Red Hole (Skephalo)

A Blip on A Map

Zak's POV

I've lived in the same town my entire life. It's a small, beat up town in the middle of nowhere. There's only about two traffic lights in the town, only one grocery store, and more cows than people. Everyone drives beat up cars and trucks, but pretend they're living a country lifestyle. Beer is like a replacement for therapy for everyone here, which is messed up. It has that small town glorification and romanticism of alcoholism aura. Still, everyone is supposedly neighborly here. They enjoy watching the football games in the fall, they go to church on Sundays and they have pride in their small town life. One would be good as long as they were straight and not black too or progressive.

The whole idea of it makes me sick to my stomach. It's a mirage almost, the representation of false hope and ignorancy.

I was always poor growing up. My first home that I remember was in a trailer park. Mom and Dad rented one. It was tiny and crampted. Our floorboards always creaked so loud that the other trailer next door could hear my normal footsteps down the hall. We had about two bedrooms. I had a mattress on the floor and had a fan on instead of using the air conditioner. Sometimes it felt like the only thing in our fridge was a case of beer.

Still, that almost felt like when my family was the most happy or I was. I enjoyed roaming the trailer park and playing with other kids. 

We eventually ended up moving to an old farmhouse on main street. It was a really old house and needed a lot of work, but the rooms were so big. I could run around the house without the neighbors complaining about our floors or feel like I could breathe in my home. We were saving up for this house for months and when we finally got it we were all so happy. 

Mom ended up getting pregnant not too long after we moved in. She turned into a different person then. I think she had postpartum depression, a kind of depression that happens sometimes when a woman is pregnant. This changed my mother. She didn't look after me or the baby. She stayed glued to the bed for most days, unable to get out of her head.

Eventually we woke up one day and found out she had left. We were now alone at the house on main street with no mother.

My dad became even more than an alcoholic than he already was like everyone else here. He started drinking liquor instead of beer and he became so scary and cruel. My sister and I have grown to dislike him.

He's a deadbeat like some of the other people here.

I started developing insomnia in middle school, same time around when I became the weird emo boy who didnt want to play football or go fishing. I couldn't ever sleep at night. This eventually led to me going to red hole.

Red hole was a spot for all the rednecks to hang out and drink beers during the day and swim in the creek. There was a big rock by the creek where one could sit down on the rock, drink, and play music while their friends took a dip in the hole. The rock was a popular place to sit with friends and strangers and swim with them.

It was the epitome of the small town aura I hated so much.

Still, I had some nostalgia for the place. I remember when Mom and Dad took me back when we were in the trailer and going to the pool costed too much. I'd swim in my normal clothes as Mom sat on the rock watching and talking to strangers. My dad would get in Red Hole with me, splashing me and playing with me. He kept me safe when I was scared.

One time Mom, Dad, and I floated down the current past the rock. We ended up near a few other rocks by the time we floated down the creek. There was a big snake on the rock that I noticed, and I thought it was a rope. Dad nearly touched it, but I warned him and we swam back towards the large rock people would sit on.

Now I just went to sit on the rock with my toes dipped in, listening to the sounds of the birds and the rushing water. It was relaxing. It felt like a place I could get away, despite being the epitome of shitty small town auras. No one would be there in the dead hours I went. People liked to stay in till midnight at the latest, but I always went in the dead hours of early morning. I never saw anyone else there still when I did go.

That is, until tonight.