PEEK

"When is a door not a door?"

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James 'Jem' Calloway had lived in Rockford, Illinois for about twenty-one years of his life.

Hailed as the third largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, it boasted of more than a hundred thousand population. And while its unemployment rate had been going up and down the previous years, it had finally gone down to a mere 5.4 percent - which meant almost everyone was employed and had a job.

Unfortunately for Jem, he wasn't part of that majority.

Having fired from his nineteenth job, and booted out by the friend he had been sharing an apartment with, Jem was not only unemployed, he was also homeless and broke. So when a distant relative from an even distant town called him for a job offer, he didn't hesitate to accept.

It was only when he stepped out of his car (secondhand, but still his), that he realized how different Thurmond, West Virginia was from his former city.

Aside from the unusual hush of the town that raised goosebumps along his skin, there was also an abandoned train station, an eerily empty downtown, and a house with dark windows that seemed to be staring directly at him.

Population as of the recent consensus? Five.

James 'Jem' Calloway had officially stepped into a ghost town.

© All Rights Reserved 2016
Rockford, Illinois and Thurmond, West Virginia are both real places (and yes, there really are just five people living in the latter). However, all the other details, and the characters involved, are fictional. Any similarity to real events, people or places are purely coincidental.