Sin City: Family

Or

Country Mouse, City Mouse

By Benji: The Vampire Confuser

Based on Sin City created by Frank Miller. (based more on the movie than the comics as that's what I know.(for now))


Chapter 1

The local country station faded to white noise 30 miles out of town. Since then it's been an endless stream of preachers, black men who can't sing, black men who can sing, white boys who wish they were black, so-called music that would make my folk's ears bleed as they crossed themselves and prayed for the performer's souls. Y'know, that rock and roll.

Dunno if I could truly say I'm a country fan. When it's all you've known while growing up, it's not really a choice. It's a lack of options. I didn't care for the preachers. Not that I object on general principals, hell I'm a church goer, just seems to me that what goes on in a man's soul is between him and God. I don't need some faceless wannabe God's Favorite tellin' me what I already know.

As for the black men who can't sing, I ain't racist. But all they can talk about is disrespectin' ladies, drugs and violence. I want that I turn on the six o'clock news. The black men who can sing ain't bad. I listen to them for a bit. The white boys who wish they were black just make me shake my head.

The others, an endless stream of angry, bitter kids who probably wouldn't have known such hard times if they'd listened to their folks. But I listen anyway. Not so much to the words, as to the music itself. It kinda gets under your skin and makes you excited. Some of it anyway, some it's downright jarring and unpleasant. But I wonder, listening to the sounds of the latest tirade from a kid who'd never make a cent if parents didn't forbid their children from listening to him, was it really this that did it?

Was mom right? Was it this "devil music" that took our Susie away from us? Made her want to leave? 'Cause I gotta say, I never really found myself wonderin' about the world outside till I heard some of this. Is that the real reason our parents don't want us to listen to it? Does it draw us away? Will we ever want to come home once we've seen what the world has to offer?

Other small towns come and go, more preachers and music it never occurred to me to wonder about. Signs for restaurants offering disgusting fare that has me yearning for Mom's mashed potatoes. They all start to run together after a while. Till you can't tell a McDonald's from a Wendy's, a Taco Bell from a Pizza Hut. I almost lost my bowels when I actually saw a KFC and a Hardee's combined in the same building. I thought the miles had finally affected my mind.

Fast food. Drive through ATM's. Billboards advertising high speed internet. Faster. Everything out here in the world seems to be about faster, and faster. Everyone's in such a hurry. I can't count how many have passed me, some even being downright belligerent about it.

Well sorry folks but I can't say that I'm in any hurry to reach my destination. I think of stopping at a few of these roadside attractions I pass, partly to stall. But though I may be driving the speed limit, I've got a momentum going, and if I stop when it's not necessary I may lose my nerve and not get going again. And I've got to keep going. I have to. I have to get there.

The latest American Idol is crooning on the radio as I pull into a rest area about an hour from my destination. I have to empty my bladder and stretch my legs. My knees complain irritably as I stand outside the truck. Damn, I haven't spent that long on my ass since before I can remember. Everything back home was within walking distance.

"Anyplace worth going to is worth walking to." Grandpa always used to say. Grandpa never rode in a motor vehicle in his life. He once walked from Niagra Falls to The Grand Canyon. Took him a while, but he always said that the trip, and the destination was worth it.

Across the road from the traveler's respite is a gate blocking a dirt drive just starting to give way to the constant onslaught of nature. That's how I know I'm almost there. Not the signs that tell me how many miles to go. That gate. The Rourke Farm.

Powerful men make powerful enemies on the way up. And they didn't get much more powerful than Senator Rourke. Hell of a scandal when it finally broke. No one knows who got the word out, but somebody must've smelled blood on the water when the Senator's son was killed. Then when the Bishop was murdered that seemed to be the last nail in the coffin.

Jr. was a serial child molester and murderer. The Bishop was a cannibal. Like I said, hell of a scandal. I don't think my folks'll ever recover. Not completely. They voted for Rourke, mourned with him when Jr.'d fallen victim to the cop who'd taken the fall for the kids. That and the mess in Boston with those priests almost made them convert to Protestantism.

Brand name sodas. I miss home more and more and I only left this morning. A few coins in the slot of one of the machines and I recharge with a chocolate bar and cola. The sun's approaching it's farewell moments when I finally muster up the nerve to get back on the road.

Time to find Susie.

Time to find my sister.

To be continued...