After I learned about the grinning man and the mist, I sat and drew for a little while later longer. I sheepishly said goodbye to Sam knowing for well I’d be coming here exclusively to see her and buy her excellent coffee.
I hopped out into my car, a junker. I had bought a few weeks ago when I knew I was leaving the city. Was an old SUV. It had a few dings in it, but it ran pretty well. It soaked up enough gas that every time I filled the tank, I felt like I was killing a herd of dinosaurs.
I threw my sketchbook and my laptop bag in the passenger seat and she grumbled up to a start.
OK so today’s list:
- groceries
- find out if there’s a good movie theater around here
- maybe hit the library.
I knew from all my role-playing game experience the libraries have old newspapers and books on microfilm or something, by now they’re probably all scanned and on a computer somewhere, but that’s what I get for playing RPGs from the 70s.
That’s the one thing I will miss more than anything about the city. Once every week or so me and a group of friends get together and played a game. We had a pretty creative book group. One of us was a novelist who had two or three books published and even a best seller, another of us was an accomplished cartoonist, another was an indie film director, and then there was me the artist. We all had pretty successful creative careers, and we all met in college. After college, one by one, we all moved to the city And we regrouped there.
It was then that we started gaming again. Our little group had started in college with lots of beer, pizza, and Dungeons & Dragons, and after a brief few years where we were all in different places, the game started back up in Brooklyn. What was great about our group was we would often share GM roles so everyone had a chance to come up with new stories and play with each other’s worlds. Since everyone there was wildly creative, we never really used the campaigns or game books except for anything but rules, and even then we made up a lot of our own. COVID slowed us down a little bit, But we quickly figured out how to do things over Zoom and while it wasn’t the same being able to see each other‘s rolls and feel the attention of the stories, it kept us all together and kind of kept me sane while I lived in my one room apartment with my maniac ex-girlfriend.
It’s funny. Most people if they were gonna lose it would’ve lost it during lockdown, but she waited till after lockdown to really fall apart. It’s weird how you can stay with somebody long after things have passed simply because trying to find an apartment in New York was so goddamn annoying. The last year or so we were like strangers passing in our one bedroom apartment. It didn’t give us much room for anything else considering the living room was also the kitchen. I slept in the living room. She got the bedroom. It made it extremely awkward when I tried dating other people.
Back to Duskwood… I went to the local grocery store. It’s a regional chain, but it was pretty nice. I figured I would try the local bagels, and picked some up at the local bagel shop.
I can’t tell you what it is, but bagels must be the hardest thing to make. When I lived in New York, there was almost a religion about bagels. There were certain places that were known for fantastic bagels, and then it dropped off from there. You could only find “real bagels“ at certain places and people had incredibly divisive opinions. According to most though, a bagel had to have a hard shiny crust that was still flexible – not flaky in any way. And they were supposed to be dense inside, not crumbly, but dense-like and super firm.
I had some friends who were real snobs and we only got bagels in one or two places. Outside of those places you might find bagels that look like a bagel on the outside, but when you cut them, they were more like a roll – crumbly and soft inside even the outer crust was a little bit flaky.
I wasn’t as much of a snob as some, because I definitely liked a good bagel, but I also liked bagel sandwiches, and a real bagel is not good for sandwiches. It’s too stiff and hard. If you put anything in between it, you can’t get your mouth around it because the dumb things aren’t flexible enough. So when I went to the local bagel shop and I saw they had the kind of soft crumbly bagels, so I got an egg sandwich and it was fine. The outside was nice, at least, but the inside was essentially a thick roll.
I have to say if I’m gonna survive up here, I’m just gonna have to give up on all of my big city snubbing. Because man, I dread the idea of eating pizza around here. Bagels were bad enough but pizza… oh my God.
After I went to the grocery store and the bagel shop, I realized I didn’t have enough time to go to the library yet, I had to get back for my dog. She’d been sleeping when I left, but by now she’d probably been up and hungry and wanting to go for a walk
The town itself was nestled in a valley right on the shores of the lake, but I lived on the outskirts which meant uphill. And the hills around here were no joke. I’m not talking the Rocky Mountains, but they were pretty steep. I wouldn’t wanna jog up them…
Well, I wouldn’t wanna jog anyway.
But I had to drive up the winding roads as the houses got fewer and fewer.
There was this really cool old bridge on my road that passed over a gorge that led to the lake. It was an old metal bridge, made in the 1800s or something. When you drove over it, the tires would click over the metal boards which made you kinda have to slow down. It was a one-way bridge so you always had to be cautious that there wasn’t someone either on the bridge or coming the other direction.
As I approached the bridge, I noticed that there is a light mist covering the ground in the woods around me, almost like a fog. And when I drove over the bridge – click clack click clack click clack – I could see down in the gorge. When I looked to the right, I could see where the gorge would open up, and where the town should be, but the mist had covered it up making it look like there was no town at all.
I shudder a little bit, because it reminded me of that day 2001 when I stood on the shore of Brooklyn looking over at the cloud of ash and smoke reaching out like a giant hand towards Brooklyn, making Manhattan look like it had disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
I wonder if you could get PTSD just by standing across the water from two skyscrapers toppling.
But I still feel a little sick to my stomach even today looking back on it.
I hit the other side of the bridge and drove along the winding road to my house. It was a little more desolate out here – a lot less houses, a lot more trees. The little house I was renting stood on a pretty big piece of property.
I knew that while it seemed so absolutely desolate here, if I just walked a mile into the woods, I would hit the edge of route 13 which is a pretty major highway, so when I was in the house or on the property, I felt completely alone, but not that far away. The property ended at a pretty major thorough-way with cars flying by 70 miles an hour.
I parked the car next to the big ash tree that bloomed over the yard, grab the groceries, threw my laptop bag over my shoulder, and head into the house.
Rob said not to even bother locking the door because no one came out this far but I’m a New Yorker so I had to fumble with the bags until I could get my keys out and fight with the lock. I don’t think anyone had used this lock in ages and the dumb thing could probably use a gallon of WD-40. The door creeped open and I pushed it with my shoulder so I can get my bag and everything inside.
I was greeted by a wiggly little dog. My little whippet, bouncing and jumping and skittering around on the floor, her way too-long-claws clapping all over the wooden floors as she danced and spun. I had to push by her as she jumped up my leg so I can get my stuff to the table all the while going, “Yes, yes, I’m here. I’m here. I’m excited to see you too calm down calm down. It’s OK,” as she danced, spun, whimpered, and jumped. She was the best thing from the last few years. I couldn’t believe my ex-girlfriend was willing to give her up, but I had always been more connected to the dog.
Whippets really aren’t like most other dogs, they’re like smaller greyhounds. They’re really fast and they’re generally pretty quiet. They don’t bark a lot and they’re couch potatoes – except for when you take them out for a run.
In the city, I always had to take her to the dog run in the park and while it was big, I couldn’t do it every day so she didn’t get the exercise she wanted. We had enough property around here that I could let her go without worrying about cars or anything. I popped open the door and walked out with her a little bit for encouragement.
She took off like a rocket.
Back at the dog park, she would always run circles around the other dogs. She could run so fast that when the other dogs chased her, she would have to literally slow down to allow them to keep up, looking over her shoulder as she ran with a look of disappointment. If there was another whippet or greyhound there then it was like watching a race.
She took off into the woods.
She usually needed to just run around like a crazy dog for a little while before I could get a chance to play with her, so after her first couple of laps, I tossed a stick out into the woods.
Now I don’t know about other whippets, but she was not good at fetch. I would throw a ball or a stick as far as fast as I could, and she would outrun it and have to turn back by the time she realized that she had run far beyond the extent of my throwing power. She would double back and then lose whatever object it was she’d been chasing. Even when I was a little lucky enough to throw faster than she was running, she would just run the ball down and then stand there looking at it like she had no idea what to do.
I toss another stick out again.
She tore off, but now I can’t see her. The mist had gotten so thick and that’s when I heard a yelp.
My heart jumped, and I ran out into the woods.
It took me a while to find her because the fog had gotten really dense. I had to rely on her heavy breathing and whimpering to find her. When I finally got to her, I went to reach down to her.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled.
Something had tore the skin of my hand. I pulled my hand back, and on the back of my hand was a big scratch. Blood started pouring down my arm. I leaned in slowly to see what had scratched me and I saw a thick vine with giant razor-sharp thorns. The heavy black vine had to be at least an inch in diameter and the thorns, reddish at the tips, were almost as long and nasty looking.
I gingerly pulled the vine away and looked around. Multiples of these vines surrounded me… Somehow I’ve gotten into this patch without getting hurt, but I could see now that the dog and I were both fairly surrounded by thorns. I reached down slowly once more and put my hand on her side. I could feel her breathing under my hand, her soft fur warm to the touch, soft whimpers were coming out of her.
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