Mile Marker 327

By Jessica Kuzmier

The day is too hot, and the road is too boring. It’s sucking Foster’s soul dry, but that would mean he had a soul. But he doesn’t, since he threw it in God’s face so many years ago on a day he doesn’t want to remember.

So he stays on a road that depletes whatever zombie shell that’s left over from his long ago grand holy gesture. The road may lead to certain death at day’s end, or worse. But he doesn’t care. He tells himself this all the time, every day knowing that death or worse awaits him, that he might kill or be killed on this path he’s chosen.

But he never leaves the road. He would rather be dead than remember. He’s dead, anyway. Because would God ever want him back, when Foster threw his soul in the Almighty’s face all those years ago?

So starts the premise of Mile Marker 327, on another day that alternates between complete tedium coupled with the undercurrent of violence awaiting the man who calls himself Foster. It’s another day that’s too hot for the calendar to agree, and another violent client awaits Foster at the end of the highway he travels. God forgot about him long ago. He knows that, because there’s nowhere for him to go without the soul he discarded, and isn’t sure if he wants back.

Without his soul, this is the path Foster’s condemned to, with no end in sight except for perhaps the mercy of a bullet or some other tragedy.

Or is it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Kuzmier
• Release date: Jul 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005157944

Book preview

Mile Marker 327. © 2022, 2019, 2014 Jessica Kuzmier.

All Rights Reserved.

Website: jkuzmier.com

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/jkuzmier/

Cover Art by John Bauer.

Website: johnbdigital.com

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/johnbdigital/

Life is hell. The preachers got it all wrong with all their fear, fire and brimstone. Hell isn’t a place that God sends the naughty after they drop dead.

Want to know why? Here’s why: God’s the devil. Hell is all he ever created. And that’s where we’re stuck, for all goddamned eternity.

This is Foster’s grand conclusion about God, as he passes Mile Marker 228 on the national highway in his ancient Dodge Dart. He notices his burner phone on the passenger seat, and for some reason this sparks a momentary pitch for a bad public service announcement in his mind. Did you remember that God doesn’t give a shit about you today?

When he condemns the Higher Power for what seems like the umpteenth time in a day, he’s traveling eastbound on his oh-so favorite national highway for his oh-so lucrative profession. It’s the same road every day, for what’s been over a decade now. Only the mile markers where his journey begins and ends differ.

On some level, it’s as though the real Foster exists somewhere else. Like he’s watching some cinematic shell-like version of himself on a bad infomercial. The real Foster, wherever or whomever he is, has a real awesome exquisite treat. He gets to watch the shell version of himself rotting away like bad horsemeat. In an overheated rust-bucket excuse of a car, a million year old Dodge Dart. On the same exact damn road, day after week after month after year. No way off, no exit ramp, no throughway, no way out. What a total gourmet buffet that must be to sample.

When did it all get like this? And how? Foster doesn’t remember. He probably doesn’t want to, hiding demons deep in a psychic closet that he lost track of a long time ago. But truthfully, Foster doesn’t even know if he cares. And God, in his infinite and omnipotent silence, sure as hell seems like he doesn’t either. So it’s just up to Foster, him and himself locked in some kind of unholy trinity. Whether it’s the imaginary shell version of himself, or the real deal live in the flesh, Foster’s condemned to roam this road alone. All while everything around him burns to hell. Including himself, literally.

Speaking of hell, he observes his surroundings. The unseasonably hot March temperatures are burning up the landscape, along with the interior of his ancient Dart. Drought parches the land, consuming it with its own rabid thirst. It reminds him for a moment that he drank his last water an hour ago.

But Foster doesn’t have time to worry about useless things like dehydration. The threat of violent death has a way of crystalizing priorities, writing most things off as useless trivia. The down side to this? It’s hard to appreciate anything, when he knows in the end it’s all pointless. Even God’s given up on all of it.

At this point in the road-to-nowhere’s game, Foster drifts by the same cows that he always does wilting in the sun. March shouldn’t be a time for wilting, but with this winter, nothing even got a chance to even freeze. What kind of cows are they? Foster has no idea, even after a decade plus whatever amount seeing the various characters. They’re always the same bland color, somewhere between off-white and a hue Foster can only describe as off-brown. Did mud do that? Did God paint them that way? Who knows and who cares. God probably didn’t care, so why should he?

Toasting Foster’s mood, the region is appropriately decorated with trailers that resemble bombed-out fallout shelters. Overgrown weeds sprout all about them, peeking through the cracks of what once must have been driveways to a place that once was home to someone, sometime long ago.

While viewing the decay surrounding him, Foster imagines a nuclear bomb tearing through the grasses while the doomed residents throw rotten eggs at the death missile. He decides they’re the kind of people who won’t go without a fight. Even if it’s a useless one, and they go out anyway. God seemed to love to see people uselessly squirm. It would explain why so many humans got a kick out of watching hamsters run aimlessly