I miss the truck, sometimes, which was as much a home as a means to end this long task I have set out to accomplish. The bike gets me where I’m going (and many places I don’t mean to go), but it is more companion than shelter- a pet that trades service for fuel and good care. I see more on the bike- I experience more, for better or worse. Every warm day and every drop of rain. The smell of blossoming orchards and of drying leaves. I feel the lazy shadow dragging behind me and whipping in the wind. I worry, still, that it may get pulled up under the tires like an errant scarf, leading to some sort of eldritch maiming.

It hasn’t, yet.

I would get lost in the truck. Not on the road but inside the truck itself, in the landscape of plastic wrappers and ancient stains. Most miles would pass unnoticed and unremembered, ‘gray roads’ in a different sense, in the sense that they might as well not exist for all the evidence I would be able to conjure up in retrospect. Dark roads, then, like dark matter- the mysterious glue that holds it all together, that is endlessly expanding.

Where do we go in the time between things?

‘Though perhaps not exclusive to America, ‘The Traveler’s Sojourn’ maintains facilities along so much of the country’s infrastructure that the author would be remiss in excluding it. Accessible by car, bus, and train, the ‘Sojourn’ offers the weary mind a short respite in a place that is just outside the vehicle’s glass.

Tempting as it might be to question the purpose of the ‘Sojourn,’ or to assume that such a service is not without a price, it has persisted in being a relatively benign phenomenon. Perhaps, in our hurry to conflate the otherworldly with the grim, we neglect to consider any other world’s mundanity. Perhaps ‘The Traveler’s Sojourn’ is no more than a sun-warmed rock- a place to be for no reason but to be there.’

-traveler

‘Rumors of ‘The Dread Toll’ emerge over embers, they being a series of less beloved tales than your Jersey Devils and myriad-gender Moth-Beings, muttered only after the fire has wound down and allowed the night to encroach upon storytelling. The reluctance to voice these stories stems from a two-fold problem with every toll taking- that meeting a booth implies that a driver was either intoxicated or on the verge of sleep, and that the outcome of each encounter is widely mundane.

The average paying of ‘The Dread Toll’ begins late at night or early in the morning, often on a stretch of road that is familiar to the driver. A checkpoint emerges on the horizon, a gray, cloudy booth and a weathered gate. Condensation and grime obscure the toll-takers inside their boxes- though we know them to have humanoid silhouettes and dull voices. They demand payment through a crackling speaker and raise the gate when paid. The toll itself feels expensive, but not so expensive as to warrant arguing.

And the toll is always money.

That’s the ‘dread’ that lingers with those who meet the tollbooths, long after they have paid and gone on their way- a discomfort at the idea that the American supernatural is as strapped for cash as anybody else, that money is the force that turns all imaginable worlds.

The state of the country’s gray infrastructure is currently unknown, but it would behoove the lone driver to keep a roll of quarters in the glovebox. Prices are on the rise.

-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The man, presumably the owner, stands behind me. I feel his eager breath on my shoulder. His hands tremble in his pockets, shaking the quarters there.

“Go on,” he says, “This machine is one-of-a-kind. A game unlike any other.”

The machine, an arcade cabinet called ‘ESCAPE!,’ beeps innocently and runs a small, pixeled man through a variety of trap-filled rooms.

“You’re sure,” I say again, “You’re sure I’m not going to get pulled into this thing? Like, pulled in to a real-life situation where I’m that guy on the screen.”

A speech bubble appears above ‘ESCAPE!’s’ character.

“Help!” it says.

The owner coughs and looks nervously around the empty room.

“First game’s on me,” he says, handing me a sweaty coin, “With a little skill you might be able to play on that for a long time.”

This is a man that can’t help himself.

I balance the coin in the slot and hear the man’s breath catch- almost a squeal. I brace myself and the quarter drops. The machine beeps wildly and then beckons me to start.

The man taps his foot and scratches wildly at his scalp for half an instant.

“Now,” he says, “Just press that red button. That’s when the real fun begins.”

This, like so much of what I do, will end badly.

-traveler

After two days of shuffling through snow and ice, two days of an escalating storm, I hunker down in a small cave and rest, gathering warmth and strength and taking stock of my dwindling rations. A few dry pieces of jerky, a sleeve of cookies, and bottom-bag rejects of a picked-over trail-mix, all raisins, peanut skins, and dust.

When I’ve confirmed the direness of the situation, I dig for the ground, hoping to find a surface that isn’t ice. No such luck- the softer snow gives way to sandpaper frost and I put my sore, trembling fingers away. I could move deeper, further into the darkness of the cave where the storm hasn’t yet reached, but it grows darker even as I stay still. The wind has changed and the entrance shrinks under the layers of drifting snow. It would be easy to lose the way out.

In the dwindling half-light, I harvest the ceiling’s rainbow stalactites, tossing them into a multi-color pile for shucking. There is a lot of green here, the chemical smell of artificial lime. I follow a vein of orange that starts several yards in and weakens to a dull lemon-yellow at the edge of light. The dank smell of fudgsicles and freezer burn rises from the thick black beyond.

An hour’s work is a minute’s fire, a warmth that leaves me colder than I was before. I stir the ashes of flimsy wood and faded punchlines and prepare myself for what will be the last try. There is not enough food for a meal, not enough heat to warm my extremities, not any reason to stop short of the exit. I consider the scant calories of the popsicle pile and weigh them against the deep cold of my body. If this really is the last push, I’ll need all the energy I can muster.

I melt a soda can’s worth of orange ice to slush in the waning coals and sip.

Sugar-free.

It’s all sugar-free.

‘Americans never feel freer than when they are presented with an abundance of unremarkable choices. Consider the self-service fountain drink, the multi-flavor holiday popcorn tin, and the international, all-you-can-eat buffet. Consider the 400 channel cable package, the cloned dating app, and the coffees with deep, personal backstories.

Consider ‘Chilltown,’ which boasts the country’s largest selection of frozen sweets under one roof, a collection so large and so all-encompassing that it includes a ‘collector’s aisle’ of popsicles kept in stasis since the pioneering days of freezer technology. Here you can peruse and sample- testing one decade’s strawberry against another or exploring the niche and failed flavors of doomed enterprises. The modern selection is no less varied, featuring ice creams from the west, the east, from neighbors in all four cardinal directions and from a fifth, loosely defined region marked ‘Other.’

In 2006 interview, ‘Chilltown’ owner, Anaya Anand admitted the selection can be overwhelming for some.

“It’s a lot,” she said, “And some people just want their vanillas and their chocolates. We get people walking out with coolers full of weird stuff and others that hunt around forever and never buy a thing. Some people love the choices. Some just freeze.”’

-traveler