Georgia Gothic Pt. 1

nomchimpsky:

• It is summer and the southern states are known for its humidity. Your shirt sticks to your skin and it feels like you might as well have gills with the watery air you are inhaling. The sun is beating down on you relentlessly and the air around you become more and more liquid. You blink multiple times, trying to adjust to the bright light, but all you see are rays of yellows, orange, but mostly white. You are swallowing water now. You gasp, or at least you attempt to, but you end up swallowing water. Coughing somehow makes you inhale more of the murky air, and the heat, the heat is pervasive. You close your eyes but you can still see the bright light.
• You voice an ill conceived thought. Immediately someone turns to you, tilting their head slightly, their eyebrow slightly raised as their lips mouth “bless your heart”. You jump. You were thought you were alone in your room.
• In the distance, you hear the ritualized sounds and beats. You try to prepare yourself for what is to come, but you’re no exception – everyone is swept by the sound and chanting. The UGA/Tech games have started and Georgia fans pretend to ever consider Tech as rivals. Their chanting and tailgating become everything. You only see and hear their colors. As you shotgun your third…ieth?? beer of the day?? week? year???? you start to vaguely notice that the words have transcended you. It is no longer english.
• Blood Mountain and Slaughter Trail are two very real places that adventurous high schoolers like to laugh about and attend simply for its name. For Halloween, they would plot the very real GPS coordinates into their devices and spend hours driving to these very real locations. They’ve been told that Blood Mountain is the highest Appalachian peak in Georgia. After an hour of driving, they see the mountain in the distance. After another hour, they still see the mountain in the distance. Did it ever change size? Another hour passes. And then another hour. The trees get greener and greener and the road changes from pavement to dirt, but still the mountain stays the same size in the distance. They keep driving.
• You turn on Peachtree. You need to make a left on Peachtree. And now a right on Peachtree. You continue turning on Peachtree. Again and again and again and again. Eventually you find yourself on a road called, McEver Road. You sigh in relief and continue driving along it. It turns into Peachtree Industrial. You never see a single peach.