Southern Gothic // Joshler

5. Out

Internalized homophobia.

The drive back to Josh's house was beyond uncomfortable. It was mostly just silence, with ominous clouds swirling in the distance. The storms were growing more common these days, but no one in the town seemed to acknowledge them. Sunday was the only day that Tyler saw cars on the street, in accordance with everyone going to church. Often times it would only be busy near the square, which housed the most eccentric of the stores and residents of the town.

There were no commercialized storefronts or restaurants, Tyler realized, as Josh sat beside him complaining to his parents that he'd kill to go to a Taco Bell right now and grab some tacos, or a quesadilla, or something. That was the strangest part to Tyler, that he had never even heard of the place Josh was talking about.

Tyler had never even had soda, which he wasn't entirely sure whether or not he should be grateful for. He realized there were outside products, such as basic groceries that were beyond the capability of what the town could produce, but other than those few staple items like bananas, chocolate, coffee, flour, amongst other things, there was only what the town produced. He enjoyed the fact everything was always fresh. Fresh milk, meat, eggs, butter, as well as things like fruits and vegetables, but he longed to be able to taste the burgers and sandwiches and various other things that Josh raved on about.

He came to the realization that he had never even truly read a book outside of the bible. There were children's books in every home crafted and handed down through generations, but no outside material. There were no dictionaries, as Josh called them, no fiction novels, no nothing.

Josh was growing frustrated with the fact they had to dump all of their electronics to favor the town, too. They had gotten rid of their television, their consoles (causing Josh to kick and scream when they dumped his precious video game collection he had spent months painstakingly growing from scratch), even all the cell phones besides the house's landline.

Tyler came to realize he was truly alone. He had no outside resources, no lifelines to call on the case that he tried to leave. He didn't know if it was scarier than the thought of spending his entire life there.

As they pulled up to the Dun residence, Tyler looked up to notice that the house had belonged to his childhood friend, Pete. The entire family had been slaughtered, and no cause of death had ever fully been revealed, but it had been rumored his mother had grown tired of living in the town after being forcefully moved in and married to Pete's father, and wandered into the forest in search of 'salvation'.

Pete and Tyler were only 7 when he was murdered.

Tyler remembered the rumors that had circulated around after his friend's death. How they were still roaming the streets, smiles with too many teeth, too wide for their face. How their limbs seemed slightly longer than they should have been. How they definitely saw the corpse of the child, running faster than a human should physically be able to.

He shivered and tried to push the thoughts from his mind as the car came to a park, all of them unbuckling their seatbelts and Josh frantically pulling Tyler into the house and up into his room.

Josh immediately moved to his closet after they entered, pulling off his shirt and putting on a black hoodie, in place of the white long sleeved shirt he had been wearing.

"Do you mind if I change my pants?" Josh hummed, unbuttoning them and stepping out of them without waiting for an answer from Tyler.

"I suppose not," Tyler said as he sat down onto the bed, turning away, blushing furiously. He was raised to never undress in the presence of others, so this was certainly an unwelcome surprise.