The Town of Fake

Nothing was real in the town. Not the people, not the buildings, not the pavement. Not the air, not the water, nor the fish in the water, nor the algae or other sea creatures. Nor those in the air, the seagulls, the doves, the crows. The shops on main street weren't real, nor were the flags they posted, or the chairs and tables placed in front of them. The street signs weren't real, nor were the signs, or the fire hydrants. 

It was all fake. The schools were fake, the children in the schools were fake, their backpacks, their pencils, their notebooks, all fake. Their first loves, relationships, bullies, all fake. Their parents were fake, their parents' marriages were fake, their father’s mistresses were fake. Their siblings were fake, their pets were fake, and the collars, leashes, and food they fed them. Their food was fake too. The beef, the cereal, the water, the milk, everything in the stores was fake. The store owner was fake, the clerks, the windows, the phones they used to talk on the intercoms. Their lives were fake. The football games, the movies, the Church gatherings. It was all fake. The people living those lives were fake. Their problems, their beliefs, their hopes, their aspirations. Their eyes, teeth, noses, hands, ears, genitalia. All fake. Nothing in the town was real. Cardboard cutouts made to represent the real thing. The real people in towns, the real children, the real schools, the real markets, the real cars. 

No one knows who this fake town was made by. Who took the time to hang the seagulls by what seemed to be fishing wire from the thousand-foot ceiling that stood above. Who took the time to paint that thousand-foot-tall ceiling, or the walls that went those thousand feet high. The clouds, the rain, the sunsets. The projectors mounted to that thousand-foot ceiling to shine a facade of sunlight every day, or the moon each night. No one knows who made this fake ocean that sat next to the town, nor the millions of gallons of water it took to fill up that fake tub. Or the millions of pounds of sand placed next to it. Or the millions of pounds of concrete, wood, and metal used for the framing of these cardboard constructers. Or the millions of pounds of cardboard itself. 

No one knows the person or persons responsible for the thousands of residents, carefully thought and cut out. Or the person responsible for placing them where they were in this town, as the barkeeps, the police, the prisoners. Or the cardboard gravestones placed over the holes, and which cardboard cutouts lie in them. No one knew why either. Why whoever did this, did this. Why they made these fake people, these fake buildings, this fake town. Nor did anyone know how. How they acquired the materials to build this fake town. To build the fake cars, the fake trees, the fake animals. How they built these fake cars, or the fake people, or the fake birds, or the fake boats, or the fake sinks, toilets, tables, chairs, books, radios, and televisions. Nobody knew how this place came to be. 

However, one woman was real. A woman who had never been there before, a woman who had never even left her hometown before. A woman who did not know where she was. A woman who did not know why she was there, either. 

She had happened upon this location accidentally, unknowingly. Heading to a place she had always wanted to go to, she was many hours into a many more hour journey. She was running from a real place, with real people, and real buildings. A place with real problems, and real jobs, and real rent and real children. A place with real priorities, and real obligations. A place with real needs, real wants, real regrets. A place with real pain. Real monsters. A place with real bruises, real blood, real tears. A place she could not go back to. She got into her real car, looked back at the real car seats, for her real children. She then looked past the real taillights glowing off the real garage door. She then cried a real tear, put her real foot down onto the real gas pedal, and took a real drive. 

This real drive took her through the real city, passed the real homeless, the real trash, plastic tips, syringes. It took her past the real factories, the real fences, the real trash lots and trailer parks. It took her into the real mountains, driving into the real green. And then, it wasn’t. Suddenly, it was no longer real. The air felt fake. Too thin and too thick all at once. The trees she passed were cutouts of what she had once passed. The road was a fake version of what her wheels had just driven on. 

She stopped at the fake gas station to ask the fake clerk a question, to no answer. She turned back that fake road, hoping it would return to the real one she had just come from. But no matter how far she drove, the pavement never did return to the same feeling. Nor did the trees, the same ones she seemed to pass before that were once real, were now, not. She drove for hours through fake forest, only winding back up at the fake gas station once more. Having never taken any real turns, or fake ones. She tried again, driving the other way down the fake road. This time taking her into the fake town. Taking her down fake main street, to see the fake people, the fake seagulls, the fake trees and shops. She drove through the fake town, back into the fake forest, but once more, there was no difference in the result, always returning at the same, fake gas station, with the same, fake clerk. 

Over the real years trapped in this fake town, she collected what real materials she could, doing what real things she could. She gathered the real cardboard, the real wood, the real materials for the fake world around her. She tried to take the fake gasoline from the fake gas station, but when it was not able to spark a real flame, she had to turn to other means. She syphoned the real gasoline from her own real car and used the real lighter she had once used for her last, real pack of cigarettes to create a real flame. It burned fake home after fake home, through the suburbs of cardboard cutouts. The fire burned through the fake shops and all their fake isles. It burned the fake schools and all their fake books, fake lockers, fake desks, and fake students. The flames reached up the thousands of feet, climbing the fake buildings and fake telephone towers. It reached high enough to kiss the thousand-foot ceiling, scorching it black. 

Until it rained. From everywhere, it rained. Real water washed the real flames, exhausting them. But it kept raining, flooding the fake town, flooding its fake drains. Submerging the fake buildings, the fake shops, fake houses, and fake people in feet of water. The woman fought the real water, fought the real drowning. And then, after so much real pain, the real water began to lower. The real levels sinking, allowing the facades to emerge once more. 

She attempted to leave this fake town many times over the following real years. Aging until her real hair was grey. She tried to take the fake boats across the fake sea, fake air balloons into the fake sky. Nothing real ever happened. She never met another real person, nor saw a real animal or building. She never again ate real food, gaining sustenance from any and every real material she could bring herself to consume. She took a fake home, building a fake life within it. Taking the real clothing off the fake people, out of their fake closets. She found real hobbies in this fake town. Destruction, reconstruction, everything one could think of, she had done. She had done what she could, she had done what she wanted. She learned to live in this fake town, learned to live in this new, fake world of hers. She learned to find real joy in these fake things she had. Her new fake life. 

And then, many real years later, with her real bones now withered and her real body failing her, she had to prepare for her very real death. She had to dig a real grave years prior, when she still had the real strength to do so. She had to prepare a real coffin, build a real walkway for her to set herself within it. She had to set the real occasion at the fake church, placing fake bouquets and fake grieving audience members. 

She spent her last day knowing it would be so. She had to give herself one last real bath, dressed herself in the best real outfit the town had to offer, and took one last real look at the fake sunset she had observed so many nights prior. She ate her last real meal of fake ingredients. Her malnourished and shrunken body working to lift the fake utensils. She set one last, real fire, setting the fake home she had stayed so many nights and days in, ablaze. She took in one last, real moment watching the real embers eat way the real wood, the real cardboard, feed off the real oxygen particles in the fake feeling air. 

Soon after, she took her last real step down into the real grave she had dug herself, her frail body taking the better part of a real hour. She then stepped down into her real coffin and laid her real body down. She then spent the evening looking up at the fake sky, remembering the real one, trying to at least. She began to think maybe all this was all that there ever was, and what she had known before was all fake. This was the true world, her true life. And then, it ended. She closed her real eyes for one last time, thinking her last real thoughts. The fake soil around her, its fake vegetation atop it. The fake graveyard it lay in, the fake buildings surrounding it. The fake shops, the fake schools, the fake houses, and people. This town around her, now swallowing her whole. This town of fake.