Here in Armantrout, we take great pride in our town. Everyone you pass on the street will greet you with warmth, friendliness, and wide-eyed smiles that occasionally border on questionable mental illness. Plus, you’ll be gobsmacked by the beauty of our homes and businesses that bear a playful mix of Cisterian, Anthropophagy, and Herodian architectural styles – the latter of which is an homage to the Roman customer lord of Judea. Obviously.

A visit to Armantrout places you among an exclusive class of uniquely-minded travelers. In fact, our town has been likened to Florida by travel writers from the greater Eufaula, Alabama area as well as around the globe. As a case in point, Lester Leafblower from the esteemed travel journal Why Go There? eloquently stated, “Armantrout is not a place that makes anything and it’s not really a place that does anything – other than bringing in more people.” Just like Florida.

Also like Florida, Armantrout is a site to behold at any time of the day and in every season. The most popular time to visit, however, is during our annual Straw Festival in mid-March. Aquatic sea turtles aside, we’re proud to celebrate what we deem the world’s greatest invention – developed in 1864 by Armantrout’s own Benjamin Bendy. Don’t ask for ‘no straw’ with your beverage here! If possible, the best time to arrive in Armantrout is in the late evening when you can drive Bendy Boulevard along Loch Straw and observe the wind-torn whitecaps whispering and roiling while a vicious, grudge-holding moon creeps slowly across the sky. It’s all very poetic. You might even catch a glimpse of our own legendary Loch Straw monster. There are those who believe this is nothing more than a floating barge of plastic bottles given Armantrout’s “short-sighted and abysmal recycling program” (Leafblower, Lester, Why Go There?, issue #29, p. 63). But any Armantroutisian will tell you differently. So you should believe them.

While downtown Armantrout boasts major attractions such as the world-renowned Cow Museum and the illustrious Just Umbrellas! shop, it’s the now-defunct carnival site just beyond the city limits that seems to draw the most visitors. Or maybe ‘squatters who are untroubled by the cracks in the wall that seep cold air and centuries-old secrets that would make anyone shudder’ is a more accurate description.

Whatever the case, the majestic Bendy Mansion is a perfect specimen of the Anthropophagy (translated as human flesh consumption) architectural style. Working from a rather provocative belief system in 1800s Brazil that promoted consuming pilgrim oppressors to accomplish self-governance, the mansion is now epitomized by mechanical primitivism with striking dream-like symbolism. What’s more, if you’re a ghost hunter, you’ll be delighted to know that the mansion is haunted by the soul of the carnival’s resident World’s Smallest Man who had just laid bare his body and the real truth of its deformity before being trampled by a herd of cows.

So come and visit our little slice of paradise.

If you favor the quietude of isolation – away from the quick-witted quips and subsequent quicksand of human interaction that can so swiftly and skillfully swallow you whole, then Armantrout is just the place for you. Contact Belinda Bendy-Straw at the visitor’s bureau today to add Armantrout to your bucket list!

“I’ve worked as an au pair, a private tutor, a ranch hand, a cook, a teacher, a flea-marketeer, a clerk,” Tasha began before I interrupted her.

“A butcher?” I asked. “A baker? A candlestick maker maybe?”

She slowly smiled, cocking a brow. “Something like that.”

“You obviously have a wide range of… interests,” I said and she stared past me. 

“Bored, mostly,” she responded flatly.

Tasha was an extraordinary specimen of a human being. Long and sinewy with bone-straight orange hair that cascaded down her rib cage, she reminded me of a giraffe. I wondered whether her tongue was that strange black/blue/purple hue that paints giraffe’s tongues yet defies being named. I propose Giraffe Tongue. It only makes sense.

“Why are you here?” she asked me, sliding sideways out of her reverie and returning to Earth. Or, at least, whatever this place was. It sure as hell didn’t feel or look like Earth. Scorched earth, maybe. Though there was no shortage of that around here. And yet, here I was again. I could never make sense of why anyone would call this place home. I always figured they had to be running from something. Of course in Tasha’s case, she didn’t have any other option.

A clattering broke the silence and Tasha shifted in her seat, looking perturbed. At the back of the house, her mother was banging pots and pans in the makeshift kitchen. “Whaton God’s green earth is she doing now?”

“Please,” I held up my hand. “One question at a time.” 

She pierced me with her chilling grey eyes, then bowed her head, watching her fingers twist in and out of one another as though they didn’t belong to her. “Fair enough,” she looked up. “So… what are you doing here?”

“I think you know why I’m here,” I said, easing back in the overstuffed chair, lighting a cigarette, and attempting to look cool – which may have worked had it been 1958 instead of 2016. Tasha crinkled her nose, pointed at the cigarette, and shook her head vehemently. I snuffed it out. “Your brother sent me to get some information,” I said, which based on the intel he’d provided up to that point, I suspected would produce an unsavory response.

“Hmmmmmmm,” she paused. “Well, you can tell him this for me,” she said. Then right there in the middle of the living room, she horked up – and with impressive showmanship – a sizable wad of phlegm and spit it at a picture of her brother on the table next to her chair. Her aim was spot-on. 

“Not sure I can relay the message with quite the same savvy,” I said, clearing my throat. “Certainly not with as much accuracy.” 

She shrugged. 

“Now, as for your mother,” I continued, “I haven’t any clue what she’s doing. Washing dishes? Making a pot roast?” I offered. “Cooking up some meth? I mean, it’s really anyone’s guess.” 

She ignored me. “You know what I hate most about my brother?” she said thoughtfully, pulling on a strand of her long hair. 

I did not. The truth was, I didn’t really know her brother. I’d only met him three days ago. And I certainly didn’t expect him to have a sister that looked like Tasha. He was obviously spawned from a different father because it had to be some sort of cosmic mix of DNA that created Tasha. And were it that she had true siblings, they’d have many of the same features but arranged in different and equally exotic ways. Because that’s how genetics works. Meanwhile, Jessie was a balding, standard-issue short and stocky dude with charcoal eyes like Frosty. Yes, the snowman.

She squinted her eyes. “He drives an expensive car but doesn’t seem to be in love with it.”

“Hmmmm,” I nodded. “Seems a perfectly logical reason to hate someone.” 

She dipped her chin and raised her brows to glare at me. “Believe me, he’s a first-class waste case,” she rolled her eyes. “Just like my mother.” She glanced toward the kitchen for a moment, then across the room. She nodded toward an ornate antique grandfather clock that stood in the corner, indicating she wanted me to look at it. I studied it for a moment. The face of the clock showed the different cycles of the moon – with each of the faces bearing a wayward smile that came across as both calming and unsettling. “My father,” she began, grabbing at her fingers again, her voice becoming a little smaller. “He used to keep the key for that clock on a small nail he’d hammered a little crookedly in that papered wall there. He’d wind the clock and set it going at the right time. It seemed like he did that every day.” She gazed off into the distance. “But that couldn’t be right. Could it?” 

I didn’t answer.

“Aren’t you going to write any of this down?”

“I don’t really write about grandfather clocks being wound,” I shrugged. 

A joker’s grin spread across her face. “You’re a smart ass.”

We sat in relative silence (barring the sound of her mother now humming in the kitchen) for a bit longer. I began to wish that her long-deceased father would resurrect himself if only to wind the clock and set it ticking. 

“I want to see what you’ve written about me,” she suddenly said. “So far, I mean. Based on what you’ve heard. And on what he told you.”

“Do you?” I asked. But I knew she did. They all did; always wanting to read about themselves. It was no different than a visual artist’s subject hungry to embrace an alternate view of themselves. To grasp an image that they themselves could never see. 

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “That’s why I said I did.” 

I laughed. 

“And what’s it called?”

“It’s still untitled.”

Tasha leaned forward and cupped her chin in her spidery fingers. “I have one.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said. “Which we can certainly discuss at another time. In the meantime,” I continued, handing her my old worn notebook filled with script and scribbles that were, in fact, all about her. “I’m truly honored that from within the boundary defined by your skin, you are choosing to peer out at my words.” 

She laughed and rolled her eyes like a young girl. “Definitely a smart ass,” she said with that same chilling smile that I’d come to know well. “We should get along just fine,” she mumbled while glancing over my pages.

I nodded and smiled.

“Until, of course,” she cleared her throat, and looked up at me, “we don’t.”

*(Excerpts from various fiction and non-fiction works)