illphated
The Curse of Prosperity Flats
illphated.com | Field Notes on Local Tragedies
Before she was a ghost, Elara was a promise printed on cheap paper. You’ve probably seen the poster, even if you don’t know the story. A beautiful cowgirl, hair the color of sun-scorched wheat, with eyes so green they seemed to hold the last vestiges of life in a dying land. A green cowboy hat tilted just so. And the words, plastered in bold, desperate type: #WE NEVER STOP TRYING.
That was the motto in Prosperity Flats. It was less a town and more a collection of dusty hopes huddled together against the Wyoming wind. The farms were failing, the water was scarce, and the young were leaving in droves. Then, the Sterling Oil & Gas Company came, promising a black-veined salvation that lay thousands of feet beneath their cracked soil.
Elara, born and raised on a failing ranch, believed them. She had a grit that was almost radiant, an optimism so fierce it was contagious. When Sterling Oil needed a face for their local investment drive, she was the obvious choice. She wasn’t just a model; she was the town’s chief believer. She posed for the photo, her smile genuine, the oil derricks painted into the background like monuments to a future that was already assured.
The poster went up in every window. The slogan became a prayer. #WE NEVER STOP TRYING, they’d say as they sold a family heirloom to buy another share. #WE NEVER STOP TRYING, they’d murmur as they signed over another acre of useless farmland for drilling rights.
They drilled for months. The first well was dry. The second, too. The company men, with their slick city smiles, just pointed to the poster of Elara. “She’s not giving up, is she? We never stop trying!” So the town poured the last of its savings into a third well, “The Prosperity Gusher.” They drilled deeper than was wise, ignoring the groans of the earth and the strange, sour smell that began to taint their well water.
Elara was there the day it happened, hauling coffee and sandwiches to the exhausted rig workers. She was standing by the derrick, her real-life green hat casting a shadow over her determined face, when the ground began to tremble. It wasn’t the triumphant shudder of striking oil. It was a deep, guttural roar from the planet’s belly.
They had bypassed the oil. Their relentless, desperate trying had punched a hole straight into a massive, high-pressure pocket of sour gas.
The explosion was heard two counties away. It turned the derrick into a twisted metal skeleton and the sky into a canopy of black, greasy smoke that blotted out the sun for a week. The fire fed on the gas, an eternal flame on the tombstone of a town. Elara, the radiant promise on the poster, was gone—incinerated in the very heart of the hope she championed.
The company folded. The slick men vanished. The people of Prosperity Flats had nothing left to try for. The land was poisoned, the air unbreathable.
Today, if you drive through the skeleton of what was once Prosperity Flats, you might see it. Nailed to a rotted post, flayed by the wind and baked by the sun, is a single, tattered poster. Her green eyes are faded, her blonde hair is the color of dust, but the smile is still there. A ghostly, tragic smirk. Below it, you can just make out the words that became their epitaph. A perfect, cruel summation of their ill-fated ambition.
#WE NEVER STOP TRYING.
