Categories
Fiction Science Fiction Web Serial

Hell Town RV Park, Episode 1. A Web Serial

Hell Town RV Park

Where one man’s trash is another man.

(a Web Serial)

From The RV Files

By Clara Bush

Part 1: The Park

Episode 1

(Rated Mature for Adult content)

Spooky’s fingers darted across her MacBook Air keyboard. She must get her thoughts down, in case…well, in case something happened to her. Her first words colored the white blank with a 12 point New Times Roman font.

Who notices the creepy RV park buried off to the side of the road like forgotten road kill? I never noticed nor did I suspect anything out of the ordinary until….I struggle with one question. What lies beneath?

Her fingers paused on the keys. Maybe, this is a bad idea. Maybe, it’s all in my head like Brodie says.

When Brodie, her husband, and she decided to become full-time RVers, unexplainable was not part of the conversations they had with their dealer. The dealer preached long and hard about the pros of owning a rig and traveling the U.S. to parts unknown, but words like strange and unexplainable never flavored the sales pitch. Spooky liked the thought of parts unknown. Sounded like an adventure to her.

Of course, circumstances changed. Their daughter became pregnant and her husband, an engineer on an offshore oil rig, was out of town. A lot. Last year, during her first trimester, their daughter lost the baby. They weren’t about to let her be alone during this pregnancy. Especially since Spooky felt guilty. She hadn’t been excited about the pregnancy. I’m too young to be a grandma, she’d told her daughter. And then they lost the little one. Spooky didn’t mean what she’d said. For days she’d dreamed about him. Holding him. Kissing him. Smelling him. But she didn’t share those dreams with her daughter and blamed herself for nature’s decision. 

“Great,” Brodie said. “We can try out our new life on the road and be close to Dovie when the baby comes.”

So, instead of taking their new Class Super C to Yellowstone to hear the wolves at night, they headed to Prayer Town—some forsaken west Texas town—so their daughter wouldn’t be alone while pregnant.

Spooky’s fingers punched the keys with urgency. The name should’ve been a dead giveaway, she wrote and clicked save. 

***

Prayer Town proper composed one motel, one restaurant, one gas station, two churches, and one elementary school into a loose resemblance of a town. The gas station served as a grocery store, a post office, coffee shop, and UPS drop off. Their daughter was hired to be the new second grade teacher.

Brodie googled Prayer Town to reserve a spot for their RV. “Looks like we have only one choice with full hook-ups, Spooky. What do you want me to do?”

She wanted to say, “Duh, did you think we’d have five-star options?” But she didn’t. She learned over the years to retreat to her imagination instead of saying something that might cause him to come unglued.

Early in their marriage, Brodie angered easily. It’s all because of his damn job, Spooky rationalized. He was a detective back then.

His anger provoked what he referred to as her haunts. She hated he called them, haunts. They were her friends and had been her only ones for as long as she could remember. And still were. Even her husband couldn’t be the friend her friends were. These friends of hers launched projectiles into the air. Tampered with electronics, especially Brodie’s coffee maker, when he lost his temper with her. For her benefit, Spooky lectured her friends. Told them her husband needed his hot java first thing every morning. They didn’t listen. They rarely did.   

Soon after their wedding day, they found a house they could afford. Move-in day and one walk through later, she told Brodie it was haunted. He asked why she didn’t tell him the house was haunted before they bought it—or more specially—she was haunted before they got married. She explained the spirits hid in hopes the old owners sold the house, which meant new people to scare.

As for as the question directed at her, she said, “When we were fucking all those times, you didn’t ask. And didn’t you ever wonder how the sex was so great? I mean you always said I seemed to have hands, lips, mouth everywhere on your body?”

She knew the thought of supernatural forces giving him a hand during their love making would spook the shit out of him. And as calculated, he never asked that question again. But instead of honey, babe, sugar buns, or even her given name, she became Spooky to him.

She didn’t mind. Her parents often cussed the day they named her Rumer after her great grandmother. Spooky showed her parents early she inherited more than just a name from Craycray Gran. At Aunt Mae’s funeral, Spooky announced to Uncle Bob and all present, not to cry because Aunt Mae said she was as happy as a tick on a dog not to have to be around all of them sniveling fools. Spooky was four at the time. She said she didn’t know what sniveling meant, but that Aunt Mae told her to say it.  Her parents found comfort in calling her friends imaginary.  To Spooky they were anything but imaginary.

Before Brodie retired, Spooky helped on some of his cases when the ghost of the deceased paid her a visit. He was clueless of her input into the case of a serial killer. A case which launched his career and made early retirement possible.

***

“If that’s our only option, then book us a spot, hon,” she said. “Be sure it has 50 amps. It’ll be hot as hell in July.”

He chuckled. “Guess the name of the RV park?”

“Prayer Town RV?” She said.

“No. You get two more guesses.”

“Heaven’s Gate?”

“No. One more.”

“Just tell me.”

“No. One more guess and I will.”

“Haven RV?”

“No. You’re gonna love this. You’ll fit right in. Hell Town RV Park.” His laughter stung.

The name should’ve been a dead giveaway.

But Spooky assumed it was a blunt rebuttal to the name Prayer. A bunch of gypsy freaks just like me, she giggled. To herself. Which, she learned as a child, was the best course for self-preservation.

The first night at the RV park, while Brodie wiped the dust from his new rig, Spooky walked the park to become familiar with her surroundings.

Over the years, rare rains and baked dirt furrowed out the road. Their rendezvous resembled the architecture of a blind creature unable to determine direction. Spooky dodged bottomless ruts. No one has left or entered the park in ages, except for us, she noted. She also noted how dated the RVs were. But the note didn’t register because she was too busy thanking the gods for her modern Class Super C.

Trailers and motorhomes begged for shade from lone mesquites. Tumbleweeds landscaped various spots. Some residents laced lights through the thorny bushes. And some placed the weeds in empty flower pots. An ode to Christmas past adorned one site—a tumbleweed decorated with ornaments. She would’ve cackled had a chill not run up and then back amongst the inner workings of her overtly stimulated mind.

No notion of what lies beneath taunted her. But again, her mind was so fixated on the adventure of being somewhere different, for the first time, in their new rig—the notion couldn’t register. Besides she was accustomed to being haunted. Still, somewhere in her perceptive depths, even for her, this felt strange. Uneasiness settled in her bones like a toothache. Contradictory to her typical acceptance of all that was weird.

From day one, a solo thought crept through her shadows. This is not a typical RV park, they shouted and tried to make her hear.


 Click on the links below to continue following the Hell Town Web Serial.

Next-episode 2 

Comment


Me by jeepThe reason I began writing a blog was to create a brand for my fiction. After almost four years of blog writing and much research, it dawned on me, I’m not doing what I love doing. Yes, blogging is a form of writing, but my love is creating characters with flaws, placing them in scary situations, and adding a little romance. Which is not the definition of a blog. My love is being so far in my imagination I’m living in a different dimension where I’m one of my characters and the other characters are leading me on a path to discovery.

As a way of keeping my blog active, and immersing myself in what I love most, I’m adding FREE FICTION to my blog posts. NOT FREE as in take for your own free, it is copyrighted, but FREE FICTION as in read and enjoy. It costs you nothing but a little time and perhaps, a supportive comment. I like supportive comments.

When I began writing, my goal was not to get rich or even make a living. My goal was to share with others my worlds. And I thought, if I had just one person read what I wrote, then my goal would be met, and I’d be the richest person ever.

Why FREE FICTION? As writers, we’re told not to give away our writing. People don’t treasure what is free. I was told. But then the light came on. I have so many story ideas rambling around in my head I’ll never get them all written. When a writer writes a book, whether it’s self-published or traditionally published, the marketing takes a tremendous amount of time. No time is left to start the next book.

Free Fiction allows me to release some of those pent-up stories for others to read. No hassle. Hell Town RV Park will appear on a regular basis until the novel is complete. It is a work in progress. Feel free to comment on the discovery you hope the characters make. Hope you enjoy.

Copyright


The RV Files is fiction. Any characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, extraterrestrials, demons, werewolves, or ghosts—living or dead—is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright ©: 2017 by Clara Bush

All rights reserved. Published by TURTLE TOP COVE LP.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

For information regarding permission, write to:

TURTLE TOP COVE LP.

Attention: Permissions
P.O. Box 158
South Fork, Colorado 81154

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any mean, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

 

 

Clara Bush
Join Me
Latest posts by Clara Bush (see all)

11 replies on “Hell Town RV Park, Episode 1. A Web Serial”

I like your right margin blurb but I am not quite sure I believe all of it. I mean, that part about being born a Texan is really pushing it, don’t you think?

Hello again.
I enjoyed chapter one of your story.
Was glad to notice that neither Brodie or Spooky “used the Lord’s name in vain”.
Liked the way you incorporated a bit of your family history into the story.
Looking forward to more.

Wow, I got hooked. I really love the narrative and Spooky’s inner voice. I couldn’t stop reading and now I want to read more. I like the style of sharing a portion of a story every week or so.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Verified by MonsterInsights