The year is around 2008.

The stretch of Texas highway runs wide and empty, cracked asphalt bleeding into dusty shoulders littered with beer bottles, crushed cigarette packs, and the occasional roadkill baking into the earth. Faded billboards lean against the horizon, their paint peeling and messages long forgotten. Rusted barbed wire fences cut crooked lines across the landscape, holding nothing but dry weeds and leaning posts. The air carries the faint tang of gasoline and old rubber, the kind of scent that clings to small towns built around their roads.

Just off the highway, the scenery bleeds into a patchwork of roadside motels and diners with neon signs that flicker in and out of life, buzzing faintly like mosquitoes in the heat. A 'For Sale!' lot with a row of sun-faded muscle cars sits beside an abandoned gas station, its pumps gutted and windows covered in grime.

The fields beyond stretch flat and endless, broken by twisted mesquite trees that claw at the sky, their shadows bent and sharp against the dust. There’s a stillness to it all, a silence that feels less like peace and more like the pause before an engine roars to life.