Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads
Short Fiction
1670 | 0
He stops ten steps short of the sign planted in front of the intersection. He reads the sign, which says in white painted letters, “Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads”. He looks to his left and sees the road continuing on until meeting the horizon, but little else. Besides the crossroads are fields of amber grass; straight stalks are cut cleanly and uniformly to the height of his knees. He looks forward and then to the right — there is nothing to distinguish any of the paths from the other, except for a sign singling out the left path so clearly. He approaches the sign to examine its letters. He thinks it’s hand-painted — there’s a neatness to it, but something in the way the stroke lifts off the Capital T’s says to him a person wrote the sign. It’s planted firmly in the ground of the road with a wide stake. The road itself is dust and broken rock. He looks ahead, and then to the right. He rocks on his toes and looks left again. He’s hoping to see something obvious that would give him a reason not to go to his left, but nothing comes. When he turns from left back to forward he’s seeing the same straight line to infinity, and he walks forward past the crossroads.
When he approaches the next crossroads he doesn’t stop until he’s standing directly over the sign. It’s the same sign, he thinks. Not just the message, the writing. He thinks maybe he didn’t really walk anywhere at all. He looks to his left and sees a grey road stretching forever, bordered by amber grass. There’s no movement at all, he thinks. The grass is perfectly still, as if frozen. He approaches the side of the road and reaches out; the grass bends against his hand as it ought, and it scratches against his palm. When he releases his hand, the grass reverts back exactly straight, giving no sign they were ever altered. When he turns back to face the crossroads he thinks about a perfectly identical sea of grass, insidiously inert and ill-caring. Without much thought he walks forward.
And he walks forward, and reaches another crossroads and another sign. And he walks to the right. Forward. Forward. Right. Forward. Forward. Forward. Right. Right. Forward. Backward. Right. Forward. Forward. And at the next crossroads he finds another sign that reads, “Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads” and he kicks it over.
It falls quickly and soundlessly into the intersection and leaves behind a shallow, wormless hole in the ground. He lets the sore in the earth pester and he thinks he’s tired of the road. He realizes all he has are straight lines; the crossroads and the wall of the horizon, the square of the sign and the straight stems of grass. He has no soft aspects to comfort him — he looks up and sees no sun, no moon, no clouds. He sees endless blue above him, endlessly. All he has are straight lines and he thinks straight lines. And he thinks if these crossroads are straight and connecting, he can make four right turns and be back to this spot with the knocked over sign. That way, he thinks, he’ll know for certain if this world is playing fairly. And so he turns to the right, and the right, and the right, and right again and walks until he meets the next crossroads and he sees a sign planted firmly in the soil that reads, “Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads”
He thinks he needs to get off this road. He thinks he hates the signmaker and he thinks he’s lying. He walks forward and stops somewhere between two crossroads. Ahead and behind are endless roads, for all it matters. Do not turn left at the crossroads. He thinks he needs to get off this road and he looks to his left at the expanse of golden grass and he takes a step off the road and begins to walk into the field.
He walks in a straight line perpendicular to the road and as he walks he parts the grass, which scratches against his legs but he thinks it's nice to feel something. And he looks down at the soil and thinks it looks soft and he stops. He thinks about his steps, first on the rocky gravel of the road and the soft dirt of the field and he thinks he hasn’t felt anything. He reaches to pick up the black dirt and he holds some in his hand but he can’t feel it. He touches a stem of grass and feels its brittleness and he tries to break off a piece with his fingers but he can’t. He drops the dirt and uses both hands to try to snap the grass, and when he fails, he bends the blade against itself to create a crease and when he lets go the grass releases and stands back straight. He looks out ahead of him and sees so much of the same thing it overwhelms his eyes until all he can see are gold and blue blocks of color. He begins to run, and he runs for a long time and he doesn’t get tired. He runs for much longer than it should have taken to reach another road and so he stops. He looks behind him and sees the road from which he left two steps away. He does nothing for a long time. He closes his eyes and swims in the blackness and the deep nothingness and when he opens them he sees the same road and same field of grass behind that.
He steps back onto the road and collapses on the ground that should feel like something but doesn’t. He drags his hand across the pebbles and feels nothing in the same way the pebbles feel nothing. He’s beginning to think about forever and he lays there on the ground with one hand on a stomach that does not rise and fall with breath and the other on a ground that does not feel like ground and he’s beginning to wonder how long he’s been dead. And after some time, he rises and walks until he finds the next crossroads and he reads the sign, “Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads” and he wants to turn left and he does and he’s in a room of white.
He’s in a blank, white square room with one black door centered on the opposite wall. And he knows that behind his back is a wall of white that continues behind him, possibly forever. And he knows he could chip through that wall with his fingernails for the rest of his sanity and he’ll only ever find white wall. And the room stares at him with the eye of a black door and he knows he must go through the door eventually but it doesn’t have to be now. So he chooses not to go yet, so he sits down in the white room and feels the cold of its flesh enveloping every point of contact with his body. And he lays his body against the cold to feel as much as he can and he lets his cheeks burn hot with the cold of the floor and he looks at the eye, the door, in the room and he thinks he’ll wait, and he does.
But he’s had the taste of feeling again and he knows behind the door he’ll find too much feeling too quickly but he can’t wait here forever, he knows. He knows he can find realness again behind that door, no matter how painful. And he thinks he must go through the door to be himself again and so he gets up and opens the door and he’s coughing as the fabric of the mask slips above his head. He blinks the world back into place and he’s slumped over with his shackled hands bound high, keeping him standing. And he can feel the aching in his legs and his arms and he sees the new doctor in front of him, the red glow of the clock shining off his white coat. You lasted 25 hours over 26 minutes that time, Charles, well done. And his arms are straining with the weight of himself and he tries to stand on his own and he’s thinking what he always thinks which is why would anyone want this? And he can see the movement of the others beyond the doctor, preparing his next trip and please, let me stay here a little longer and the doctor smiles and, oh, Charles, you know how valuable our time is. You’re doing a good thing, a noble thing. And he thinks the repetition must be tiresome for the doctor too but he doesn’t show it and he breathes in deeply and his lungs inflate and the hunger from his stomach permeates up into his throat and he tries to remember when he last ate but it was so long ago. And the doctor is no longer in view and he chuckles to himself because if the doctor wouldn’t tell him his name every time, he doesn’t think he’d know who he is and he feels the mask lowering over his head again and the figures melt into the shadows of the room and he thinks they’re looking at him closely but he doesn’t know, and he thinks he’s scared but he’s not sure he knows what that means anymore and he looks up at the red clock on the wall in front of him. 5 years, 231 days, 6 hours, 24 minutes, 10 seconds. 9 seconds. 8. And he’s walking down a weathered grey road bordered by a field of golden grass. He comes to an intersection with a sign, “Do Not Turn Left At The Crossroads” and he looks down the left road and sees the greyness continuing on forever toward the horizon.