Before I start, I’d like to just express my eternal and deeply felt gratitude to the wonderful Susan Richardson of Flowering Ink’s Stories from the Edge of Blindness, and most importantly for today’s purpose, the podcast A Thousand Shades of Green. Many weeks ago, Susan undertook to feature my short story collection Dark Nocturnes on her podcast for Story Sessions. She has faithfully, tirelessly, and brilliantly read every story in the collection, all 32 of them, over the last few weeks, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. She finished yesterday with the final story, Mr. Death Goes To Market, and like the rest of her readings, it was phenomenal. If you’d like to hear Susan basically turn my collection into a fantastic audiobook, you can hear her read each story by going here: https://athousandshadesofgreen.com/story-sessions/ And if you like what you hear, leave a comment or a review, or even buy Dark Nocturnes for yourself–here’s the link!:

http://a-fwd.com/asin=B0DY8B6C1K

And now on with the inanity. A couple of weeks ago, my car was making some awful noises so I took it to my mechanic. Turns out all the tie rods were worn out, which explained why my cute little Sonic was creaking and groaning like my joints in the morning, only I’m almost 60 and my car’s only 12. I got what amounted to basically a new front end “but,” my mechanic said, “you’ll need a wheel alignment and we don’t have the rack to do it here.”

So I asked around and got a recommendation for a place up the road. The afternoon before my appointment, I decided to go there and see A) where exactly it was and B) to see if I could drop off the car later that day instead of first thing the next morning, because I’m retired and I don’t go anywhere early if I can help it.

When I saw the sign for the business, I had an uncomfortable revelation—the long laneway led to a “community farm”, which was occupied by people, part of a religious cult, who live communally in large barrack-type buildings on several acres. And the mechanics were apparently part of the cult. I’d never been there, but let me tell you, it was incredibly eerie, and not because of all the zealots. No, the place was completely deserted—no adults, no children, even in the summertime–literally no one. I found out later that over time, most of them had left. Or died, based on the creepy cemetery they had on the property.

I couldn’t see anyone, and the garage looked deserted too, so I drove around the back—just in time to see an elderly man taking a piss against some bushes. Like, do religious cults not have BATHROOMS? He looked at me as if he couldn’t imagine why I was there. I explained, staying IN the car, and was told yes, I could drop the car off later. I wasn’t thrilled but Ken came with me after dinner to make sure there were no more urinary shenanigans.

Then, the next day we went to pick the car up. We walked into the office and there was a guy sitting there on the phone. Sitting on a shelf above him like some kind of weirdass trophy was a bright red “Make America Great Again” ball cap. And while this might be de rigeur in America, I live IN CANADA. So it was very f*cking off-putting, and why wasn’t I surprised that a business run by members of a religious cult would be displaying something like that? And then he had the nerve to tell me that they couldn’t get my wheels completely aligned because there might be something wrong with one of my tires. And I so badly wanted to say, “Then keep it and FIX it” but at that point, all I wanted to do was hightail it out of his Stephen King-esque MAGA Christ Cult Compound. Needless to say I won’t be going back there anytime soon. And I really hope they get their plumbing fixed.