Out On Hwy 101

Up late checking the want ads on the net since nobody uses newspapers in a small town; those are for big city guys looking for big city jobs that pay good. Got a ton of experience but after a good number of years it's all no good as you start all over. Nobody knows how hard it is to get a job after enough time goes by and you have no references to mention. I could be a manager of a restaurant by now, or a graphic designer, but that's not the hand I was dealt. For some people it's not so easy to prove how damn smart you are.

Got me some tough times to keep me company over this cup of coffee as I imagine the many ways I would deal with a psycho trying to rob me. I'll write my poems and doodle my drawings but eventually the waitresses catch on to your camping at the table and stop serving you coffee. It never used to be like that. They never used to care how long you stayed. Now days I think they get less business if they expect you to leave after an hour or two. The late night artist is a rare breed often seen sulking and brooding over life.

I watch a lot of horror movies. If someone came at me with a gun I would probably come at them with a knife to the jugular, or the eye. Nobody is gonna rob a late night diner though. It's the slowest time of day. I used to work at one in downtown Seattle with my brown, leather apron that I likened to Leatherface. I was the best goddamn dishwasher you ever saw. There was a curse I think, if ever a place were to let me go they would go under within 2 years time. I was a big draw, with my arm tattoos that is.

Nobody in this small town knows about my city life prior. Nobody knows about the survival skills I have after living on the streets. I was a dirty, heroin punk with a blue mohawk. I quit the drugs, I quit smoking, I controlled the drinking. I learned CSS. I learned HTML and XML. I started reading a lot of books. I learned to type really fast. Hell, I even became an expert on healthy foods. This new life also gave me time for horror movies. That dichotomy of my soul, like a demigod, would never leave me alone.

A past that I cannot mention led me to my present day choices. One day one job called back. A ma 'n' pa place that served burgers and ice cream. They were situated on the side of the highway on 101 practically in the middle of nowhere. Everybody knows a place like that. I was the dishwasher that worked overtime and made 5K in 2 months! Try to beat that! The best summer on a job, falling in love with 5 young ladies, all beautiful. I imagined a life in a big house with them all as my live-in girlfriends. Pseudo wives.

Deep down I was an alpha male capable of having 5 unofficial wives. I would make love to them all every day and be a happy man. It takes a better job than that, though, to make a dream like that happen. About this time was when the husband of the owner got a scan for brain tumors. He was told there was a small gray mass in his head but they didn't know what it was. Then I saw him, a man in his 70's, flirting with a beautiful, young waitress. I suspected that they had slept together. 3 weeks later he was dead, very odd.

You don't go from walking to bedridden in 3 weeks when you weren't even diagnosed with stage 1 cancer. The wife, the owner, said he died of cancer. There's no way he had stage 4 cancer. Later on she tells a waitress that she had 7 men die on her, 7 husbands! She joked around about being a black widow even. She said one husband had been killed by the mob. I was seriously suspecting something going on now. The two head cooks, these two mothers, were both ex-cons, and they were up to something else now.

I found it odd that I was the only man working at this establishment. It seems that the bitter, old hag running the place didn't want anyone to be friends or date. She wanted all the waitresses to join 4H and ride horses. She wanted to preserve their chastity. She would yell at me just for talking to them. She had no idea what I was capable of, but I would not go there. One mother waitress told me she grew rhubarb on the side of the building. It turns out the flowering part of rhubarb is poisonous. Rhubarb tea anyone?

If that wasn't enough there was this huge, obese man that came in on holidays. He was older than me. They told me he screws all the girls and there isn't enough room for the both of us. Then this guy starts dating the youngest waitress. I started to worry that she was being pimped out by that guy and the two ex-con mothers in the kitchen. And the reason, to afford a horse for 4H! Except, they didn't tell her. They just invited her to parties with horny guys that had paid ahead of time. I was starting to loose my cool.

One day heading to work one curve felt as though someone had put oil on it and I spun out of control but I steered in the other direction, slowed down, and managed to stop the car before anyone could T-bone me. There were two guys that came in that day to eat. They had driven the semi that accidentally ran into someone and killed a person. The 18 wheeler parked in the parking lot sideways with its long trailer. I was introduced to them. Was someone threatening to smash my car with a semi on the highway?

The cops in this area don't pull me over because I'm friends with a superior court judge from childhood. Mom and dad used to take me to church. They kept trying to call the cops on me for flirting with young ladies and lying about theft and lying about speeding on the highway. People have a way of ruining their own lives by trying to ruin mine. It's part of the curse. Nobody would believe me if I told them anyways. I told the cops about that place. I forgot about them and moved on. White trash hillbilly inbreds I'd say.

They say that everyone crosses paths with a serial killer at least once in their lifetime. As hard as that is to believe I am beginning to think that's true. The things some people do to feed their families, but I was wondering how such a desolate place could stay open. Moving drugs and pimping waitresses that were still in high school and poisoning husbands for money are on that list. The things they do just to have that life riding horses at the local fair. I'm no better, though, a monster that just wants to protect and save unfortunates.

My inspiration for this story was an old movie called "Shack Out On 101" and experiences from my life exaggerated. If you liked it then feel free to leave me a tip. Sometimes our paranoia might be something more real.