by Peter Ackers
"…I GOT TO THE ROAD…"
I got to the road and stepped right out into the middle, hoping to see a car. But to the left and right the road wound away into darkness - no headlights or lights of any kind. Behind, the lights of the town were dimming with distance and because it was late and people were heading to bed. Far in front, across a vast nothingness, the lights of a motorway, another city or town, but these seemed miles away, too many miles to cross. I didn't know what lay ahead. It might just have been more fields and plateaus. But it might have been a black swamp stinking with the rotting corpses of all the foolhardy tourists who'd risked the journey before me.
So, back to the road. Left and right, winding away. The glittering rainwater on the tarmac faded quickly to a dull glow, then to nothing in the near-distance. I seemed to be on a raised portion of the road, because the road slipped slightly downhill to either side of me. I suddenly had the thought that where the road faded from sight in both directions, it was because the single-lane blacktop dipped underground via some hole, continuing its downward trajectory through the crust and mantle until any who walked its length found themselves between walls of molten rock somehow kept back. Ever downward, perhaps right through to the core and the City of Hell. I imagined a wire that has exposed itself through a tear in its rubber housing. Was perhaps this length of glistening blacktop a portion of one of the highways of Hell that had popped out through a rent in the earth's crust?
I shook that silliness from my head. My hand was in my pocket, closed around the sweet I'd taken from Teeth-bloke. I pulled it out and dropped it. It had begun to melt, leaving a sticky film of sugary gel in my palm. Maybe its slight softness was what prevented it from smashing into pieces as it hit the ground.
As I watched, the round sweet began to roll left, slowly. It rolled only a few inches down the slight decline, but it was enough. I didn't thinking it was a homing-sweet, eager to return to its owner, so I figured that direction was as good as any. It would save me having to make a choice, for a start.
So, I faced left (I didn't know if that was north, east, whatever, and wasn't sure how to use the moon or the few stars in the sky to educate myself). Left. Sounded as good as any compass point. Left. I followed the road left, which was now straight ahead.