Uneven Pavement Under a Green Sky

note: this is a fictional short story

Uneven Pavement Under a Green Sky

Pulling a half broken wagon down the cracked center line of an endless highway in a nameless landscape withering under the last rays of a dying sun. Waiting for the wagon to break. Waiting for the road to end. Waiting to overheat. Waiting to die. Waiting for someone he knows isn't coming.

Waiting to be saved.

Pushes forward through the baked hills searching for a tree to rest under, but they are all too far in the distance, and his feet are sore, and he is running low on water, and the wagon is about to break. It finally catches and breaks and jerks him to the ground. He takes the spilled bag and puts it on his shoulders and keeps walking down that cracked center line of that endless highway stretching through a nameless landscape withering under the last rays of a dying sun. Waits for the road to end.

Waits to be saved.

Waits to die.

Thinks about his brother. Thinks about his dog. Both are dead and have been that way for a long time but he still remembers them fondly and misses them till his heart becomes a fierce ache in his sun-burnt chest and he has to remind himself not to cry because there isn't much water left and his feet are sore and there isn't any shade and won't someone please save me?

Sits on that cracked center line on that endless highway and waits to die. Looks up at the dying sun painting the wispy clouds orange. Ignites the sky to burn with slow blue-green fire. Remembers his brother and his love of sunsets and wants to cry but he's dried out. A husk. He's got nothing left, and he'd cry about that sooner than he'd cry over the brother, and the dog, he lost all those years ago.

Lays down on that broken center line of that endless highway surrounded by a nameless landscape withering under the last rays of a dying sun. Lays down to die.

Gets back up, because he can't die.

Gets back up, waiting to be saved.

The stars wink at him. He winks back, blinking the tears from his eyes.

Remembers when we used to run through the fields at night with his dog and his brother and wants to give up right then and there more than he has in a long while.

But he can't die.

He can't be saved.

Walks along the uneven pavement of the endless stretch of road leading into an inky distance more uncertain than his faith in himself. He is broken, like the road. He is endless, like the road. He is nameless, like the land. He is withering under the last rays of a dying sun. He is forgotten.

He waits to be saved, just like he waits to die.

Is always waiting to die.

Is always waiting to be saved.

But neither comes, because is he forgotten and nameless and carries his memories as a burden. His burden that cannot be shared. A burden no one would understand

He walks down that twisted center line of that darkened highway wending through a forgotten land, guided by the thin light of a waning moon and a billion twinkling stars.

A hollow wind stirs the dead grass. Everything is dead. His hair moves on his head and he keeps looking forward into the hopeless blackness. Thinks of his brother. Thinks of his dog.

Thinks about his death.

He died once. Why can't he do it again?

He was saved, once.

Once.

Keeps walking through the inky night bathed in the moon's pale glow, stars winking above his head. Keeps walking down that cracked center line of that endless highway passing through a nameless landscape withered by a dying sun in a forgotten place that no one cares about, and cries. Cries for the dead. Cries for his brother. Cries for his dog.

Cries for himself.

Passes an old diner. Dead cars sitting in the gravel. Windows dusty and insides obscured. Something stirs behind the broken neon-fronted door and he walks faster. Walks faster down that endless road into a dark and uncertain future. Walks faster. Doesn't look back. Something black moves in the stalks of crisp dead grass. Something blacker than the night. Something the pale thin light of the moon does not shine on. Thinks about his brother and his dog and he breaks into a run.

Can hear the thing running after him. Claws scratching across the uneven pavement in deep grooves and it accelerates. So unnatural.

He looks ahead into the uncertain dark of that endless highway in a nameless landscape withered by a dying sun and thinks about his dead brother and his dead dog and thinks it wasn't so great after all.

He falls onto that cracked center line.

Waits to die.

Waits to be saved.