Oh, Alright

So I've finished the first draft of the previous story. (The one you may or may not have read.) If you chose not to, I respect that. It wasn't very good. The installment written yesterday (and, btw, Wrong Turn will most likely not be the title) was so much better than I thought it would be. I especially love the last few paragraphs. It makes the rest of the story seem like a drab sketch of what it will eventually turn into.

When it's officially finished, I can add it to my SRTBP (that is, Stories Ready To Be Published) file which currently numbers ... zero.

Same with The Itch.

Wrong Turn Part 6

There is no pain, not in the way you'd think. Just a moderately dull ache, starting from the impact point of the shard of glass and radiating outward. And while looking at it protruding from my skull is interesting enough, I'm still upside down and the gravity reversal is making me dizzy. I need to get out. My hands fumble with the seatbelt mechanism, and I'm trying to push the button in but it isn't working. There's too much weight on it. I'm pulling it, shaking and pressing and grunting with no success when a hand appears. It's large and pale, with fingers that look more like branches than phalanges. It reaches into my shattered window, touches me gently on the arm, and then moves to the seatbelt mechanism, pushing once, firmly, on the release. The seatbelt around my torso slackens, and I manage to catch my falling body with my arms, dropping me onto my stomach on the upholstered roof of my van. And now I'm looking up, out the window, at the man who'd made all this happen.

From this close up, the albino man's eyes are not red. They are a swirling torrent of colors, most so different from anything I've ever seen that red is the closest thing they come to. His lips are drawn thin, pulled down on his elongated face in an expression that is more sadness and exhaustion than menace. He blinks, at once knocking me out of my intense observation. Then the branch-fingered hand, his hand, is coming toward me again. It touches me on the shoulder, delicately showing the comfort it means to give, and in one swift movement takes a hold of the crunched door of my van and pulls it away. Hinges scream and metal shears, and I'm no longer trapped. The hand is there again, hovering above me and cocked sideways as if asking, "Ready?", and I put my much smaller man's hand inside of it. He pulls me out. I lay, panting, on the grassy edge of the ditch.

"You should not have come here." The words are so fluid, so understandable and bright that each one forms a seperate rumbling image in my head. It's like a waterfall, the voice seemingly comprised of the millions of smaller ones, as if every living cell in my body and the in the bodies of every other being in the universe were speaking in unison. There's power in that voice, and sadness, and anger, and it's coming from the albino man.

I look up, into his face. Light from somewhere seems to break through his skin, casting a creamy glow about his visage that makes him at the same time real and not, at the same time ugly and beautiful.

My mouth is moving, and it's not until it stops that I register what emerged.

"What are you?"

The man looks away. The brilliant glow from his skin deepens, making it harder to see. The night had gone, this man forcing all darkness from us.

"I am many things. Tonight I am a guardian, a keeper. But that is not important. You were brought by the-" And then he, the bright man, says something my lacking human mouth would be unable to repeat.. Still, I am brought to perfect comprehension by the image of the thing at the end of the road that seems to be everywhere. The image comes from him, I know that.

"This place, this path, is one of the few ley lines between this world and the next. However, the word place does not exactly fit. Because this road is less a tangible place than it is a being. The same way an ant lion lures prey into it's pit, this line lures souls. And if I had stood aside just then, and let you pass, you would continue on into a place you don't belong. It is not your time yet, and I am here to keep you from getting any farther. Any farther and you would not be retrievable." He looks back, into my face, and as if responding to some deep need, I stand up. My nose reaches the height of the middle button on his silvery suitjacket. His hand, coming from his side, shoots to my face and light flashes.

It's over in an instant, whatever it is, and my vision clears. He's holding in his hand a shard of glass. It's the one from my windshield, the one from my forehead. Then he closes his palm and when he opens it again all that's left is a small pile of sparkly white dust. I put my hand to my forehead, feeling for the place the shard had been. The cut I was looking for wasn't there. The skin had knit over the hole, the bone beneath barely telling anything had ever been there.

"My job is to make sure no one who enters this line gets past me. This road is a false caller, and left on its own would devour people who have yet to make their mark on the world. It's a being that, over centuries, evolved into this form to appear familiar. The reason you hadn't noticed this road before was because before yesterday, it wasn't here. The road, it's a traveler. And I'm the only one who can follow it, who can prevent its purpose. Its pull has no effect on me."

Already the brilliant glow enveloping myself and the man is dissipating. The unreality of it all is not. And yet I still have the presence of mind to speak.

"Thank you."

The sadness in his smile tightens the muscles in my throat, tugs at the corners of my heart. He bows, slightly, and brushes past me. The light radiating from him pulses with each step he takes, as if I can see every little bit of energy he uses. He lays his hands on the crumpled bulk of my van and the world explodes. It's cold, white light that pulls my hands in front of my eyes,and still it's so bright that the protection my hands give is equivalent to staring at the sun through the turquoise plastic of a visor. I am sure that if this place were centered somewhere in my world, the living world, the light from this one being could be seen from the depths of space.

Then it is over, and my hands fall. He's kneeling near the van, now whole again, and for a moment I think he's been drained. But then he stands up quickly, two branch-fingered hands bringing the roof of the overturned van to it's original position. He glances back at me, then, reaching under the front hood for a handhold, drags the three ton vehicle out of the ditch and back onto the road.

I'm unable to move, unable to speak. He nods in my direction, his eyes saying many things but mostly just goodbye. He turns. The tall man, who was in no way a man, strides down the road, in the direction I had been traveling just minutes before. He shrugs his shoulders mightily, and a tip of something white like him and bright as his skin slips out the bottom of his suitjacket and is just as quickly pulled in again.

It's the angel's wingtip, I think. And five minutes after I can no longer see him, I start up my van and begin my journey home.

Wrong Turn Part 5

The road I find easily enough, as that familiar pull catches me and tells me to turn. It seems stronger this time, more impossible to resist. I think of a junkie sticking a needle in his arm, sure that his actions will kill him eventually but unable to do anything else. I flip my blinker on and make the turn, feeling suddenly as though everything has brightened. The knot of tension in my gut unties itself and a relaxing relief tingles through me. It's going to be fine; everything will turn out alright. All I have to do is reach the end of the road. There, all things will be answered.

The needle on my speedometer crawls higher, now at forty, now at forty-five. My heart is beating in ecstasy, and for the first time all day I crack a smile. This is it, my destiny. The needle shows sixty miles per hour. At the end of this road will be the meaning of all things, ready to be discovered. Seventy miles per hour. And I will be the one to do it. The lone explorer, with glory to gain and nothing to lose. Eighty miles per hour. Trees and fields blur past, and I don't care. Everything I ever wanted, and it's waiting here for me. Ninety miles per hour and now I can't contain my joy. I let out a loud whooping holler, knowing I won't need to worry about the man in the gray suit now. He can stand in the middle of the road if he wants to, but I'm not going to stop. A hundred miles an hour, the fastest I've ever pushed this minivan. But the engine roars, pleased at the challenge and hungry for more. And with my foot on the gas, I feed it.

I see a winking red light in the far distance which I'm sure is an airplane tower or something. Then the light takes shape inside a face, and I'm looking at the eyes of the man in the road. He's looking into my eyes and I'm touched by the absolute wrongness of the situation. And here he comes, sliding up the road at an incredible rate. He's going to hit me. But no, it's the van; I'm going too fast. The brakes, something urges. My foot releases the gas and touches the brake pedal. There is a slight reduction in speed. I press harder, against a pedal that pushes back to meet my force. The man is not moving, is not doing anything but staring at me. I'm a hundred yards away and there is no way I'll be able to stop. Both my legs are now straining against the pedal and outside I can hear rubber being torn from the tires. Beneath my feet the brake mechanism grinds, seemingly falling apart under the pressure. I look desperately from the speedometer to the man. I'm going forty-five and the man is closing fast, maybe at this point only twenty meters from me. I'll hit him any second. Turn the wheel, I think. Go past him. And I wrench the steering wheel to the left, both feet still on the brake pedal. The turn is sharp, and something happens.

When it's done happening I'm hanging upside down in my seat, blood dripping into my nasal cavity from my lip. Yellow green strands of field grass reach whimsically through the windshield, as if they'd grown there. My hands, nicked with pieces of glass, are still clutching the steering wheel. My feet are still on the brake. I've flipped the van, I know, but I don't quite believe it. When I see my reflection in the rear-view mirror (now perfectly in front of me) I quietly chuckle. Because there's no way this is right. Embedded in my forehead is a large and jagged piece of automotive window glass. It's joined so well that when I turn my head it moves with me. I bring my hand up to touch it, and when I try to wiggle it there's no give. The most I can figure is that it's fused to my skull, in so deep that no amount of wiggling will set it loose.

Wrong Turn Part 4

Google's results for albino eyes returned some interesting results, and not exactly the ones I was hoping for. Apparently those afflicted with ocular albinism (what often happens to eyes of an albino person) have eyes that are hyper-sensitive to light. And unless he was blind, this would not hold true for the man in my headlights. Furthermore, the very idea that all albinos have red eyes is a misconception. According to the major albinism sites on Google, pacients with ocular albinism usually have green, blue, or brown eyes.

It could have been that he was simply blind, sleepwalking in the middle of the night. That would explain his barefootedness. No, what about the suit? And he looked into my eyes! There was no blindness. He might not have even been albino. But if not, then what was he? A guardian of whatever lay beyond? Hundreds of questions bubbled up through me.

About an hour ago I decided I needed answers. The sun's light turned crimson, then a darker purple. Soon it had vanished beyond the trees and I started up my van. The smell of dried piss in the driver's seat reminded me of the horror I had felt the night before, and the way I'd panicked to get out of there. To get away. Hopefully I was better prepared tonight. I'd left a message on my girlfriend's machine, telling her I was going for a drive and to call the police if I didn't come back. It felt odd, doing that, because it made me realize just how endangered I felt.
I pulled the gear shift into reverse and let my foot off the brake. Go back now, I thought. Just forget about the old man. You don't have to do this. But I did. I pulled out of the driveway and now I'm on my way back there, to the road where anything seemed possible if only I could get there.

Time seems to have stopped for everyone else except for me. No one is on the roads, and my headlights bounce along the yellow dashes between the lanes as the road changes its pitch. The radio is off. My stomach is in a knot, half because of the old man, who I'm sure will be there as he was last night. It's his job to stop me or anyone who comes. The man who guards only at night, because during the day the road is just a road. At night...at night it comes alive.

Wrong Turn Part 3

The morning came like an unwanted visitor, the light through the window heating my skin and penetrating my eyelids. Sleep, and its dreams, was drifting steadily away, and there was no amount of effort that would let me catch it. So instead, I lay there blinking, going over what was real and what was not. The time spent in the shower the night before was but a second in my memory, a vague second, but the image of the albino man in the road was clearly burned there like a brand on a cow's side. Thinking of it now, drowning in sunlight,it still gave me chills. For what reason, however, I didn't know. The man hadn't seemed especially menacing. He hadn't shouted or demanded anything. He'd simply stood there, barefoot, with his mouth shut and his face stoicly set. His eyes, with their tinge of red, perhaps that had done it. It made sense. Seeing a man in the middle of the night with red eyes might be a cause of fright. No, that still couldn't be it. Myself, a man who dares to find even the highly touted horror movies worth hardly a flinch, should not have pissed himself over a pair of eyes.


Perhaps not the eyes, then, but what they did.

Yes. That had to be it. The man, he'd stared right through my headlights, meeting my gaze with a dull lack of interest. Perhaps there is something about albino eyes that makes it possible to look into most powerful lights. And then, when he'd had me there, looking into his eyes, he'd said more than would have ever been possible with his mouth. He wanted me to leave, to return where I came from. But why? It had to be the feeling. The internal magnetism, the one that made me turn down that road in the first place. He didn't want me to end up where I was headed. A warning? But he wasn't waiting for me, he was just there. Standing in the middle of the road like some suicidal lunatic.

It was too bizarre to think about. And especially before breakfast.