Category: Blog

Gregory Scott Gentry II

(Old story, revisited for your enjoyment)

The bench sat at the corner of an abandoned ghost town, where the dusty, empty road stretched endlessly under a sun that seemed fixed in the sky. The town was a shadow of its former self—boarded-up windows, cracked sidewalks, and porches sagging like they’d given up long ago. It was quiet, not peaceful quiet but the kind that made you feel like even the wind had grown bored of the place.

At the center of it all, where 11:11th Street met Black Boulevard, the bench waited. It had always been there, at least as far as I could tell. Crafted from a single piece of wood, its surface carried the weight of time in its creaks and groans, in the smooth polish of its right side where I always sat. It didn’t just sit there, though. The bench lived. It had scars—carvings that told stories only it could remember.

One carving caught the sunlight: a jagged spiral that I’d scratched into the armrest during a restless evening long ago. It had no particular meaning at the time, but now it felt like a mirror of how my thoughts spiraled some days. Next to it was a cluster of tally marks, faded but sharp, counting something I couldn’t quite recall—nights spent waiting? Regrets I’d tried to tally? I wasn’t sure anymore. On the backrest, near the center, was a bigger carving: my initials, surrounded by what used to be someone else’s. I’d dug a deep line through the other letters years ago. The bench remembered what I wanted to forget.

Kid Danger leaned casually against the other end of the bench, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets. “You ever think about how much of your life is carved into this thing?” he asked, his voice light but his eyes thoughtful.

I lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating a small heart scratched near the seat—a memory of a moment I cherished long ago. “Yeah, sometimes,” I admitted. “Guess it’s like a journal I can’t throw away.”

“It’s more like a confessional,” Kid said, running his fingers over a faded crack in the wood. “All the stuff you won’t say out loud ends up here. It’s kind of poetic, in a depressing way.”

I smirked, exhaling a plume of smoke. “You think everything’s poetic.”

“Not everything.” He tilted his head, staring at another carving—an arrow I’d etched into the backrest, pointing down the road. “What’s this one about?”

I followed his gaze. “The way out, maybe. Or at least the way I thought out was.”

“Did it work?” he asked, his tone lighter now.

I shrugged. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

The bench creaked under my weight as I shifted, its voice as familiar as an old friend’s. It had held me through so much—when my hands shook too much to carve, when the only thing keeping me together was sitting still and feeling the wood beneath me. The carvings weren’t just marks; they were echoes of moments I couldn’t carry anywhere else.

“You know what’s funny?” Kid asked, his grin widening. “For someone who says they hate looking back, you sure leave a lot behind.”

“Yeah, well,” I muttered, flicking ash into the dirt. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to put it.”

Kid leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “What if the bench gets tired of carrying it all?”

I laughed dryly. “It hasn’t yet.”

The truth was, I wasn’t sure if the bench could get tired. It seemed built for this—holding my weight, my memories, my failures. Every scar in its wood felt like a silent witness, a quiet keeper of my struggles. The day I etched the spiral, I’d been lost in my thoughts for hours, carving until my hand cramped. The day I cut through those initials, the bench had soaked up my anger, my regret, without complaint.

“You ever think about adding more?” Kid asked, gesturing to the empty patch of wood near the left side.

I looked at him, then at the bench. That patch was clean, untouched, a blank space waiting for something new. I hesitated. “Maybe,” I said, though the idea of marking it again felt like admitting I hadn’t moved on.

The wind shifted, carrying the faint smell of sandalwood. The banners that stood in the distance fluttered slightly, their faded markings unreadable but strangely familiar. The bench didn’t creak this time; it just stayed steady, as if to remind me it wasn’t going anywhere.

“I think it likes you,” Kid said suddenly, grinning.

“Who? The bench?” I scoffed. “It’s a bench, Kid.”

“Yeah, but look at it,” he replied, waving a hand. “It’s holding all your crap and still standing. That’s love, Scotty.”

I shook my head, laughing softly. “You’re impossible.”

He leaned back, draping his arm over the backrest. “Maybe. But you keep me around for a reason.”

That was the thing about Kid. He wasn’t real, but sometimes he made more sense than anything else in my life. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was right about the bench. It didn’t just carry me. It carried us—all the parts of me I didn’t know how to keep anywhere else.

The sun dipped lower, stretching shadows across the cracked road. I finished my cigarette and ground the butt into the dirt with my heel. Kid sat quietly now, his gaze fixed on the horizon. The bench held us both without complaint, its carvings catching the last light of the day like a patchwork of stories that only it could tell.