smelled like it; cold. He screamed. In the moonlight he saw ice still on the people’s heads, eye lashes and on the men’s beards; he farted. He had no way of knowing how many they were but one thing was for sure; they were very many. Their hands held like cold metallic vices he felt and try as he did to break free he just couldn’t. He screamed again.
They were dragging him to the road he knew as they dragged him between the two cars Becky had run between. He called to his wife but she wasn’t coming, she wouldn’t. Her thongs could be heard slapping continuously on the tarmac as she ran down the street towards where no cold people were in sight. He called again as they laid him on the ground. These people frightened him, they filled him with fear, blurred his mind with it even. He yelled again.
She heard him call her, she turned but stopped not; she ran on, on towards where she thought she’d be safe. She saw Nancy who sat on his belly raise a gleaming knife; its fall silenced his next cry; drowned it actually with the sudden flow of blood into the throat it caused. She crashed into something; wire mesh reinforced with metallic bars; a gate. She fell back with a dull thud. A city with a gate! This more than it was scary was preposterous. The only other place to run to, the garage to her left. She scrambled to her feet and ran. They had finished with him she knew but as she panted in desperation as she ran to the garage, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry as they headed in her direction; they knew they’d get her.
She had switched on the lights in the garage so nothing would surprise her. Her back pressed against the white brick wall, she fretted a lot. They were here; she could smell them in the still air; the door creaked; she wet herself.
If it were a movie, Peter would be here and would just switch it off but it wasn’t and he, he just wasn’t here. Jack walked in holding a big knife; his smile still on. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing; as if he were sleep walking; she hoped he’d wake up. From the bench to her right She picked things, cans, spanners, things, just things and hurled them at him they hitting him with dull thuds but on he walked; on towards her, the knife gleaming in the fluorescent light. Next as the pale, cold people entered was a crow bar. The straight edge landed on his forehead stuck there for about a second then with a clank dropped onto the floor as an emotionless hand behind a freshly scarred emotionless face ran a shining blade into the screaming girl’s throat immediately quelling the scream.

Sliding against the wall to lay on the ground, she realized what had been amiss on Nancy’s chest; movements. It had unlike hers – which was making the last movements as her lungs labored to draw breathe – been still, dead still.
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Why the closed shoes, the jeans and the turtle necks now she knew; why they wore not revealing clothes but the ones they did she knew only too well; she understood. There were more people in the town now as she had suggested; to make it look normal. To add to the normalcy, there were cars moving up and down the street, shoe shiners on the pavements, fruit parlors and a group of young looking men with a loud radio lounging outside one shop. These people had come from the church –turned fridge –up the road that joined the street at its center; that’s where the excess were kept. Makeup had been used to make them look normal and perfume which they never could be too careful with to make them smell the part. Though she couldn’t smell the one she had used, she was sure she had applied more than needed.
Looking at the new arrivals as they exited their Range Rover, she wished she could put on a skirt as short as the one the teenage girl had on but she couldn’t; she knew why. Holding Peter’s hand they both smiled at them. It was their turn to ‘welcome’ people and Jack-with his bandaged head- and his wife’s to empty the car of its fuel. The cycle repeated.
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They had just run from a town where they almost got lynched for hooting. This town they felt was normal; their kind of place.
“Do you think they’ll want swing?” The girl asked tightening her arms around her boyfriend’s belly as the smiling couple walked towards them. He shrugged his shoulders to show he knew not whether they would; he hoped they would.