The Road Goes Ever On Novels & Stories

The road starts to look familiar. At first, I don’t think much of it. Just trees. The same bend. The same long stretch of empty road. Then it clicks. My grip on Calix tightens slightly as he drives past a bad spot. This is the same road. The one we took when we left the mansion. I don’t say anything. I just sit there, the wind brushing against my face as my eyes follow the path ahead. We keep going. Five minutes.

Freedom tasted like metal and cum and the open road. I was never going back.

Right now his legs were in the air, not that he attained some meditation state but Moth was grabbing him by his collar right now. He was barking something but Allen couldn't tell what it was so he had to guess. "Okay my bad" "You listening to what I am saying" Moth raised one eyebrow. "As long as the feelings reach the heart, other things don't matter… Okay, something along the lines of ``what are you doing?" "Dammit I am a better philosopher. And you asking me? I didn't say that" "Where are we going" "See for yourself" The 5 of them traveled on a long barren road that had no end in sight. The road was so silent that the sound of their doors steps could be distinctly heard.

I can’t describe the elation and aching chest pain it gives me. The truck is long gone, and I stare off in the direction it went, along a long road that curves off out of sight, and I gaze both ways, trying to figure out which would be the shortest route to a town. One might be close; one might not. Or maybe I’m being too hopeful, and it stretches for miles either way with nothing at all. If I have any chance of being rescued, I have to stick to the tarmac and not stray. Roads mean people, and people mean being saved. I am not going to give up. I get to my feet and follow the truck's route, hoping it’s the right choice.

The route shuddered as if that distinction itself burned. The route creature dragged itself forward another inch, all stolen mouths trembling with effort. “First crossing joins scent to memory,” it whispered. “Second crossing joins memory to future. Third crossing makes the pair a road.” Its grey eyes fixed on us with wet, fascinated hunger. “The old line failed because it could never force both hearts to open at once. But you…” It shivered. “You keep reaching for each other voluntarily.” “That is the least seductive sales pitch I have ever heard,” I said.

"Joanna, congratulations on your wedding." "By the time you see this video, I will already be dead. I no longer care who was right or wrong. I only want to tell you that I hate you. I hate you so much. If there is a next life, I never want to see you again." His voice before death was hollow, painful, cold, and weightless, like a judgment echoing from hell. Joanna's face turned deathly pale. She suddenly looked up at the giant screen.

"The road back is not the same road. You took the outward road before you knew what you would find. The return road carries the knowing. It is heavier. It is also the road that leads to the people who are waiting. And that makes it, in the end, the easier one." * * * They stay at the staging location that night.

Edenwood’s silence was one of them. Spiro eventually lifted one hand and pointed down a narrower road half-hidden by broken branches. “Turn there,” Spiro instructed. Ronan obeyed. The van groaned over uneven ground. The road was barely a road now, more of a path used by patrols before the world ended. Branches scraped the side of the van. Smoke thickened again, not fresh enough to choke, but heavy enough to sting my eyes.

The lime green 1980 Ford Pinto station wagon groaned as it crested a hill, its chassis rattling like a box of loose nails. The engine emitted a rhythmic, sickly wheeze, but somehow, the metal beast surged forward, cutting through the absolute dark of a road that didn't appear on any GPS. This was a "Vein Road",a back way into Calabasas that stitched together fragments of the physical forest with pockets of the Gray. To the human eye, it was a deer trail; to those with the sight, it was a shimmering, emerald-black ribbon of half-realized asphalt.