Camino Muerto

A sharp pain rings out from behind your right ear. Directions tilt. Your body stiffens; your pupils dilate. The pavement is speeding towards your eyes. Brace for impact.

Zero, Tau. “Endless Road.” Tau Zero, 15 Apr. 2015, tau0.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/endless-road/.

You are standing outside a bar.

Your head feels clear.

Free of memories and haze.

Lonely, yet you are not alone. It is settled next to a gas station left to rot, and a convenience store mainly dealing in fireworks to bored teenagers who seem not to see anyone but themselves. This little echo of civilization built on a long stretch of highway; a stretch disappearing into the desert on both ends of it’s twisting asphalt. On either side of the road are harsh street lights, cutting bright beams down to the ground.

Familiar, but not a haunt. The signs in the windows cast cheaply coloured light onto your skin.

“Girl’s Night!” casts red light on your left side and “Happy Hour 4-6!” casts blue light on your right. It is never night here. It is never 4 to 6. The sun is always just about to disappear. The sky perpetually a halo of orange fading into grungy purple, with a hazy band of teal running between the two.

The taste of your last drink fades out of your mouth, only replaced by a metallic grit and flavour. You reach inside, pulling out a shiny quarter. Unused, newly minted.

What a strange place to store loose change.

The purr of an engine rumbles through the vacant desert. Appearing at the edge of the edge less highway, is an exact copy of your dad’s first car. You were never allowed to touch it, yet you dreamed of even riding in the passenger seat. The black Cadillac Eldorado, the one that sat in your driveway as you waited for the man who held the keys to return.

The final memories of filled driveways and empty chairs leak from your mind, until you are left staring at a car.

You don’t recognize it, but it is quite beautiful. A convertible. You’d struggle to name the make and model.

The driver looks up.

You see his face.

You look down.

You forget his face.

The sharp pain returns, if only for a moment.

“Do you have the toll?”, he gestures to the quarter. His fingers are too long.

Shaking fingers greet his, a transaction completed. The driver leaves his side of the vehicle, moving to open the door to the backseats for you.

“Passenger seat is for special guests only I’m afraid.”

You nod, crawling onto leather seats facing open air.

The car lurches forward, then enters a glide. Your spine stiff from the presumed formality of entering a stranger’s car. Your hands are lost, wandering from pockets to lap, searching for a comforting home. The driver hasn’t spoken, his purpose a complete unknown. A neutral party.

He turns back, and smiles. His teeth are too long. He returns to the wheel, and you once again forget any concept of the face one row ahead of you. He exists just in presence, the idea of a man in the front seat. Turning back, you look for where you started. The bar’s lights still present in the vast desert. A gaudy beacon of humanity. You blink, and the lights dip behind the horizon, swallowed by the grungy purple.

Zero, Tau. “Endless Road.” Tau Zero, 15 Apr. 2015, tau0.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/endless-road/.

You feel your eyelids get heavy as time drags on, the repetition of light beams from streetlights passing over the car lulling you to sleep.

Sleep is soothing in the car, reminiscent of childhood road trips you no longer remember. No dreams come, the inspiration for them having dripped from your mind. The time from when you close your eyes to when you open them is not filled with anything, it is just missing.

Screeching brakes stop the car and your rest. Ahead of the car, on the endless highway, is a muddled silhouette in the headlights. A pack of coyotes, three, all moving in unison. The driver exits the vehicle, and moves to greet them. They circle him, baring fangs. He bends down, allowing them to sniff his coat; they part, no longer interested. Their three heads bob off into the desert, searching for another victim.

Your chauffeur then moves around to the trunk, pulling out two large shovels. He places one in your hands and beckons you to follow.

Into the empty dust you go, a pair of unknown souls. The wastes are featureless, interrupted only by your momentary presence and footprints, which are covered in mere seconds. The land of nothing suddenly gives way to a rising obelisk out of the horizon.

A single streetlight in the middle of the desert, it’s cutting beam casting a tight rectangle onto the ground. The pain returns.

What a strange place for such a light.

“Here, we dig.”

Your shovel hits the ground, following the driver’s lead. Together you dig within the confines of the rectangle, burying it deeper into the dust. Heave after heave leaves a hole fit to hold the entirety of a human soul, and the body it uses for containment.

All that digging has left you tired.

The hole seems inviting, a place to sleep.

What a strange place to rest.

The driver holds out his hand, and helps you down. You lay in the dust, your eyelids dragging down. The sharp pain fades away. The streetlight is soothing. Sleep is coming. The time from when you close your eyes to the time when you open them won’t be filled with anything. It will just be missing.

Zero, Tau. “Endless Road.” Tau Zero, 15 Apr. 2015, tau0.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/endless-road/.

 

 

Picture: Zero, Tau. “Endless Road.” Tau Zero, 15 Apr. 2015, tau0.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/endless-road/.

Gif: Giphy. “Black And White Artists On Tumblr GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY.” GIPHY, GIPHY, 18 Apr. 2018, giphy.com/gifs/black-and-white-Z9DsXL8KSP0mA.

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