The Empty Road

A woman tries to get out of bed, but is haunted by her past.

Ding, ding, ding

From the road she couldn’t see the bottom of the skeletal trees standing sentry over the highway of the ghost town. Standing in the middle of the road’s parallel yellow lines, she didn’t think she wanted to know if there was a bottom. The road was marked with bent white arrows, aimed to turn onto to a street that no longer existed. It dropped off into a deep ravine and more endless branches, but there were no guardrails on the shoulder to stop her if she did try to tun. The thought made her shiver. That was all that was left of the town. The rest was suffocated by the trees.

Ding, ding, ding

Della opened her eyes expecting to find herself staring at the sharp limbs of aged wood, but she was greeted with the cracks in her peach colored ceiling instead.

Ding, ding, ding

She groaned. It didn’t go away. She turned to the pill bottles on her bedside table, willing her brain to stop hearing. She picked up the first bottle she could get her shaking hands on and looked at the label with her name on it. Xanax. A guaranteed dreamless sleep if she swallowed a few. She dumped a few of the dull pink pills onto her hand and stared at them. If a scrap of sun wasn’t trying to break through the heavy curtains that covered her window, she would’ve swallowed all three and called it a day.

Ding, ding, ding

She clutched the side of her head, wanting to cry because the sound wouldn’t stop, but she couldn’t let it get the best of her that day.

Ding, ding, ding

She threw her blanket to the side, and slid her legs off slowly, one at a time. Her pulse beat in her ears (a nice change) as her chest tightened, and her spine stiffened. She could do it this time. She could get out of bed, get dressed, and leave the house for once as if nothing ever happened.

She just needed to get out of –

Ding, ding, ding

“ARRGH!” She screamed, her head too dizzy to form words. She fell out of bed, taking her lamp and pill bottles with her. She slammed to her knees with a hollow thud, crying out in pain and frustration. Three months. Three fucking months, she thought for the thousandth time as she sat with her back to the wall still facing her bed.

Ding, ding, ding

Her fuzzy head scanned the dim room, making out shapes at all corners, black spots still covering her vision. There was a larger black shape under her bed, but after she blinked and rubbed her eyes it was still there. She sucked in a broken breath and bent closer to look at the shape only to see the stricken eyes of her dead son staring back at her. His face was gray and swollen, mouth pursed tight, his eyes wide and ringed dark gray, while streaks of red shot to irises as blue as ice and just as still. Another agonized moan, and she went on her hands and throbbing knees to find the right pill bottle.

Ding, ding, ding

She squeezed her eyes shut, holding her pounding temples, forcing the sounds out of her head, and forcing the vision of her son gurgling and choking, out as well. She opened her eyes, willing herself not to look at him, shoving away half empty bottles of Lexapro, Effexor, Zoloft, and Prozac, growling at their uselessness. Where is it? Where is it? The last bottle in her line of sight was full of green Paxil pills that she never even touched. The yellow bottle made their color look so sickly that she didn’t even think of swallowing one.

Ding, ding, ding

A headache started and she forced herself to look at the mottled dead face, lips bubbling with black spit. His eyes were locked on hers, but she only saw what was clutched in his little hand, dark blue fingers gripping tightly to the last bottle. Clozaril. The antipsychotic. The one she needed. He held it close to him, his body hitching with hiccups of more black spit that spilled to the floor.

Ding, ding, ding

She sat back against the wall of their room and started to cry, her chest heaving like her dead son’s. She didn’t even notice that the Xanax was still in her fist. Without even thinking, Della swallowed four pills, staring at his cold eyes the entire time.

ding..ding..ding

She pulled her self up, an ache already accumulating in her swelling knees. She slid back into bed, and stared at her cracked peach ceiling until her eyes closed. She looked forward to her dreamless sleep, pretending that she couldn’t hear her son suffocating under her bed anymore. She turned to her left side, and stared at the end table where her pills and lamp usually stayed.

ding...ding...ding

She drifted away, the sound fading out. As she slipped into a temporary oblivion, the rotting arm of her husband flew over and held her close to his corpse. His blue lips went to her ear. “Go to sleep, baby” he rasped, his voice a rattle. “We can go for a drive in the morning.”

Della screamed.

***

Three months ago

Ding, ding, ding

Della wondered why her husband didn’t close the car door when he jumped out to take pictures on the highway. She didn’t want Aiden to go with him, but Lucas insisted. “He’s gotta know our history, babe.” Couldn’t argue with that reasoning. Although, she wondered if a town that dropped off the face of the planet because an underground fire still burned underneath it, leaving the smoke filled air too dangerous to live in was just the kind of history she wanted her 6 year old to learn.

Ding, ding, ding

Aiden just wanted to go to the amusement park: ride the kiddie rides, eat some funnel cake, and play in the water park area. Lucas told her that it would be only a few minutes “We live so far from here,” he said mouth close to her ear, so their little boy wouldn’t hear in the back seat. “How many times are we ever going to see this?” So she stopped, and her two boys walked out. Lucas was beaming with a disturbing enthusiasm, while Aiden looked tentative at best.

Ding, ding, ding

She refused to leave the car, and he refused to close the passenger side door, the alarm being the only thing she could hear since they walked down the highway and through the mist of the town the old highway was built for. It wasn’t a normal mist though. It was tinted red and smelled horribly. She hoped that Lucas hurried up because she didn’t want either one of them exposed to that tainted air for too long. She didn’t even know exactly where they were. The dangerous road wasn’t on any GPS, but her husband found a blog post with detailed directions. The whole thing smelled like ash and premeditation.

Ding, ding, ding

She took the keys out of the ignition to stop the annoying noise.

Ding, ding, ding

She grumbled and unbuckled her seat, crawling to the other seat to close the door. She got it shut with a slam.

Ding, ding, ding

She looked at the console and didn’t know how it was even possible, but she was too frustrated to be concerned, opting to sit behind the driver’s wheel and sulk.

Ding, ding, ding

Damn car. It was only noon, but the air clogged with mist made it darker, leaving everything in a haze. A few minutes before she could see Aiden’s light up Avengers sneakers glimmering on the cracked road, but they disappeared soon after, the fog dense and thick, crowding the closed doors of the car.

Della was nervous.

Ding, ding, ding

She tried to text Lucas, but there was no service in that godforsaken place and as the air pressed in closer to her, she didn’t even think of leaving the confines of her car. She felt as if in any second the air would be filled with the strange, red smoke, suffocating her, taking her away from the life she held on so tightly to because of that little boy in light up sneakers with superheroes on them, and the man who wanted nothing more than to creep himself out.

Ding, ding, ding

She felt like she was going crazy in that claustrophobic place, and with sweating hands she shoved the keys into the ignition so hard she thought they snapped. She had to stop herself from flooring it, realizing that she had no idea how she was going to find her family in the mist.

Ding, ding, ding

She pulled to the middle of the road, a neutral place, and crawled along through the dense air, trying to quell the growing panic in her stomach. The day was so warm when they were singing kid’s songs down the highway, the sun beating through the open sunroof, but the air felt like it froze around her. Life was so good only 15 minutes ago and the bottle bottomed out a lot faster than she ever expected.

Ding, ding, ding!

The sound made her jerk in her seat, and she was swerving the car so much that her speed went up without her even knowing. She couldn’t see them, and didn’t even know how far the road went. Her hands were the definition of white, gripping the wheel as her body lurched forward, shoulders set and stiff. Her body felt like a tense muscle on fire.

Ding, ding! ding!

She went faster with no sign of them anywhere. She wasn’t really looking anymore. She just needed to get out of the air. She started to cough, and the sweat rolled off her body in waves. She breathed hard, trying to get rid of the acrid smell that seemed to encase her in that tiny car. She came to the feeling that she would never see her family again.

Ding! ding! ding!

It was getting louder. That nonsensical sound. She pushed forward even faster, the fog splitting against the windshield. 

DING! ding! ding!

She thought it was following her, tearing into her back, nails of smoke filled air scraping her.
Della’s eyes started to water.

DING! DING! ding!

It was inside the car, and the pain was intense.

DING! DING! DING!

She didn’t drive anymore, her foot off the pedal.

DING! DING! DING!

It ripped through her skin like tissue paper, filling her with red and ash.

DING! DING! DING!

She screamed so loud the car shook.

DING! DING! DING!

She spun out, her hands off the wheel.

DING! DING! DING!

She was crashing, the car going too fast. Somehow she  pushed herself out of the front door as the car fell off the road without guardrails, tumbling to the bottom of a ravine.

Ding, ding…

The sound finally stopped, and the fog cleared from her head. She grabbed her back, but nothing was there. There was no pain. The smoke was lifting, a bright spot of the sun pushing through its mass, clearing the way for the trees that stood above her. They stood like sentient beings, jeering at her foolishness. She couldn’t see the bottom from where she knelt, eyes still filled with tears. Next to her, the road was marked with arrows that told her to turn. She tried to laugh, but only a choking sound came out. 

Wait, that sound wasn’t her. Something below was choking, gasping. She thought there was water down there, but as she got up and saw the lone sneaker with the lights built in, lying where her car barreled through, she knew that she didn’t want to see the bottom.

Ding, ding, ding.
​
_____
Photo courtesy of Eric Hammett