Liminal

There are places in this world where reality is just a little off. Places that the passage of time doesn’t seem to touch, where measurements like distance don’t seem to work quite right. They could be anywhere, but oh so many of these places can be found driving along the highways of America.

In such a vast country, strange things are bound to pop up here and there.

Some are as simple as complete emptiness. An empty rest stop – no one eats there, no one rests there, no one stops there. It doesn’t feel natural that a place can be so empty if nothing bad had ever happened there. Or maybe it’s a vacant desert, so massive in scope that even the biggest trucks look like fragile ants against the great universe. You will never feel so small. You know what bad things happened there. You’ve been to history classes. We won, and this place is empty.

Others are different. These places are gas stations with giant scrap metal sculptures that tower over the landscape, the only interesting things for miles around. This alone makes them tourist attractions instead of eyesores. They’re corn fields along the highway that spread as far as the eye can see. They’re what could be ordinary bits of nature, but with strange species of life that you never knew existed – spiky lizards, colorful ducks, black birds like the ones back home but different somehow. They’re places with fruit stands where nothing grows.

There is nothing inherently dangerous about places like this. They’ll just leave you feeling changed, like all you knew before might have been insignificant in the face of the new truths you’ve stumbled upon. Of course, this could be a danger all its own.

This segment of highway was nowhere in particular, a place that time and county workers had long forgotten. Potholes and cracks littered the asphalt, and the few cars that ever passed carefully swerved around them. Unless someone had a keen interest in fogbanks and great, lonely emptiness, the area had little of note.

She’d been driving for so long now that the lines on the highway were just a familiar yellow blur in her vision, the only consistency left in her life. But on this stretch of road they began to fade, dragging her abruptly back into reality. Reality said that her bladder needed a break, and badly. A green sign ahead told her of a coming rest stop, and she counted that as her good fortune for the day.

The sight of the rickety brick building filled her with relief. She jumped out of her car and ran to the restroom, the sound of children laughing in a nearby playground echoing behind her. With how fast she had pulled into the lot, she imagined there’d be at least one angry mom waiting outside to chastise her. She braced herself for that fight.

The covered courtyard between the men’s and women’s restrooms was empty when she emerged, and she counted that as a little more good fortune. Still she lingered there a while longer, taking in all the same type of surroundings she’’d seen a hundred times in a hundred different places. A vending machine, filled with candy bars and snacks in brands that nobody actually wanted. A small kiosk of brochures for upcoming locales, collecting dust as it remained untouched. A decrepit payphone in the corner, pretending it was still relevant. Just beside it, a newspaper dispenser pretended the same thing, as if anyone got the news from anything but a screen anymore. But she had to give it some credit; it wasn’t pretending very hard. The newspaper inside looked to be from about ten years prior. “LOCAL WOMAN’S DEATH RULED HOMICIDE.” The headline could have been from then or from yesterday. Some things never change.

She stretched her arms above her head with a groan and headed back to her car, but she came to a sudden halt as she took in her surroundings. Aside from her beat-up red sedan parked haphazardly in two spaces, the lot was empty.

The sound of noisy children on the playground continued, and she looked around desperately for the minivans those kids belonged to. With the sun starting to set in the distance, the idea of them being here alone shook her. Bad things could happen in the dark. She quickly rounded the side of the brick building, unsure of what she intended to do.

Her heart dropped; she wouldn’t need to decide. No matter which way she turned, there was nothing there for her to see.

There was no playground at this rest stop.

All that lay before her was an open grass field, half dead and edged with a towering forest of evergreens. A single picnic table was off to the left, covered in dirt and pollen from disuse. But there was no sawdust clearing, no old metal equipment. No parents letting the outside world take care of their offspring for just a few minutes, because it’s been a long day, kids, and mommy needs a break sometimes.

She clenched her eyes shut and shook her head. “I must be more tired than I thought.” Saying it aloud didn’t convince her as much as she had hoped.

Just a few feet in front of her she heard a high pitched giggle. Little feet hitting soft ground. The high pitched creak of swing chains and the skid of fabric down a slide. She opened her eyes, but the sounds of play still echoed from the empty greenery.

In the forest at the edge of the field, she saw a few trees rustle, like something was barreling straight toward her. She wasn’t able to make out what, only a shadow, but her confusion turned instantly to dread. Without a single thought of investigating, she turned on her heel and sprinted back to her car, leaping into the driver’s seat and fumbling to turn her key in the ignition.

Click.

Her breath caught in her throat as she tried again to get the engine running. Nothing. Click, click. “No, no, no. Please, baby. You can do it.” She patted the dashboard encouragingly, but the car only responded with another click. “Please, I’ll look you over at the next stop. Just not here. Come on! Drive!”

An unseen force collided with the car, shaking it and scratching down the passenger door as it fell to the ground. She screamed, and the next turn of the key brought the car to life. Throwing it into reverse, her tires rolled over something that wasn’t concrete; she didn’t dare to check what it was. She sped back toward the highway, glancing in her rear view mirror in the dying light just long enough to see a shadowy figure rising, unfazed and looming. She hit the gas with more vigor, determined to put the rest stop as far behind her as she could.

The sun sank lower and disappeared behind the horizon, hiding the vast nothing that surrounded her with the dark nothing that night brought with it. She had only gone a few miles when her headlights caught a flash of color along the roadside. A pink t-shirt, fitted to a woman desperately waving her arms. She seemed even more frightened than she was, and despite her selfish urge to drive and never look back she pulled over and rolled down her window.

“Someone’s followin’ me,” the woman stammered. “I didn’t get a good look, I just…they tried to run me down with their truck and I jumped into the bushes and they turned and came back the other way and they’re probably on their way back. You’re the only other car –”

“Get in.”

The woman nodded, and within moments they were on the road together, headed anywhere but there.

The static energy of panic filled the car, but as the women caught their breath it was replaced with creeping silence. It was ten minutes before either of them spoke. She glanced over at her new passenger; her bare arms were scratched from braving the roadside underbrush, but the bruises on her neck and face looked more man-made. They filled her with both sympathy and a morbid curiosity.

“What’s your name?” she asked instead.

“Violet. Yours?”

“Ashleigh.”

“Pretty.”

“Yours too. So…what brings you to the middle of nowhere?”

Violet gave a sharp laugh, picking a stray leaf out of her tangled hair. “Fight with the boyfriend. It, uh, got out of hand, and he drove off from the party we were at completely wasted. Left me all by my lonesome to walk.”

“Nobody could give you a ride?”

“You don’t party much, do you? He wasn’t the only one completely wasted there.”

“Ah.”

“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if it wasn’t for that whacko chasin’ me down with his truck. I have half a mind to think it was just David, goin’ out of his way to make me miserable to add insult to injury. Anyways, I just live in the town ahead.” She paused. “Can you take me there, by the way?”

Ashleigh nodded. “Of course. We’ll need to get gas anyways.” She was down to a quarter tank at most.

“Thanks.” Silence threatened to overtake them again, leaving both of them grasping for small talk. “So, you movin’?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” She supposed with all of her baggage crammed in the seats behind them it was fairly obvious.

“Nowhere around here, right? You don’t wanna live here, trust me.”

“No, just passing through. I’m headed back to the west coast.”

“Long way to go still.” Violet paused to stare out the window. The nothingness was gradually turning to tiny lights ahead, just enough to reassure them that they weren’t the only life left out there. She lost interest as quickly as it had hit her, and she turned her eyes back to Ashleigh. “Well, what’re you runnin’ from?”

Her heart skipped a beat as the image of the figure in her rearview mirror forced itself back to the forefront of her mind. “What makes you think I’m running?”

“Everyone’s runnin’ from something.”

She hesitated, unsure how much she was willing to divulge to a perfect stranger. What she did know was that a quiet drive would mean being alone with her terror. “Boyfriend, funny enough. I moved across the country to be with him and left it all behind, and then he… well, he changed.”

“Changed like this?” Violet gestured to her black eye, and Ashleigh winced.

“Yeah. Yeah, like that.”

“How long did you stay with him?”

“Longer than I’d like to admit. After a while, going through the same dance over and over just seemed normal. I like routine. Routine is easy.”

“Sounds about right. What finally made you leave?”

“Called my best friend after the police came and got him one particularly bad night. We hadn’t spoken in months, but she still answered the second she saw my name pop up on her phone. Hearing her voice was like…waking up from a nightmare. I was just so damned tired. Wound up packing up all my shit and leaving that night to head back home. I didn’t want to be there when he got bailed out. He can rot in jail for all I care.”

“How long have you been drivin’?”

“I don’t even know anymore. It feels like it’s been forever.”

“I give you props, girl. You’re a stronger woman than I.” She pointed to the gas station on their right, just across the street from a tacky diner and a boarded up laundromat. It looked a bit like one that she’d passed a while back, but that didn’t surprise her. After a while, a lot of things start to look the same. That was the beauty of the highway.

She pulled up to the second pump, slowing to a crawl to avoid the stray orange tabby that was leisurely crossing the parking lot. An old man in a pickup truck was at the first pump, and he nodded at them in acknowledgment. His bald head gleamed under the neon light of the store’s sign. Ashleigh got out of the car and headed inside, glancing back at the passenger side nervously. There were no dents or scratches where the thing had hit her, and she shuddered. She almost wondered if she’d imagined all of it, but something in her gut told her not to count on that.

It took just moments for her to find all she wanted, and she handed the two sodas over to the cashier, a skinny blonde woman with more facial piercings than she could count without staring impolitely. In such a small town, Ashleigh couldn’t imagine that she fit in. Or maybe her impressions of small town life were wrong. She wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out.

She filled the tank and took a quick peek under the hood before getting back on the road. Nothing was abnormal or out of place, and with all the miles behind them she found herself wondering if a car could malfunction out of sheer spite. After all, if so many people named their vehicles, they must have personalities, wants, needs. She’d never taken the time to name hers.

As they drove off Ashleigh found herself gazing at Violet and not the straight road unending road before them. Beneath the cuts and bruises and tousled hair she was probably pretty. “You don’t have to stay with him, you know,” she blurted. The certainty in her voice surprised her. “You could get out.”

“Around here, people really don’t get out of anywhere,” Violet sighed and turned away from the window as they went under an old overpass, her view of the blackness disrupted. “It’s a vicious cycle of parents fightin’ and teachin’ their kids to fight and everyone bein’ too poor or stubborn to move on. I don’t know a single person who’s ever left here.”

“Break the cycle then.”

“And go where?”

“I don’t know. The coast? The next town over? You can go wherever you want.”

“How naïve do you think I am, tellin’ me to believe something like that?”

“You don’t deserve to get hurt.”

“Lots of people don’t deserve to get hurt. Doesn’t stop the hurt though.” Violet’s expression grew serious. “Would you have listened to you, back when things were bad?”

“…No.”

“See? You know how it is. Is there a little voice in the back of my mind telling me to run, to get out while I can? Sure. Are we just playin’ the same parts and doin’ the same things, over and over and over? Absolutely. But I do love him. I do. And who knows? Maybe tomorrow, things’ll change. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

“And maybe the day after won’t be.”

She shrugged. “No use livin’ in a future that may never come.”

Ashleigh opened her mouth to reply, but before words could come her foot slammed on the brake. Violet yelped as the car veered off the highway and jolted to a stop. “What the hell are you doin’?”

Ashleigh got out and looked around wildly. An orange tabby hissed at her and darted into the night, having narrowly avoided her tires as she pulled into the lot. Across the street a few stray cars were parked in front of a tacky diner, blocking the parking of the boarded up laundromat beside it. The bald old man glanced at them with concern as he stood next to his pickup truck, the neon light casting him in red and shadow. “Why’d you come back?”

“I…what?”

“Is something wrong, ma’am? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She jumped as he tried to approach her, scrambling back into her car and locking the doors. Through the windows of the gas station she could see the pierced cashier leaning over the counter, peering out suspiciously. “We were just here. Why the hell are we back here? We were just here.”

“What are you –”

“Drive.”

They both spun in their seats, but all that greeted them in the back was Ashleigh’s pile of belongings. No person could feasibly find room to hide, but – whatever it was – she’’d locked it in with them; the man tapping at the window worriedly barely registered anymore.

“You heard that too, right?” Violet finally stammered.

Ashleigh started the car with trembling hands and drove off, her knuckles white against the wheel. She wasn’t sure what compelled her. Maybe it was that she was already headed in that direction anyways. Maybe it was the color draining from the old man’s face as the word had been growled. Maybe she still felt unseen eyes at her back, like she was being hunted.

Her grip tightened as they went under the old overpass, a brief interruption in the void. “Where am I taking you?”

“I’ll tell you where to turn.”

They took the next right, a one lane concrete road that led infinitely away from the safety the lights of town promised. A pair of headlights swerved after them, close on their tail. Ashleigh squinted at the rearview mirror, but she couldn’t make out the figure behind the lights. “How long has that car been behind us?”

“Dunno.”

“I don’t remember seeing it on the main road.”

“Huh.”

The silence that they’d been so desperately trying to avoid had overtaken them. Ashleigh shifted uncomfortably in her seat, glancing back in her rearview mirror every few seconds as they crept along the lane. The headlights followed closely, illuminating the inside of her car. She glanced over at Violet and shivered; in the stark contrast of light and shadow, the girl’’s skin seemed deathly, her eyes dark and vacant. The dark bruises across her body were the only signs of the pains of life.

She pointed for her to take the next left. Ashleigh’s pulse slowed as the car behind them passed on while they slowly made their way down the winding gravel driveway. At the end, a humble yellow house sat next to a massive old tree, its branches hanging precariously low overhead. Its windows were open, letting the summer air saturate each room. The small welcome mat on the porch beckoned for them to enter. But there were no lights to greet them, and Violet frowned. “David isn’t home yet.”

“You don’t have to stay with him,” Ashleigh said again, but she remembered how deaf selective ears could be.

“And go where?”

“You could go with me.”

“You don’t have anywhere to go either right now.” Violet forced a smile. “Who knows? Maybe tomorrow, things’ll change.”

They both said nothing more for fear of breaking down the lie.

Violet waved goodbye and flicked on the lamp in the entryway, enveloping her in a soft glow as she shut the door behind her. Ashleigh was hesitant to leave. It didn’t feel right to leave her. Not much had felt right as of late.

She put the car in gear and escaped the narrow driveway, heading back to the narrow road that led to town. Her tires had scarcely hit the concrete when her rearview mirror was filled with a flash of blinding light.

A pair of headlights sped toward her from further down the road. She hit the accelerator, a terrified shriek escaping her throat as she braced herself to flee for her life. But the truck swerved violently long before it reached her, careening off the road and down the driveway she’d just left behind. It wasn’t her they were after.

Ashleigh slammed on the brakes and threw the car into reverse. If it was the boyfriend, she could at least intervene. She didn’t know what she could do if it was something else. She had no plan. She flew back up the driveway, gravel spitting from her tires, and at the final corner she braced herself to expect the worst.

Her heart dropped as she slowed to a stop, her vehicle alone in the blackness. Beneath the low hanging branches of a massive tree stood a little rundown house with boarded windows, the door off its hinges and leaning against the peeling wall. A few stray strips of yellow tape clung to the porch, faded black letters indiscernible in the night. No lights greeted her; they likely hadn’t been turned on in years. She thought she saw something looming in the doorway.

“Drive.”

She didn’t know what she could do but listen. Her mind in a haze of questions she wasn’t about to stick around to answer, she turned the car around and drove away from the decaying little house in the middle of nowhere. In her rearview mirror, visible even against the darkness of the night, a shadowy figure stood perfectly still, portentously waiting for her taillights to turn back onto the main road.

She swore she’d made the right turn toward the lights of town, but it was harder to find her way than she’d expected. Beneath the heavy fog rolling in, she doubted she’d be able to see them anyways. But as long as she kept driving, the thing couldn’t get her. If she never stopped, she was safe.

She frowned as the fog broke and she watched the yellow lines of the highway begin to fade. The trip must have been even duller than she’d realized; she could barely remember what lay behind her. Cornfields, probably. Vast, lonely emptiness. Nothing of note. But she was down to a quarter tank of gas, so at least she knew she was making progress. Her bladder definitely wasn’t empty.

A green sign ahead told her of a coming rest stop. The decrepit brick building soon appeared ahead of her, cast in soft shadows as the sun started its descent over the horizon.

She pulled into the parking lot with a sigh of relief. It’d be good to stretch her legs. It felt like she’d been driving forever.