Outskirts Press, INC.

Just another Coricidin epidemic in small-town America.

Just another Coricidin epidemic in small-town America.

Sex, drugs, Radiohead, and Whoopi Goldberg. A transcontinental odyssey through a nightmare.

We eventually got off at the exit that a previous sign had indicated offered camping. Found a place far from the entrance. There was just a firepit with some trash in it. Luke had only a weak flashlight, so in almost pitch black crossed the trail, gathering pieces of tree from the encompassing woods and strategically arranging them in the pit, utilizing some of the trash to get it started. The fire rose ever so slowly, as Luke and Avery prodded with long slender sticks and threw in fresh wood, to a steady blaze. Our faces and bodies sitting Indian-style were illuminated orange. Time became so slow it halted. The flames were our unanimous focal point, their hot dance was unpredictable and constant; instantly subtleties of color striped a single arm of fire, throwing its smoke to the Washington night, and were gone. Orange, yellow, blue.


“That’s so weird,” penetrated Avery into the quiet only-crackle-of-destruction.


“What?” Luke asked.


“I was just watching the flames so intently I felt like I was actually inside them.”


This prompted me to seek the same sensation.


Orange everywhere. Yellow in the highlights, a nuance that came and went blink-quick. Its hottest part, fiery roots curling up from the embers, blue.


My conscious there among the gray embers and flickering color. Me a tiny nonphysical presence, observing, I was in there for eternity.


My eyes glazed, my vision blurred. I was an anesthetized demon in infernus.