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Royer’s Madcap Experiences: The Barrens

January 8, 2013 Leave a comment

By Ric Royer
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It was a rough patch of weedy asphalt where there had once been a restaurant. Beyond, there was nothing. The last man before the barrens told me this:

It was a restaurant with a red roof that was shaped like a sort of blocky hat. They had a little fireplace in the center and they put starlight mints on your plastic check tray at the end of the meal. They sold flat dough discs that sometimes had sauces and meats on top. I don’t remember what they called it. It was a long time ago.

I looked around his filthy ramshackle house on the edge of nowhere, the edge of the barrens. Everything had gone to hell. There were fifteen cats that wandered in and out of the morass. He sat on a stiff wood chair in one corner of the kitchen. There had not been a woman here in fifteen years, maybe twenty.

“Give me something, something to take out there,” I said. He vomited a little. “What’s in them tins?” he then asked, pointing to the filthy, littered counter. I stared hard at the three tins. I looked back at the man.

“You would not have fared well in the olden times,” he noted. Then, he died.

I took all his food and headed for the barrens.

***
The sky was grey though it was warm. A mild breeze blew. I suddenly grew very horny. But it was the barrens. There was nothing that could be done.

Later, I came to the crest of a slight hill. I could look down upon another ten miles of the barrens, ebbing at the distant horizon. I began to grow mad.

***
Flat Dough Disc Hut. Time seemed to be moving very quickly. I knew though that it was the Flat Dough Disc Hut. I had once won a contest for reading. My prize had been a trip to the Flat Dough Disc Hut. The last one before the barrens, now gone.

***
One ribbon, one trophy. The two achievements of youth. Gone. Where does one dispose of trophies? And who disposed of it? It was not me. I would have kept the trophy. Forever.

You keep things in the barrens.

***
I’ve been in the barrens now two years. I cannot find my way back to the old man’s home. Food is brought. It’s a man that walks down a staircase. The staircase ends, I supposed at the time, in heaven. I know that to be wrong now. This man, he brings the food. I recall having a fairly non-existent credit score.

***
Barrens.

Categories: 2012-13 Season, Royer's Madcap Experiences Tags: ,