The Jukebox Keeps Playing

​"Just don't look them in the eye," they tell you on your first night. Like it's that easy. Like you can just erase twenty-something years of normal life and pretend a smile in the dark is just a bad dream. The diner still smells like stale coffee and grease, the cars in the dirt lot are rusting out, and the radio only plays static. It's a postcard from an era nobody wants to live in, and every morning you wake up alive is just another day spent waiting for the other shoe to drop.