Daved E.

Sandefur

3154Words

P.OBox

Fries, Virginia

The Highway
by
Daved Sandefur

The long ribbon of highway stretchedon

into the night. That

was the way they always described it wasn't it; the long, lonely black
ribbon? He watched the gray and black mottled asphalt disappearing
beneath the hood. He thought of the time when he was a kid and the
family was on a long trip. He had been bored, staring out the back
window at the road, mile after mile, and he had come to the conclusion
that the car was really still, in neutral, and it was the world spinning
and spinning underneath
universe.

as it hurtled through the emptiness of the

He hadn't been able to figure out how they would get back

the other way, but he decided that it didn't matter, the theory worked at
least half the time, and he had been so proud of such a deep insight into
the workings of the world.
With time, though, that theory had died away, just like the
dreams and hopes and ambitions that had marked every step of his life.
Now, he was just another man, his presence unknown to the rest of the
world, driving alone down a deserted highway in the deep void of the

Sandefur - Highway - 2

darkness of space and universe. For a moment, he let himself return to

that child's fantasy insight, that he was hurtling into the deepness of
nothingness as the world spun beneath him, trying to outrun him, to
leave him behind.
Everything was now reduced to impenetrable blackness and the
cone of light that turned all that it struck gray. Gray. That was the
color of life, he decided, the road granting him another insight into life,
unending grayness. People always said that life wasn't black and white,
and he knew it to be so true, more true than he thought they could even
imagine. No, it wasn't black and white, it was gray, the black and white
in life mixing into a dull grayness that washed out life itself.
He glanced up into the rear view mirror. Nothing there.
Everything there.

In the blackness of the dark that was chasing behind

was hidden all in the world that were pursuing him, persecuting,
accusing, judging him for every word, every thought, every action that
he had been so arrogant as to make his entire life. They were all just
behind him, hiding themselves in the black of the night, chasing the
lone car down the lonely road.
He kept the radio dark and silent, the dashboard lights lending
only a ghostly glow to the stark face that stared out at the unending
road. The only sound the hum and bump of tires rolling on mindlessly
over the dips and ruts of the highway, the engine a whine spurring the
car into the night, pursuing the secret that could only be found by