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Entry tags:
on the road
Title: On the Road
Rating: G
Genre: Urban fantasy?
Wordcount: 755
Remarks: Prompt - restless. Sincerest apologies to anyone who actually knows the locale, my sole nod to the real world was remembering which side to put the driver on.
His phone gave out about two hours out of Beaumont with a last apologetic peep, and Andrew sighed, tucking it into his coat pocket and thumping his head back against the headrest. Bob—who might have introduced himself as Daryl but looked so incredibly Bob-ish it was impossible to deny his true self its day in the limelight—didn’t so much as glance over from the driver’s seat, which was about on par with the tone of the conversation so far. He’d managed to earn some encouragingly tuneful grunts after the initial exchange of details, but even those had tapered off once they’d hit the highway.
The last remnants of sunlight had vanished from the landscape sometime between his last look out the window and now, narrowing the world down to what the headlights could paint into existence. Road, mostly, flashing back at them from its dotted reflective markers and bordered neatly by guardrails and tree-branches. It was slightly more interesting scenery than what the plane had had to offer, but then the plane had also offered things like movies and music and screaming children, and after the look he’d received last time Andrew was not quite ready to make another try for the radio. Logic said that being forced to walk the plank off the back of a truck was unlikely; Bob’s eyes had not promised he was a logical man.
Now that he thought about it, when you took the blandness of the open ocean into account, it was hard not to wonder whether there was a correlation between long stretches of empty space and latent piratical tendencies.
“Arr,” he said idly, but the heavy silence from his left continued. It seemed Bob didn’t feel like conversing in his native dialect either.
Andrew slumped a little lower, seatbelt sliding over his hips to dig into his abdomen. If ever there was an excellent moment to feel the tiniest bit like sleeping, it would have to dual this moment for pride of place. Ten paces, pistols, winner gets the more interesting landscape filled with flying whales and toffee apple trees and frankly anything but more road. He had no idea how much further there was to go until the next city, else he would have considered asking Bob to pull over and tackled the remaining distance the traditional way. Or maybe the slightly less traditional way; juggling his duffel bag in flight wasn’t easy, but there was nothing like the challenge of defying physics to stave off boredom.
It would also be nice to just stretch. At this rate his tailbone was going to forget it had ever extended beyond its current cramped position.
The tension coiling its way through his leg muscles was starting to edge into the realms of unbearable as well, so he jammed his toes up as far as they went to the front of the cabin and tugged his phone out again to make sure it hadn’t miraculously found a few spare bars of charge. Without that refuge, he was pretty much out of options. Even if his duffel hadn’t been packed in the back of the truck, he didn’t have so much as pen and paper in there, and probably not quite enough shirts that he could decide to take up polyester net-weaving. The road signs were flickering by too quickly and sparsely in the darkness to be a suitable distraction, and any native wildlife was refraining from gracing the road with even its more permanent and less attractive presence. The glovebox was still untouched and the radio still beckoned, but a slide of his gaze sideways confirmed Bob was also still gripping the steering wheel in a manner that made it easy to picture the thick fingers being transferred to his throat instead.
Out of battery, out of luck, and not quite out of the will to live, Andrew heaved another sigh and let himself sag sideways at last, cushioning himself against the cool glass with his shoulder so that he could roll his eyes up to the prickling of stars above. Maybe he would wind down enough to sleep; maybe he wouldn’t. Couldn’t do much about it now. In any case, a few hours of stifling monotony was a small price to pay for the promise of big things ahead, and that was a promise as solid as the deadly glint in his surly chauffeur’s eye.
After all, he thought, sharing a small grin with his faint reflection in the window, everything was bigger in Texas.
Rating: G
Genre: Urban fantasy?
Wordcount: 755
Remarks: Prompt - restless. Sincerest apologies to anyone who actually knows the locale, my sole nod to the real world was remembering which side to put the driver on.
His phone gave out about two hours out of Beaumont with a last apologetic peep, and Andrew sighed, tucking it into his coat pocket and thumping his head back against the headrest. Bob—who might have introduced himself as Daryl but looked so incredibly Bob-ish it was impossible to deny his true self its day in the limelight—didn’t so much as glance over from the driver’s seat, which was about on par with the tone of the conversation so far. He’d managed to earn some encouragingly tuneful grunts after the initial exchange of details, but even those had tapered off once they’d hit the highway.
The last remnants of sunlight had vanished from the landscape sometime between his last look out the window and now, narrowing the world down to what the headlights could paint into existence. Road, mostly, flashing back at them from its dotted reflective markers and bordered neatly by guardrails and tree-branches. It was slightly more interesting scenery than what the plane had had to offer, but then the plane had also offered things like movies and music and screaming children, and after the look he’d received last time Andrew was not quite ready to make another try for the radio. Logic said that being forced to walk the plank off the back of a truck was unlikely; Bob’s eyes had not promised he was a logical man.
Now that he thought about it, when you took the blandness of the open ocean into account, it was hard not to wonder whether there was a correlation between long stretches of empty space and latent piratical tendencies.
“Arr,” he said idly, but the heavy silence from his left continued. It seemed Bob didn’t feel like conversing in his native dialect either.
Andrew slumped a little lower, seatbelt sliding over his hips to dig into his abdomen. If ever there was an excellent moment to feel the tiniest bit like sleeping, it would have to dual this moment for pride of place. Ten paces, pistols, winner gets the more interesting landscape filled with flying whales and toffee apple trees and frankly anything but more road. He had no idea how much further there was to go until the next city, else he would have considered asking Bob to pull over and tackled the remaining distance the traditional way. Or maybe the slightly less traditional way; juggling his duffel bag in flight wasn’t easy, but there was nothing like the challenge of defying physics to stave off boredom.
It would also be nice to just stretch. At this rate his tailbone was going to forget it had ever extended beyond its current cramped position.
The tension coiling its way through his leg muscles was starting to edge into the realms of unbearable as well, so he jammed his toes up as far as they went to the front of the cabin and tugged his phone out again to make sure it hadn’t miraculously found a few spare bars of charge. Without that refuge, he was pretty much out of options. Even if his duffel hadn’t been packed in the back of the truck, he didn’t have so much as pen and paper in there, and probably not quite enough shirts that he could decide to take up polyester net-weaving. The road signs were flickering by too quickly and sparsely in the darkness to be a suitable distraction, and any native wildlife was refraining from gracing the road with even its more permanent and less attractive presence. The glovebox was still untouched and the radio still beckoned, but a slide of his gaze sideways confirmed Bob was also still gripping the steering wheel in a manner that made it easy to picture the thick fingers being transferred to his throat instead.
Out of battery, out of luck, and not quite out of the will to live, Andrew heaved another sigh and let himself sag sideways at last, cushioning himself against the cool glass with his shoulder so that he could roll his eyes up to the prickling of stars above. Maybe he would wind down enough to sleep; maybe he wouldn’t. Couldn’t do much about it now. In any case, a few hours of stifling monotony was a small price to pay for the promise of big things ahead, and that was a promise as solid as the deadly glint in his surly chauffeur’s eye.
After all, he thought, sharing a small grin with his faint reflection in the window, everything was bigger in Texas.