Backroads

 

    Preface: Third part of something I wrote during a very emotional part of my life. The other two parts are way too personal to publish. Maybe one day, but probably not.

    Running away is so easy. He never thought about it before. Under the blanket of nighttime sky, he drove, the frigid fall winds blowing all throughout his car; colder still from the morning’s rain. Country backroads, dotted with farmhouses and the occasional one-street town, tall grass flowing in the wind, swaying back and forth to the beat of life. Nobody saw him in any of these places. He could have been the only person for miles or for feet, and he never would have been able to tell the difference.

The trees smeared beyond the open windows of the car, blurry in the setting sun. Beyond them laid darkness, with the faint glimpse of some house or rusty vehicle in between the branches with no leaves. His tires slid a little on the wet leaves on his side of the road. The few towns he passed blended into one another. Lawns flat and dying with spots of dirt between the brown tufts. Decaying buildings left to rot mixed with modernized gas stations and rows of suburban houses. Porches with metal swings and cracked, crumbling staircases and peeling paint and cushioned furniture. He’d seen millions like it, never from anywhere but the backseat of his parent’s car.

He thought back to those nights, the long drives to the hotel for the day being dragged out by the early sunsets in winter. It was picturesque in his memory, colorful in spite of the darkness, in spite of the deadness that the cold inspires. Sometimes, if the time was right and he stayed up late enough, he’d pass through the neighborhoods with their Christmas decorations all put up, with the strings of light hanging all across each house on the block, each one trying to outdo the ones next to them. He would marvel at them in his sleep-deprived state, wishing he could get out and live among the lights and the empty streets of each town his family passed through, walking along the cold sidewalks, stopping to lay down in the snow and let the flakes fall all around him; perfect equilibrium. In his mind's eye, he saw these places, and they were always covered in snow. Always, their streets were empty. Always under the inky blackness of nighttime. 

He stood by the bridge overlooking a hardly-lit waterfall, illuminated only by the floodlights on the building across the lawn. Someone sat on the lip of the rock formation, or maybe it was just part of the formation itself. For a minute, he thought about doing away with his desire, ending his journey right there. He wasn’t sure if he truly wanted to or not, he couldn’t think straight. In the dark everything is a blur. Nothing seems real, an imitation of life at a chopped framerate. Actions are never your own, things always seem to be done behind the windows of the body you inhabit, in the passenger seat with someone else behind the wheel. 

Across bridges and over a shallow creek, making way for a small river which weaved its way around tiny islands within it and the shorelines on either side of it. The path was out but the only thing stopping anyone was a sign and the risk of falling. He took the path downstream, passing the twisted figures of trees and stumps and rocks and animals he knew had to be out there. Hands in his pockets but mind nowhere near the place he was walking through.  Under a bridge not used for decades, rust showing ever so slightly in the light of the nearly-fallen sun and stretching wide across the valley. Parallel to the road still traveled by thousands, so many lives untouched by his own. Untampered, more like. 

Nothing phased him. He could not be touched by wind nor chill, he was completely closed up. The only reaction he had to anything was from the cuts beneath his shirt, still tender from two nights before, burning with each shift of his body. 

The mud turned to sand as a bridge appeared in the corners of his vision, and a great gnarled tree with its roots exposed sprouted up out of the earth and reached for the wispy gray nighttime clouds. He looked for the top, but the darkness took more of a hold of it the further up it went. The beach let out to reveal a vast bay, with an island in the middle and a set of buildings on the far coastline, a concrete wall monumental in size stretching towards those, preceded by a thick wood leading back to the entrance. A stone tunnel stretched beneath the earth and emptied water out into the lake. 

A boat sputtered along in the water. Voices echoed from across the water. Leaves rustled in the distance. He made his way along the coastline, his steps increasingly unsteady as the darkness took a physical toll on his brain. Along this stretch of beach were more rocks, more stumbling as a result. He pretended to be alone even though he saw the outline of two shapes on a bench overlooking the bay. He wished he could have the world to himself. 

Slippery rocks made up the entirety of the path the closer he got to the concrete wall. He sat at the base of it, looking out over the water. The island in the middle was dotted with evergreens and had a singular building on it, just barely able to be made out from the lights on the coast, all of which cast long reflections on the rippling lake in shades of yellow and blue and white. The boat was long gone by then, and the only reminder of the outside world was the few cars still humming along on the road off in the distance; little lives just like his own. His legs ached, but all was well. He was there to rest, to be in bliss. To be away for a little while.

He shut his eyes and wished they would never reopen. 

He began to cry.