August 1, 2021   Along the Marsh Edges of the Coastal EmpireCoastal Empire  

  To avoid the terrors of the night with its impenetrable shadows of darkness, we ended our back country motorcar adventuring in the Empire’s marshlands during the plague well before the moon’s rise and the sun’s fall.  

Not even powerful flashlights or our hotrods’ high beams could tempt us to linger.  

The tales of abandoned gothic looking Victorian era farmhouses, barns and businesses sometimes involved gypsies, glass eyes and witches.  So, when we spotted a creepy looking place, we’d slow our ride and U-turned to assume a vantage point for a better look at its dilapidation, broken windows and porch stairs, overgrown landscaping, and strangling vines.  Some, if not many, of these locales seemed to have no mosquitoes or gnats which said to us they were so cursed that even these nastiest of nature’s biters were scared off of these places.  

To us non-locals, it’s uncommon if not rare knowledge that many of these towns of a certain size have these places and maybe a specter’s tale or two.  A select few of these abandoned places looked like they had in their bones a spell or curse or two that made the nearby land infertile or unfortunate animals’ life short and painful for those who were unlucky enough to have gotten too close and stayed too long.  

At times some of these places repaid our curiosity with a brief glimpse of how we might die like old and a fall or sick after eating or drinking too much or something bad.  It was right after these brief moments that you sensed these places were smiling at you to see if you’d smile back at them.  

From these moments, our fear of death waned.  And for that, it was as good as being immortal.  We knew that everything else we’d survive.   We now knew the truer versions of things — events, our stories, ourselves.  

No more being plagued with unspeakable monsters, murderous giants or even plain old freaks like beltway politicians and legacy media talking heads.  

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