Illusory Escape

He stood in the basement of his suburban ranch home, in a subdivision of outwardly neat homes whose dark secret now lapped at his ankles. It started, as it always did, with a slight trickle through the failed seal of the sump hole cover, as the pump struggled to keep up. But the water filled the hole faster than it could be pumped back out again, leaving it no other place to go but his basement.

"Whose brilliant idea was it," he muttered not entirely to himself, "to put the sump hole in the basement?"

He pushed a wide broom, trying hopelessly to direct the water to the makeshift drain hole cut into the concrete floor. "Should have dug a sump pit in the backyard. That way if it overflowed the water would just go into the yard, which is where I'm pumping it right now anyway," he uttered as if cursing. "And they couldn't even be bothered to put in a decent floor drain."

The water rose, slowly and inexorably, inching up the edge of the makeshift wooden risers which were built by the previous owners and should have clued him in to the fact that the house had water problems, before they ever signed a contract. Everything plastic or otherwise impervious to water sat on the risers, with anything expendable being crammed into the small, elevated openings to the crawlspace.

Finally, when he saw that the water was no longer rising and he knew the pumps would do their work, he realized he had had enough. He dropped the broom with a splash and trudged barefoot up the unfinished wooden stairs, drying off his feet on the landing and returning to the kitchen.

"There's nothing more I can do," he said wearily. "Let's order dinner."

Driving to pick up dinner, he unconsciously avoided making the required left turn and continued to head west, past the stoplights and gas stations, past the fringes of suburbia and into the open farmland. He drove and drove until he became numb, and his mind clear. Clear of all his concerns, and even clear of the thought of his family waiting at home for their dinner. The stands of cornstalks on either side of the road formed an insulating corridor, propelling him onward and free of thought.

Two random turns lead him to a minor crossroads, a town barely worthy of the title. A small tavern, with a grain elevator across the road and a minor scattering of houses here and there. An insignificant blot on the landscape, a pile of peeling paint slowly receding back into the earth. Gravel crunched beneath his tires as he turned into the tavern's parking lot, a destination he wasn't able to explain. Through the screen door to the nearly empty darkness within, where he found himself staring absently into a lighted Pabst sign with a sweating bottle of Blue Ribbon before him, which was barely touched as he sat and sat.