Nightmare on Peachtree
It’s not Freddy that haunts my dreams
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, Spooky Season! Finally, the oppressive Georgia humidity has dissipated, replaced by cool mornings. It makes overpriced spiced lattes oh so much sweeter.
It’s also an excellent time to indulge in a safe, fun way of facing our fears. Scary slasher movies. Socially distanced haunted house monsters. Standing six feet away from someone not wearing a mask at the fall festival… Okay, so the fun is mostly safe.
There’s only one thing that terrifies me for real, though. It lives year-round, hovering right outside my perimeters. Atlanta. It strikes fear into my soul thinking about driving in the city.
As impressive as Atlanta can be, it’s an absolute nightmare to navigate. The roads are a hot mess, and I refuse to subject myself to that insanity. I mean, come on. There are fifteen streets within the perimeter named Peachtree. Not to mention another seventy-ish roads with some variation of the two words.
Despite its horrors, Atlanta does provide some excellent fodder for inspiration. I hope you’ll enjoy my spooky takes on the city and its inhabitants.
If you’re an Atlanta native, I’m sure you’ll be familiar with some of these horrors. If you’re new to the city? Well, you were warned.
- Some poor, naïve visitor whispers, “Hotlanta.” A mother named Karen shrieks and covers her child’s ears. Others walk by with heads bowed, desperate to be somewhere with A/C. We dare not say it, for the humidity is omnipresent, but it is too late. The humidity never lets us forget that the fires never really died.
- You miss your exit on 285. No big deal, you’ll get off at the next exit, you think, but it’s too late. You’re now caught in the endless loop that is Spaghetti Junction. Forever looking for the next exit and knowing it will never come.
- A young man says something foolish, and his grandmother responds with, “Bless your heart.” The young man screams and crumples to the floor under the weight of the condescension.
- The Vortex draws you in, but you’re hungry, so you innocently think nothing of it. The room spins, and the doors disappear. You want to eat the burger, but instead, the burger eats you. You are now the burger.
- With every new soul that moves to the city, Atlanta’s monstrous reach extends even further. It cries for it cannot devour anymore; it’s too full. Citizens demand to know where the city limit ends. City officials cry in despair, for they do not know.
- You decide to take a ride on the Skyview, the eye of Atlanta. It’ll be fun, you think. After all, who doesn’t love a good ferris wheel? But the higher you go, the more you see. It’s too much. You reach the top, and you can see everything in Atlanta. Everything. A shadow slithers down a sewer drain somewhere in Buckhead. Supernaturals parade through Little Five Points, trying to blend with the humans and failing. You see a sea of specters mixed among the patrons in Underground Atlanta looking for the place it once was. As the wheel falls back to Earth, you know it changed you. You can never unsee these things. Your eyes are open now.
- You’re new to the city and have yet to memorize The Peachtree Maze. You need to get across town, so you hop on the interstate. The traffic starts as soon as you are on the ramp. You look in front of you and see a sea of cars; you look behind you, and there’s another sea of cars. You’re gridlocked. You see the exit in the distance, but it never moves closer than the horizon. You look at your GPS; it shows you are five miles from your destination with an hour to go. How long you’ve been here already, you do not know.
- “It’s a straight shot from Buckhead to Piedmont Park if you take Peachtree,” your friend advises. He has tickets to a summer music festival that are too good to pass up. You’re unfamiliar with the city, but it can’t be that difficult to get there. You forgo using a GPS like a fool. Halfway there, you hit a detour. Road signs encourage you to take a right, then two lefts. You’re back on Peachtree, but it’s not the same. You come to another detour — a right and two lefts lead to another Peachtree. You go through fifteen different Peachtree tours, with each version differing vastly from the last. You somehow make it to Piedmont Park. Your friend waves from the entrance, a blaze of trees behind him. “Glad you finally made it. The fall festival is almost over.”
Thanks for reading, guys and ghouls! If you ever do find yourself lost in Atlanta, there’s so much to enjoy. It’s an incredible city with a little something for everyone. Just don’t drive anywhere. The only parking is in purgatory.
