The first three paragraphs of this story actually came to me in
a dream (I have gotten quite a few story ideas from dreams, though
rarely actual text bits), and I wrote them down immediately after
I woke up. Alas, the dream didn't tell me how the story was supposed
to go on, and I haven't had any brilliant inspirational ideas either.
So, the story remains incomplete for the time being.
Return to Nowhere
It was an ordinary American small town in the Californian desert.
A collection of wooden houses, nothing more. About 200 inhabitants,
a gas station, a diner, a general store, a bar, two churches, a
run-down motel and a newspaper office, that was all.
It reminded Marina of those Jack Arnold films of the 50s. As she
crossed the large square in the center of the town, she almost
expected to bump into the Creature of the Black Lagoon. Or Tarantula.
Despite the heat she had to suppress a shiver.
But this was no black-and-white movie. This was full colour reality,
though the colours did look a bit faded in the ever-present desert sun.
And the only creatures to be seen in the square were quite ordinary
looking people. It was around ten in the morning, and therefore the
town seemed less sleepy than Marina would have expected.
She turned to Jason. "Is this the place?", she wanted to know.
"Hard to say after all those years."
"Come on, if you grew up around here, you must remember it. Besides",
she said, looking around her, "it doesn't look as if much has changed
here since you were a child." In fact, it seemed as if time had stopped
sometime around 1956.
"I remember very little of my childhood", Jason said.
How could this place not raise any memories? Marina had been having that
dejá-vu feeling all morning, on the long drive from San Diego out here.
And she knew that she had never been here before. Yet everything seemed
so familiar.
Suddenly she realized that the whole place reminded her of her childhood.
Which was strange, since Marina was city born and bred. Except for those
obligatory school trips to Death Valley and Joshua Tree she had never even
been out here the desert.
Nevertheless, she had seen all this before. Not in her actual childhood,
but in her fantasies. This desert land reminded her of afternoons spent
in front of the TV, way back when she was just a little girl and everything
she saw on that magic screen seemed so brand new to her. This was the
country of black-and-white Western serials, of 50's B horror films, of
Star Trek reruns and all those beat-em-up and blow-em-up adventure shows
of her youth. As soon as she was back at university, she would check whether
any films or TV-shows had ever been shot in this area.
"Let's refresh your memory!", she said to Jason. If this place had such a
dejá-vu effect on her, it would certainly help him to remember. It had to...
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