Rest Stop Stories

By Amanda McCormack

Massachusetts is a strange place, filled with strange tales. This collection of 21 flash fiction stories celebrates the things that make Massachusetts unique. A shipwrecked young man spends the night in a hut of refuge along the Cape. The clerk at a suburban comic shop experiences a superhero meet-cute. And of course, you can't forget your French toast supplies before a snowstorm!

Rest Stop Stories collects all the short stories released on the podcast Rest Stop Stories between 2020 and 2021, now with new edits. Plus there's a brand new story exclusive to this collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda McCormack
• Release date: May 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005801212

Amanda McCormack

Amanda McCormack is a writer, performer, and lifelong Massachusetts resident. In a past life, she was a librarian in both public libraries and private research institutions. This led to a passion for research and writing which, combined with her love of New England’s history and culture, formed the foundation for Enfield Arts.She loves getting lost on the back roads of Massachusetts, chocolate chip cookies, and a good slow-burn romance story. She hates pears and driving in Boston. You can usually find her at home with a cup of coffee in hand and at least three pens stuck in her hair for safekeeping.

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Amanda McCormack

Rest Stop Stories

Copyright © 2022 by Amanda McCormack

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

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Contents

Foreword

1. Allston Christmas

2. Ghost Girl

3. The Road to Concord

4. Legendary Comics

5. Apple-Scented

6. Autumn Leaves

7. Mermaid of the Merrimack

8. Vanished Joyland

9. Move In Day

10. Agnes

11. Spring Before the Baby

12. Lunch Break

13. Big Kate’s Bar

14. Salem Halloween

15. An Ugly Business

16. Time After Time

17. Hut of Refuge

18. Bread, Eggs, and Milk

19. Neighbors

20. Gerald the Doll

21. Utopia

About the Author

Foreword

Nearly all the books in this collection were previously written for and released on my podcast Rest Stop Stories. Rest Stop Stories was created as a sister show to my audio fiction anthology series, Take the Mass Pike, which was released from 2018 to 2020. Rest Stop Stories started as a Patreon-only podcast where episodes were released publicly a year later.

And now that the Rest Stop Stories podcast is wrapping up its public release, I decided it was time to re-edit the stories and make them available in yet another format. While I love audio, my first love is writing. And I wanted to get these stories out to a larger audience because I had a lot of fun writing them and I’m very proud of the result.

I’ve spent my entire life living in Massachusetts. It’s an odd little state situated among other odd little states to make up New England. One of my favorite experts in local folklore, Jeff Belanger of New England Legends, describes it as the attic of America because it is full of old, weird stories. And he’s absolutely right. Those old, weird stories inspire me to write my own new, weird stories. And the collection you’re holding right now is the result.

These stories range among genres and intensity. Some of them are very light-hearted while others get violent. One might be silly while the next one is a heartbreaker. But the thread connecting them all is the uniqueness of Massachusetts, its history, and its people.

Enjoy!

Amanda McCormack

April 2022

1

Allston Christmas

It’s that time of year again folks! The air is getting crisper, the children are getting restless as a new school year approaches. And in the Boston neighborhood of Allston-Brighton, it’s like the earth itself is holding its breath. Because it’s that time of year again. It’s September first.

Allston Christmas is here.

You’ve all heard of Allston Christmas. That beautiful, joyful day when the students return, every lease in the city of Boston turns over, and the population of Allston swells 124 percent. And piles upon piles of apartment refuse cover the street, ripe for the picking and providing the day with its festive moniker.

Now, over the past few years, Allston Christmas has become oddly commercialized. Carolers sing in the streets, it shows up on advertising, people come in to pick through and find things to sell. But despite all this, the Spirit of Allston Christmas lives on.

It lives on in that U-Haul over there at the side of Storrow Drive, top sliced cleanly off by the BU Bridge. And that U-Haul currently wedged under the bridge. And those three U-Hauls lining Storrow Drive, waiting for their turn to get stuck.

A fine harvest of Storrowing this season.

It lives on in the mountains of apartment furnishing strewn throughout Comm Ave. Looking for a new cabinet! There’s a fine-looking unit! How about a mattress? Good god, no. Do you want bedbugs? Take a moment to think through your decisions, please. Honest to God, I don’t know what you’re thinking. Looking for a new roommate! Oh, someone tossed a perfectly good one! Here, dust him off and get on the T home.

The spirit of Allston Christmas lives on in that bookcase you managed to lug home. The one with the ornate carvings all along the sides. The one packed full of old college texts you’ll definitely use again in the future. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture and you can’t imagine why anyone would just toss it out on the street. Your roommate, Sarah, agrees with you, though she says something about how the carvings along the side give her the creeps.

But everything gives Sarah the creeps. So honestly, you’re not that concerned.

But then the lights start to flicker every night. You chalk it up to your shitty management company, grumbling about the unreasonable amount of rent you pay to be treated like this. At midnight, every overhead light in your apartment flicks on just long enough to wake you both up, but not long enough for you to be sure it wasn’t a dream until Sarah comments on it in the morning, complaining over her breakfast smoothie. This happens every night for a week, then you just get used to it. Must just be part of city living.

The voices must be too. They’re not coming from the stoned college kids in the unit upstairs. These voices sound ancient, whispering just below your range of hearing. You hear them in the still of the hot September nights without air conditioning. You hear them over the hiss of the shower. And, perhaps most concerning, you hear them underlying Sarah’s own words as she asks if you want to go grab a coffee with her.

But, like your mom said when you moved to college, there will always be aspects of communal living that you won’t like. So you’ll take the good with the bad here. At least you’ve got easy access to the Green Line.

Then Sarah comments on the ornate carvings. They look like faces, she says as she peers at the side of the shelf, beer in hand. They didn’t look like faces when you found it, right?

You shrug from the sofa, another Allston Christmas find. You don’t think so? But it’s been so long since you’ve actually looked at the bookshelf. Like, at least a month and a half.

That’s definitely a face, she says. She traces the lines with the base of her beer bottle. See? Eyes here, mouth here. It’s laughing.

She frowns.

Or maybe screaming. And look, here’s another. And another. There are three