Idaho Gothic

Idaho Gothic

People keep pronouncing it Boy-ZEE but every time you open your mouth to correct them you can’t speak, they keep chanting it while you clutch at your throat. It’s closing up faster.

Someone says that all there is out there are potato farms. You laugh but when you turn around you’re stranded in a field filled with potatoes and when you turn back around, the person is gone. There’s only potatoes.

You’re driving through a desert, an empty road ahead of you. Your eyes drift shut and when you open them you’re in the mountains, jagged peaks soaring above you and a hawk shrieks overhead. You swerve and you’re suddenly in the rolling plains. You blink again and you’re back in the desert. There’s no way to get off the highway.

You and your friends go down to float the river and you can hear their laughter just around the bend. You can’t catch up to them and the bend just keeps getting further away.

You’re stuck coming down from the mountains, waiting for cows to cross. You can’t see the end of the line of them, they just keep coming.

You’re at a Boise State football game. The turf is a dizzying, bright blue in the sunlight. It looks like it’s getting bigger, until you realize it’s slowly swallowing up the stadium. You realize it’s somehow 2010. It’s the Fiesta Bowl all over again and Coach Peterson smiles up at you with too many teeth. You’re falling in a pit of blue.

There’s a knock on your door. It’s smiling missionaries who don’t blink, they begin to talk in unison. You try to tell them you’re fine but it’s like they don’t see you. You shut the door quickly and you can hear them still talking. There’s a knock on your back door.

You thought Hells Canyon was just a name. But disappearances are multiplying and there’s a figure just past the ledge beckoning you closer.

“I’ll leave one day,” you say one year. “I’ll leave one day,” you say three years later. “I’ll leave one day,” you say —