Can't Get There From Here by Bachman Lindsay

Author:Bachman, Lindsay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

LUX

MY ALARM CLOCK was the clacking of pool balls upstairs.

Meryl never came back inside last night, choosing to stay out in the car. If she knew about last night’s tryst with Sam, she wasn’t letting on. Or she didn’t care. When we joined her outside, she seemed a thousand miles away. That must have been a hell of a phone call.

There was a long road ahead of hoping she never looks over at me and sees how much I’m sweating.

On our way out of the ghost town, we found a gym near the edge of the highway. We stopped to shower and clean up before we got back on the road proper.

For all the strangeness, far more of our trip was spent in long mundane stretches of driving through the dark, taking turns behind the wheel.

Meryl was driving this time, me in the passenger seat. Trying to keep each other awake. Her mood had settled once we’d gotten back to the numbing monotony of the road. Upgrade from depressed to intermittently grumpy.

Meryl checked the radio, but it was spitting out garbled static. “This has got to be the second worst road trip I’ve ever been on.”

“Do you travel a lot?”

“Haven’t done it in ages.” She rolled up the window to close off the sliver of cold air seeping in. “I used to take road trips all the time. Me and this group of friends. We had this ceremony of driving upstate to this specific theater that had a really good taco place nearby. It was good food, but probably not good enough to warrant the trip.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Yeah.” Meryl looked back to check on Sam but she was dead asleep. “I think Sam went once or twice on those. By the time I met her I was-”

Meryl was drowned out mid-sentence by a deep green light sweeping over us. A chittering hum followed it and flowed through us.

The hum replaced everything in all creation. All sound, all air, our sight was a shock of pale green.

And then it passed and the air shot back into my lungs. “What was that? You saw that, right?”

“I…It’s nothing.” She quickly wiped the sweat from her brow.

“That wasn’t nothing. It was… I don’t know.”

“Yeah. Exactly. You don’t know. I don’t know. Sam…” She checked the back seat. “Sam is still asleep somehow. Nobody knows and that’s fine.”

“Why am I the only one who seems concerned about these things?”

“Because who cares? It’s road shit. We’ll never get home if you stop to get traumatized by every weird thing we pass.”

We drove for a long time without further incident. I kept an eye on the rear view mirror, but all that existed was solid black punctuated by the random string of lights marking the road.

“Stop worrying. There’s nothing out there.”

“I can’t help it.”

Meryl shifted in her seat. “I know what would take your mind off it.”

“What?”

“Give me your hand.”

“Okay.”

I offered it to her and without looking she grabbed me by the wrist and guided my hand down to my crotch.

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