Editing Taylor S. Marley (section)

==Trigger:==
It wasn't long after I got my drivers license that I started frequenting Martha's Cafe. It started one night after a screaming match with my Mom, when I just needed to be elsewhere. I got into the old beat up Corolla my brother left when he went to college, and just drove. At some point I realized I was wasting a lot of gas, and was hungry... and lost.
That's when I came across Martha's. I'd make a joke about fate, but sometimes I wonder if that's a joking matter.

The place is just off the Highway, with a parking lot big enough to accommodate all the 18 wheelers that come through. The gas station was an old Shell number, complete with their shitty not-that-convenient store.
Martha's, though, was something special. There aren't enough places like it, and there seem to be fewer all the time. A truck stop that was little more than a family run diner. No chains crowding around it, no freaks, just Martha's family keeping the business alive, with a terribly paid and woefully small staff.

That first night was simple. I filled up the car, and then went in to fill myself up. Martha was still working there, back then, but she didn't do much accept talk to some of the old timers and making people feel welcome. I can still remember her there, with her blue hair shinning in the cheap lights, as she leaned on the counter and flirted with truckers half her age. The place smelled of cigarette smoke and most of it was hers.

When I came in out of the night, though, she somehow managed to greet me with a smile, sit me down, and make me feel safe and warm, and never asked me a single question that wasn't about what I wanted from the greasy spoon menu. The food was tasty, in a way anything with salt and fat is, and the coffee strong. There, in the midst of grown blue collar men and past their prime waitresses, I somehow felt more at home than in my parents' house.

I went back there a lot.

I lost my virginity to a trucker older than my Dad. God, I was angry that night. I got my first real job there, as a waitress. I got to tell myself I wasn't a whore, because they put money from blowjobs in the tip jar instead of my pocket. It was fucked up, I guess, but it was better than being at home. 
That's probably not fair to my parents, but fuck 'em.

It stayed in that weird fucked up way till I met Mitch.
Mitch seemed like just about every guy around, but he was... I dunno, straighter? Like, not like less gay, but more sound. The kind of guy who when you make advances, plays along while his friends are watching, but asks you what the fuck you're doing with your life when you're alone.

Mitch was a good guy. He helped me sort through a lot. Most of all, he helped me deal with what happened to Martha.

It wasn't long before I turned 20. I'd been going to Martha's for four years, and working there for a little under three. I was still living with my parents, but they'd given up on giving me shit about college. I was out on a smoke break, alone for once because it was raining. I saw Martha come out of the building around noon, and I waved. I guess she didn't see me.

She just walked out into the rain. It was pretty hard, but not so hard I couldn't see what was going on. She went round to one of the trucks. Big fucker with the Coca-Cola add all down the side. She went round the back. She was there for awhile, and I was just wondering what the fuck was going on. I guess she managed to open the back, because people started to get out. There were, like, seven or eight of them, and they looked like shit. I thought: 'oh, shit, is this human trafficking? Like... the real shit?' I still don't really know.

What I do know, is that the people walked out into the rain, spreading their arms like they were trying to touch as many raindrops as they could, except the last one who got out. She was this big woman, like morbidly obese, and naked. She walked out, and hugged Martha. I couldn't see exactly what happened, because she blocked Martha completely, but when she turned around, Martha was just gone... like, like she got sucked into all the fat.

Then I heard the other people laughing.
One of them went round the front, into the cab, while everyone else piled back into the trailer, I couldn't see well from where I was, and I couldn't move for staring, but I think they had to haul the fat woman back up.

The truck drove off, and I never saw Martha again.

I... I didn't really know what to tell people. The stop didn't have any cameras back then, and I would have sounded insane. So, I just described what happened, minus the disappearance. Like, that they threw her in the trailer and drove off.
They still looked at me like I was crazy.

Mitch stopped by about a month later. He made our route fairly often, but as a freelancer he didn't have a regular schedule like some of our customers. I waited on him, and he asked where Martha was and I said, "She got taken by a fat lady."

He frowned, and nodded, and asked me what the Hell I meant by that.

I should have just told him about the kidnapping, like I told everyone else... but something about the way he asked... it's hard to describe. So, instead, I told him. The whole thing.

And, he believed me.

He... believed me.

And then he told me about this time he saw a car driven by a mannequin crash into another car, and said there was strange stuff out there. Stuff that most people don't pay attention to. I could have kissed him I was so happy.

I started asking people about strange things they'd seen, and being more open with my story. Tyler got mad, and fired me. He didn't want to hear this crazy stuff about his Mom. I took to the road. I went around to truck stops and other out of the way places, asking people about it, sharing stories, trying to learn. A surprising number of people, when plied appropriately, had stories to tell. A few even had theories about what was going on and, a very, very few... showed me more stuff. Magic stuff. Weird, and wonderful, and, occasionally, scary as Hell. Most of it had no real practical applications, but people always talked about whales when they were minnows. I didn't really get it, but I picked up a few things. I started to work it out.

Especially when someone told me about Dirk Allen, and his latest book.

Every so often I go back home, to check on Martha's and see if she's shown up, or if anything at home has changed or if... if Mitch has shown up. He disappeared at some point. Occasionally people say they've seen his rig, Sweet, Sweet Connie, a semi with a buxom slightly chubby blonde sex bomb painted down the side (it's hard to miss) driving around, but no one seems to have seen him.

Once, I heard someone describe that rig and say it was being driven by a mannequin. I think back to Mitch's story and wonder...

And, now, I've come back to Martha's to find it empty. And apparently empty for decades, not just the year I've been gone. And the town is gone, too.