I'm taking a brief detour from Tradewinds, as this stand-alone story just happens to fit in well here...
The Road Triphttp://www.absolutechaos.net/viewstory.php?sid=10511Summary: Asleep at the wheel… It really seemed that night that we could have driven right off the face of the earth, and I believe we did, in a way.
Categories: Original Fiction
Characters: None
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Suspense
Rated: PG-13
Warnings: Death, Violence
Series: None
Challenges: None
Published: 03/25/11
Story Notes: Though this is a stand-alone story, it does contain references to places and things that might sound familiar to anyone who's read Tradewinds Part 5.
excerpt, from the Chapter 2:
…I don’t know how long we rode on in contemplative silence, the night seemed to go on forever.
Neither of us had bothered to restart the tape, so each of us was left to our own foreboding thoughts. I know I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t figure out what. Part of me wanted to tell spooky stories again— the only trouble was I was already as spooked as I had been that one night— but I also wanted to make light of the situation somehow. I was sure this was just another of those times when I had managed to give myself the hoodoos, and Mark and I would have a good laugh about it tomorrow.
Then again, at times like that I’ve always managed to convince myself that this time it was for real, that this time the everyday world I knew would start to unravel, and something vast and mysterious would unfold around me.
The main thing that struck me was that I couldn’t remember the last time a car had passed us in either direction, and that only served to add more to my growing sense of foreboding. I remembered telling myself, Well duh, who would be driving in this? Us. And to me, it felt like we were the last people on earth.
Mark made me jump when he finally spoke, saying, “Man, I don’t know if I can keep my eyes open much longer. What say we stop at this Eyrie place and see if they have a damn motel?”
I nodded my agreement. I knew what he meant; as eerie as it was out here, with everything drifting in out of the fog, it was also so quiet. At times I was almost certain this was a dream, and I was going to wake up to find that Mark had been driving all this time in silent boredom. Even when he turned the tape deck back on, it couldn’t quite drown out the underlying quiet.
A quiet that was finally shattered by the flashing lights that rushed out of the mists swallowing the highway behind us. Mark later told me he was so startled that he nearly hit the gas. That probably would have been a bad thing, but on top of what happened next, I don’t really see how it could have made things that much worse. I remember feeling an inexplicable need to be anywhere else but here at that moment.
Mark seemed to cruise for a moment or two in indecision, then he slowed down even more and pulled over.
I thought, Well, at least we can’t get busted for speeding…
On a foggy night…
Author
Topic: shadesmaclean/Tradewinds updates (Read 42298 times)