Road Trip

Road Trip

forced into 500 words

As his eyelids slowly lifted, Kelton focused on a square through a soiled window. It was a bright sign with a silhouette of a man swinging a golf club and the word Fore!

Man, how long had it been since he had played. Years ago he and Nick would spend three days a week or more at the clu…

Kelton surged to his feet in a room he had not seen before. Panic instantly overcame him as he frantically scoured for anything familiar. He was in someone’s trailer. Someone, assuming by the bowl on the floor, with a pet named Shadow.

“Where am I?” He whispered “and where the hell is Nick?” His heart quickened. A bead of sweat pooled at his hairline before giving way to gravity and streaming down his face. “Ok man, think.” His surroundings were so dark and…stale. The smell was one foreign to his senses before now. “Gotta focus,” he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes.

Ok, we were driving through southern Alabama, he thought to himself. We were joking about how desolate and run down things were here compared to home. “Trailer parks and closed down motels as far as the eye could see!” Nick had laughed.

We were driving all night and extremely tired, he continued to himself, we stopped for gas… again Kelton tensed, his eyes widened. “The weird dude!” he exclaimed under his breath, still very uncertain of his surroundings.

‘The weird dude’, obviously mental, had approached Kelton at the station. Staring into (beyond) his eyes, he mumbled something not quite discernable. Later they made humorous guesses about what he said, like “Fondue with mimes” or “Bind to the sides” while they drove.

A sound from inside the trailer jolted Kelton back to the now. He carefully crept to a doorway. The smell he had noticed earlier grew stronger, deep and putrid. As he peered through the opening his knees buckled. Lying in the middle of the room was Nick, his eyes in a wide gaze far from this twisted place. Blood was everywhere. Hunched over him, covered in blood as well were the station attendant Nick had befriended and a large dog. “You must be Shadow,” Kelton thought as darkness saturated his world yet again.

As his eyelids slowly lifted, Kelton focused on a square through a soiled window. It was a bright sign with a silhouette of a man swinging a golf club and the word Fore!

He was back in the car.

“Wake up Kel, that’s where we’re gonna crash awhile,” said Nick as he slowly pulled the car over. He was pointing to a trailer. “I rented it from that attendant back at the station.”

Instantly, as if someone had a remote to his brain, Kelton understood- first Fore, then Shadow, and finally ‘the weird dude’ but this time clear as day: “Mind you the signs!”
He shuddered.

“Everything ok?” Asked Nick

“Yeah, ok,” Kelton managed a smile, “but how about a round of golf, instead?”