The highway stretches long and mean,
spooled out like old cassette tape,
cracked and unraveling, a recording of a country
that once believed itself permanent .

The billboards have nothing left to sell but ghosts:
half-peeled ads for malls that don’t exist,
smiling families in colors the sun has leeched hollow,
a phone number for salvation that no longer connects.

The exit sign approaches slow as an afterthought.
Gas. Food. Jesus.

Milemarker 55.90.
The sign for the rest stop says Allentown.
It’s not, really.

It’s in that gray liminal zone where the map stops caring—
Wescosville? Cetronia ?
Maybe both. Maybe neither.

I check my phone—
3:17 AM, October 2017.
The battery’s at 11%.

I pull off, the asphalt shifting beneath me,
the roadwork signs long abandoned,
cones scattered like loose teeth.
The overpass above is thick with weeds,
roots breaking concrete, proof that even
the American Dream can be reclaimed
by something older, hungrier .

Then, the glow—
fluorescent, sodium vapor, buzzing.
The rest stop rises from the dark,
a lonely island in a sea of broken things,
half oasis, half mausoleum .
Behind it, the last gasps of a steel town,
the factories stilled, their windows blind,
their skeletons rusting under a sky
too big to give a damn.

Inside, the hum of a refrigeration unit fills the air,
a low, steady drone, the sound of something
waiting to fail. The coffee station
is a shrine of burnt offerings ,
yesterday’s drip thick as motor oil.

And they are here.
Of course they are.

They arrive in caravans,
their trucks wrapped in flags,
like bandages on a body too ruined to heal .
Somewhere, a man in a golden tower
counts the offering plate.

The gas station hums beneath fluorescent haloes,
a holy stop on the pilgrimage between
Fox News and foreclosure.
Diesel pumps work overtime,
long past when the grid was supposed to fail.
A screen above the register flickers—
muted news loops through cracked subtitles:

—The deal was bad. We made it great.
—FBI traitor removed. America safe again.
—Historic profits for the faithful.
—more after the break—

The cashier keeps a list of their revelations,
each bullet point a prophecy delivered
between Marlboro purchases and scratch-off prayers:
● How the deep state hides in microwave ovens.
● Why JFK Jr. is living in a truck stop bathroom .
● The secret messages coded in Big Pharma receipts.
● What’s really in the tax bill they cheered for.
● Which saints own condos in Dubai.
● Why no one gets rich selling the gospel—
unless they own the church.

They sip burnt coffee, faces blue-lit
by the scripture of their phones,
reading verses in comment sections
where their prophets type in all caps.
Their communion is processed sugar,
their catechism, a livestream.

And I watch them—
not with contempt,
but with the quiet horror of knowing
they were born into a rigged game,
told by men who never prayed
that God only helps those who help themselves.

Their leader threw paper towels
at the starving and called it a blessing .
Their bishops hoard fortunes in blind trusts
while preaching sacrifice.
Their kingdom of heaven
comes with an IPO and a monthly fee.

Lisa, the cashier, drops my change
onto the counter like an offering.
I ask if she thinks they believe it all.

She exhales, slow.
“They believe it enough to be afraid.”

Outside, the tail lights burn red as revelation,
glowing on roads paved with borrowed time.
They disappear into the night, still tithing
to men who drink from golden chalices .

And somewhere, a man in a golden tower laughs ,
as the faithful keep the engines running.