a melange of flies

Many months later the hitchhiker found himself in a gas station deep in the woods of some place he'd never heard of and couldn't find on a map. He bought a bottle of cold root beer and leaned up against a cinder block wall next to a dumpster. It was summer and the rancid trash, full of paper pop cups, hot dog wrappers, and soiled diapers attracted a melange of flies. "Melange," thought the hitchhiker, rolling the word across his tongue like a sweet, after dinner liquer. "Melange." I was there a few months ago, some tired old town stuck in the hot hills of Georgia. "No," it was some guy I met in a phone booth twenty years ago frantically looking for a dime. The hitchhiker gulped his root beer, belched, and thought of his beloved, dead wife.