Possum Holler Lake

A short story about a place where time stood still

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

While Piankashaw County, through much of her recent history, was a community guided by decency and decorum — not so much of the wealthy kind but of honor and respectability nonetheless. For the most part, in most circles, it still was.

However, there was a time, a place, a moment, a phenomenological time-space wrinkle within a subcultural stratum — a moment when the old world seemed to crumble into dust — smashed like a dirt-dobbers nest beneath an old woman’s broom — a time when the chivalry of the cavaliers of our forbearers was dead, that honor and decorum rotting like roadkill on the shoulder of the new highway — a time when it was good to be bad.

A time when young men carefully cultivated an aesthetic of decadence — the carefully constructed, distilled, intentional, and deliberate white trash manifesto of taste — a cracker gumbo — carefully conflated combination of regenerative rebirth and archaic decay — a reconstruction of all things new out of the ash heap of that which had yet to become history — zombies in the sarcophagi of the 20th century.

John, Bubba, Joe Bob, Lottie, Dottie, Everybody. We were all dangerous characters — a bunch of juvenile delinquents just waiting for our lives to begin… a motley crew of unborn souls waiting for the gods…