Start of untitled short story:
The golden sun, milky and pure,
that poured into the road took me by surprise. And so did the skinny ribbon of
cracked asphalt, and the wheat fields miles away from any shopping center or
subdivision. Something raw and wild crept out from behind the landscape. From
the rusty pick up trucks that spotted the curbs, to the creaking traffic lights
that swung above the intersections, something was wedged between the cracks of
it all that felt blissfully untouched. I couldn’t tell you how, but the world
that lined route 463 felt perfectly removed from the rest of the universe that
whirled beyond it. It was a beautiful anachronism, the idea of a two-lane road
that stretched for miles like a quaint curving stripe. I sped along it with a
goofy smile smeared on my face and music pumping through the speaker system, a study in smooth happiness.
Eventually, I reached the hills.
They bubbled up and down making the road rise and fall and twist back over
itself. I drove right past Mill Road, where I was supposed to turn right. I had
to make a looping U-turn through a sparse neighborhood in order to get back to
it. Driving on Mill Road was like riding a children’s roller coaster, one of
those wooden Gemini Jr. ones that didn’t have any upside-down loops but had
plenty of swooping turns and drops. I thought it was a sheer delight. And
between the skinny skeletons of trees, when I rounded a bend, I could catch a
glimpse of a huge basin of water beyond. It almost looked like a wide river if
you didn’t know any better. The hills cradled it into a valley where it
shimmered like dull silver.
I drove along Mill Road for 2.7
miles until it brought me to a mailbox labeled 1129. A long driveway stretched
behind it leading to a house that couldn’t be seen. I pulled in slowly, rolling
along the ashen pavement and passing a carved wooden sign that read “Fantasy
Farm” in large, cartoonish letters. The house was made of dark panels of wood
punctuated with black triangles for décor. Another big black triangle of a roof
sloped casually over everything. It was a squat, horizontal house, only two
floors high, and it sat like a solemn wooden dwarf in a forest clearing. The
air around it had an evergreen tint, and the grass at its feet was a faded
olive. It all felt a bit tired, as if the dwarf-house had been waiting for
someone to arrive. But the moment people came, every crease of weariness melted
into a warm welcome.
