Maybe Things Will Get Better

Just lately Aaron had been assigned to the overnights. It was a fine shift, not many people around, and he was able to just focus on his work. Life had molded him into a quiet, self-isolating little man, and the odd hours suited him fine.

One morning he was coming off his shift late – having been asked by the night manager, Brent – to stay on a few hours in the morning to help cover a few callouts. What was supposed to be a shift that ended at six, and then seven, ended up with Aaron finally making it over to the timeclock at 10:35 in the morning, 14 and a half hours after clocking in the night before. He was tired. But today was payday.

After clocking out, Aaron collected his check and had one of the cashiers cash it for him before he grabbed a few groceries and headed home.

Thankfully the Sunnyside Acres trailer park that he now called home was only about a two mile walk down the old mill road from the Walmart.

Aaron wasn’t sure why it was called the old mill road, to be honest. There wasn’t a mill located on that road, and as far as he knew there never had been – at least not in living memory. He had been walking down the old mill road, with its potholes and overgrown bar ditches, for a few years now and not only was there not a mill, there wasn’t even a hint of a mill.

Aaron looked up at the tall pine trees, listened to the buzzing cicadas and other insects, and used his arm to shade his eyes against the high morning sun. It was muggy out and he was starting to sweat. The grocery bags on his left wrist were getting heavy. He was a little over the half way mark and would be home soon, but something about the road seemed stuck in his mind. It was like a splinter or a needle that he just couldn’t quite bring himself to pull out.

He tried to, absolutely, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Old Mill Road.

He turned a half circle in place and put the sun to his back. He looked down the long, hilly road as far as he could. Trees and overgrowth rimmed each side. No side roads, no driveways, no intersections. The Old Mill Road was a side road off of State Road 210, what everyone in town called “The Main Road,” on account of how much had been built up around it – though mostly chains like Walmart and Applebees.

The Old Mill Road was a quiet, generally lifeless, two lane affair that ran on for about three miles before its first real intersection – another state highway. The only interruption was the dirt turn off for Sunnyside Acres – otherwise Old Mill ran uninterrupted to that other state road, which in turn led to Murphyboro (a similarly derelict town).

“Where’s the damn mill?”

Aaron jumped at the sound of his own voice, and for a fleeting moment felt the flush of embarrassment. Jason was right, he was an absolute pussy.

Still, even his own cowardice wasn’t enough to pull out that little needle.

Where’s the damn mill?

He turned another quarter turn left and stared intently into the thick woods. He imagined the shape of a road cut through, and just briefly he thought he could hear the sounds of a mill.

The bustling of cars – no, it was carriages. The whistle of steam boats pumping up the river. Shouted conversations over the sounds of textiles that now reached him like a murmur. It was all so vivid and real. Aaron found himself stumbling forward and into the bar ditch unknowingly. Unwillingly.

A sound surfaced in his mind. It was a horn. It gradually grew louder as his mind reached for it and grabbed on to it. Aaron spun around to see a truck swerve at him as the horn blasted. He stumbled and fell backwards into the bar ditch. His groceries flew off his hand, the bag burst open, and they scattered. His ass landed hard on a large piece of concrete while the rest of him landed in the thick, stew-like mud of the ditch with a sickening thlick. Just like that, his ass was soaked, his shirt was covered in mud, and his only good pair of jeans had a tear on the back of the calf.

He saw the truck, a red Dodge pickup from the early 90s, swerve back on the road. A long arm attached to a highly raised middle finger shot out the driver’s side window, and Aaron could faintly make out the word faggot drifting back to him with the roar of the motor and the lingering remnants of AC/DC’s Big Balls.

Derek Stubbins – he of the middle school swirlies and high school beatings.

Derek Stubbins, who found out Aaron had been molested after Mr. Parsons’ arrest, very loudly contended that Aaron was, indeed, a ‘faggot’, and probably had come on to Mr. Parsons in the first place.

Derek Stubbins, ever the bully, who himself never quite seemed to get out of this small, dying town either.

Aaron got up, brushed off his pants, and regarded the torn jeans with an absent, almost ‘well this was bound to happen’ expression. He turned towards his spilled groceries. The half gallon of milk had busted open and was lazily glugging its contents into the high weeds of the ditch. The cans were okay, a little muddy but otherwise fine. The bread wasn’t open, but the plastic sleeve was muddy and wet, and the bread itself had been crushed up by some cans and was now misshapen.

Aaron’s biggest problem was finding a still-usable bag and piling what he could salvage into it. The rest of his groceries he left littered in the ditch. It didn’t matter

Nothing that happened in this stupid little town mattered. Nothing that happened in his stupid little life mattered, either, he realized.

I don’t matter.

It was a little over twenty minutes later when Aaron reached the entrance to Sunnyside Acres. It was a narrow dirt road marked with potholes, large roots, and a scattering of baseball sized rocks that someone had attempted to use to fill said potholes.

The tan dirt road had a way of reflecting the sun, making the whole area look comically bright for such a depressing little place. The tall grass and trees that ran along the road and dotted the inside of the trailer park made up for any cheerfulness the sun might bring by adding an oppressive humidity.

Aaron walked quietly to number 10, his trailer, and fumbled through his pocket for his keys. Once retrieved, he unlocked the door and stepped inside. The trailer was quiet and dark. Aaron closed the door behind him and set the grocery bag on the counter to his left. He kicked off his muddy shoes and stripped out of his clothes on the way to the bathroom, leaving the pants, shirt, underwear, and socks on the ground where they fell. There was a good amount of light still leaking through the drawn curtains, and the bathroom had a small, rectangular window above the shower that let in a decent amount of light. That is to say, Aaron didn’t need to turn on the lights.

He stepped into the shower, turned the handle, and let the water spill over him. He inhaled sharply. It was dreadfully cold at first, but he knew it would heat up in just a moment. A chill went through his body as the icy wet worked its way down his spine, between his ass, and down his legs. The water started to warm up a bit now, and Aaron breathed out the air he had trapped in his lungs.

At the same time, and in sync with the breath leaving his lungs, his dick let loose a sigh of its own, and Aaron’s urine splashed against the back wall of the shower. He watched the dark yellow spill down the wall, mingle with water in the shower pan, and then run into the drain. After a second he closed his eyes and turned his face into the water. He didn’t have too much time for self-reflection, though. The crack in his hot water heater meant that his time to enjoy a shower was painfully short. So, like a blind man, he reached out and felt around until he grabbed the bar of Irish Spring that was sat on the built-in corner ledge of the small shower stall.

Just a few minutes later and Aaron stepped out of the quickly chilling water, turned off the shower, and grabbed his towel from the back of the toilet. After a quick dry, he threw the towel over the shower curtain bar and stepped out of the bathroom back into the living room. He walked to his bedroom at the other end of the trailer, kicking his clothes as he went.

Aaron grabbed a pair of boxers out of his chest of drawers, pulled them on, and then fell into his bed to sleep. He was exhausted, and more than that, his mind was nagging him about something. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was exactly, but he kept trying to grasp it until sleep overtook him.