Ministry Fiction Irritant: New ¢ry

The first three paragraphs of a thing I've been working and reworking for almost three years now.

Ranthus was tired of globetrotting. He'd been a reckless traveler, accruing debt and making enemies. On his way out of Flagstaff, with nowhere to go next, he bought a bus ticket home. He was born in New Century, an acne-scarred suburb in that part of the Midwest charged with creating Bambi-eyed girls with raw pink cheeks and wide foreheads. His parents, who left him no siblings, died there but were buried separately, in their respective hometowns, Pittsburgh, Lincoln. Ranthus knew that some people who stayed in New Century but not why. Those who had remained weren't exactly friends. Not anymore.

It was the type of place made you want to leave it. The Chinese buffet and the new gas station, with its buzzing fluorescence, were weekend hotspots. Strip malls clogged every street like commas in sentences that went on and on. A town of myrmidons who commuted to larger suburbs with larger office parks. Industry had come to the town in the '70s and collapsed ten years later but the housing prices kept rising until they razed the old industrial buildings to make residential subdivisions.

Before Ranthus and Jonesy could drive they spent Saturday nights loitering in the empty parking lot of an old, dead factory, its asphalt warped and cracked, weeds crawling up from below. They read comics and played Slaughter House or Wall Ball until the sun went down and then smoked cigarettes -- bought off the same kid who sold old Playboys -- until eight, when the security guard usually turned up. Every week, he drove up in his golf cart and threatened to call the real police if he ever caught them trespassing again. Though he was the largest man they'd ever seen, his nose was still too big for his face. He was the quintessential New Centurian except that he lived somewhere else. In New Century, everyone knew everyone and no one cared.