Alarmingly Strange Stories


Road Movies
by
Rob Morgan


Road Movies, I often wonder how we managed it.

There always seemed to be more people in the car back then. Always bodies, listless and gluey, asleep leaning on each other. Perhaps it was that every night we gained comrades and lost others.

I do not know how many circuits of America we made. All I remember are the shadowy figures in the dark car as we sped under the stars. Groggy figures blinking sleep from their eyes and staring silently out the windows. I remember Vegas and Dallas, faces staring through the glass grinning or groaning, skin electric with light from neons. I can't remember the stops, the exchanges and grunts and kisses, the new friends and old enemies and dope in the sun. No clear pictures, only feelings. Always filthy bodies, grinning teeth in prickly, grimy faces.

East to West is always worst. The traveller mantra. Travel is the most literal form of progress. Nomad Boy. I don't know how we met so many. So many lost souls, so many anchorless. Black clubs, krypton pits, dope barns. Just on the street. Surrounded by faces grinning or scowling or weighing us up. No friends. Just the drugs talking. Sex and drugs and rock and roll and the road. The candle that burns twice as bright burns for half as long.

We never knew them, never remembered where they got on. never knew what they were running from or running to. All we knew was that they were just like us. Cutting circles around America, searching for that sense of place, the feeling that they have finished the trip, waiting for the need to go home. Busted pair of Levi's and a bowie knife. They got on and stumble off, the night taxi, traversing the dust bowl between the empty cities.

The white line. Always. An ashtray, a desert planet ringed in by mountains. A single line, the road clean in the dust, a groove traced smooth. The wind shield framed the view of the world we wanted to see. A ghost land around us. Empty of life. Stay-at-homes. The car alone on the asphalt, a straight road clear before us. And the white line flickering beneath us, guiding our steps. The mounts before us, jagged and calling. Never moving, never closer.

More a journey than a destination.

No matter.

Maybe we had a route, a goal. Maybe we all do. I don't know. I wasn't the driver. I just sat there in the passenger seat, writing or sleeping or staring at the clouds rushing overhead or watching the road roll beneath my feet. Travelling without moving. Without changing. Craning round to see the indistinct bodies, the new friends and old enemies and dope in the sun.

Slump and shiver and wait for the next city on the runaway route.

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THE END


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