“Folks ‘round these parts been knowing for a long time this was gonna be a bad day for parking,” the old man tells you. He sighs softly and takes another pull from his lemonade, which you discern from its brown-yellow color and the old man’s slurred speech has a little more in it than lemons and water.
You sit quietly on the porch in the rocking chair next to him, the creaking sounds of the dry wood against loose nails punctuating each movement back and forth. The mid-January air is far warmer than normal, lending credence to the old man’s otherwise nonsensical rantings of bad days and long-held traditions.
“I knew ever since my daddy told me,” the sagely drunk continues, “I reckon daddy learned it from his. ‘s why we put up the signs, I’d say. Daddy always said a terrible fate’d befall the man dared to park his truck on the street on this day.”
You gaze at your trunk parked out on the road, properly by law, but apparently against custom. You hear a clunk and a scream from inside the decrepit house behind you.
The old man turns to face you for the first time and grins with a mouth full of red-stained teeth.
“And it seems he weren’t wrong.”