This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/ckjm on 2026-08-04 21:38:30+00:00.

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The town was named Venice, but I couldn't tell you why. There were no boats nor affiliation to water ways, the founders weren't Italian in the slightest, and we weren't known for romance nor history. The closest thing to a gondolier would have been old man Sticks and his worn out canoe that hadn't moved from his yard in over a decade. It had a rusted hole in the bottom, and for years he swore that he'd have it fixed for the weekend. My best guess is that the founders named it Venice simply because they thought it was ironic.

Downtown was picturesque, though, with red brick shops adorned in bright trim. I never quite knew why we called it Downtown, as if there was a midtown and uptown to compliment. Venice had just one functional road. A few businesses on one side, a few houses on the other. There was a blinking four-way light somewhere near the middle. One direction led west, one led east, and the others led to dirt roads with a few more houses in small, dead end cul-de-sacs. There was a church, a general store, gasoline and mechanical, liquor, and something else I've missed- but surely you understand. It was the expected, minimal infrastructure of any podunk. It had no tourism. No iconic cryptid. No festival nor landmark. No nothing.

Venice had beans. The plants rested in orderly rows through endless flat fields, but the legumes knew no confinement and their foliage spilled in tangled hordes outside the borders of agriculture. From the air or nearby peaks, it was a sea of sprawling, delicate, hungry vines, and they crept up the walls of the town’s few structures too, invading every aspect of our lives like a cancer.

I left for college and came back when I inherited my family’s house. I'm not sure why I didn't sell it at the time. I guess because I didn't think anyone would want to buy it if I had.

But when I left - more like escaped - the second time, I left for good. I just didn't realize how quickly I would forget entirely. My memories had disappeared as insidiously as the town itself did, and I reckon that makes sense when there's nothing left to return to.

See, nothing ever happened in Venice. I know that everyone says that about every small town, but Venice was a deep kind of dull. It was so underwhelming that I think Sticks never bothered to fix his canoe just so that he had something to look forward to each day. If he fixed it… what would he do next?

We had grown so complacent with nothingness, that when nothing became something we were wholly unprepared and surely convinced that it would resolve itself if we just ignored it for long enough. But things have a way of creeping up on you.

It started as a long, skinny crack, running east to west on top of what was formerly the Highway 78 corridor. It wasn’t absurd to find. It was a neglected road since eminent domain redirected the new highway corridor straight through the Lovett family's farm on the western-most territory of Venice. We never wanted the new highway, and the beans tried to steal the land back every step of the way as the new road materialized. The workers beat the vines back though, and, slowly, we became an inconvenient detour.

The new route demoted Old Highway 78 to a defunct, winding loop that wasn't even worth designating as a scenic or historic bypass.The state didn't invest money in maintaining it, so the crack didn't catch us off guard when it first appeared. It was just the consequence of time in our eyes.

I remember unexpectedly stumbling over it one day. I had blindly crossed that crack for what felt like months without issue, by then, it had become a feature. My toe abruptly caught its newly proud edge one afternoon. Bewildered, I followed the crack as far as my eyes could trace, both eastward and then westward, and I thought it looked much deeper, much wider, and like one side had dropped lower than the other. Admittedly, I didn't warrant much more concern beyond that, but I remember thinking the thought all the same.

The following morning came early at 7AM sharp with a stout intrusion. Jacob Sr rapped his knuckles on my door so firmly I'd have been worried that someone had died if my parents weren't already dead.

“Everett,” the wiry man kneaded his hands out of stress as he spoke to me, “you'd just best come see.”

Jacob Sr led me down the dirt road I had walked a thousand times since I was a boy. I was no expert on anything, none of us were, but matters like this were a community affair given our inexperience in everything but routine and blissful ignorance. Other denizens were trickling into the epicenter of something unusual at the same time, each wandering through the morning's fog that filled the space between the scarce Venice architecture.

Suddenly, Jacob Sr stopped me with a firm arm across my chest. I grunted, first at his blow, and next at the revelation that the previously nondescript crack had split to a deep crevice and I was walking clear towards its edge. A rock, propelled by my foot, skittered across the ground and into the abyss. I nervously watched it clatter during its descent until I could no longer hear it nor see it. I never heard it hit the bottom.

“Has to be a sink hole,” Clara chirped confidently in her country twang from the other side of the fifteen-foot-wide canyon.

I imagined that a part of her enjoyed feeling like a damsel in distress isolated where she was. In another life, she'd have been an eccentric socialite, but in Venice she occupied her time with the antics of two baby daddies on either end of the town, and even through the fog I could feel her eyeing me like she was looking for a third.

“Just like Centralia. Swallowed the whooole town. Lord rest ‘em.” She waxed, twirling her toes on the asphalt and attempting to strike conversation.

“Is Junior on that side?” I quipped.

I knew it'd piss her off and shut her up. She had married Davey, father of her oldest, but everyone except Davey knew that Jacob Junior had sired her youngest. As expected, she scrunched her face and ignored me.

“She might be right for once,” I spoke to no one in particular.

More Venetians congregated along the canyon, and I suggested to the group that we leave. But how? Half the cars had fallen into the crevice, and the remainder either didn't work or didn't have 4x4 to drive the tracked-out and muddy back roads through bean country. We could walk, but some of us weren't able bodied and even fewer seemed willing, scoffing that evacuation was dire for what, at the time, was just a hole in the ground by their own admissions.

By 9 o'clock, the fog had burned off but no progress had been made regarding our predicament. Some folks lightly bickered about what to do next, while others shrugged and went about their day as if nothing had changed.

I surveyed the divided town. The canyon grew with each passing minute, gradually consuming more of the earth as it collapsed into the seemingly bottomless maw. A utility pole on the western perimeter of town inched closer and closer to the edge, until it finally fell with a grumbling torrent of gravel and a shower of electric sparks. We never had cell reception to begin with, but the landlines and our power now joined the absence.

Another chunk slipped into the earth, this time taking Sticks’ wrecked canoe with it. The crevice had grown another five feet, easily, but still no one seemed too concerned as they debated along its unstable edge. I was anxious and my stomach twisted. The whole thing felt wrong.

But before I could attempt to inspire change, Clara questioned from across the gap in her typical sing-song voice, the way she always did when she wanted something.

“Everett, sugar,” she cooed, "I was goin’ to take the boys out with me to get groceries tonight, but it seems that plan won't work anymore, will it? Could you jus’ toss over some food? Davey Junior is jus’ growin’ like a beanstalk, ya know.” She smiled at the toddler.

The irony was not lost on me that she named the tot Davey Junior, but he was not at fault for his mother's infidelity.

“Sure, toss me your wallet and I'll go get it for you.” I smirked. She was always eager to manipulate, and I wasn't going to give her the opportunity.

“But- you- I- I can't throw that far!” She stammered.

“Naw, sure you can.” I insisted, gesturing my arms to catch.

She scowled, looked inside her knock-off Prada, scowled deeper, and - to my surprise - half heartedly threw the bag in a purposeful manner so that it flew through the air in a wide, pathetic arc straight into the crevice.

“Oops,” she feigned shock.

My eyes widened in surprise and I laughed. “You know what, I'll spot you, Clara,” I assured, half impressed at her dedication to the bit. I knew she wouldn't pay me back.

I had a heavily creased $10 in my pocket, and the meager general store wasn't well stocked. I grabbed a can of spam and a locally canned case of beans.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Clara scoffed when I tossed her the beans.

“I only had a ten-spot on me, Clara. I think everyone is eating cold beans tonight anyways. Besides, I gave you the spam too. You’ll make do.”

Clara frowned before storming off, dagging DJ by the arm.

No one else seemed to notice, but the crevice had grown again by the second day. The entire width of the road and most of the cement sidewalks had crumbled into that dark pit, and it now lapped at the edges of Downtown’s meager businesses. At least one structure was beginning to hang over it. But Venice went about undeterred.

P...

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