This is my contribution to Weekend #Freewrite 3/31/2018, Single Prompt Option.
I chose to write a rather random text today instead of continuing my ongoing story of Tara, just because I felt I couldn’t really get into Tara’s world today.
But there's a short backstory to today's text anyway: For reasons I don’t really know I have “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads in heavy rotation this evening. You can find the song here, if you really don't know it, because you didn't grow up in the 80s ;-)
And when I randomly picked a prompt, I came up with “hardboiled minds” – and it immediately made sense, the song and the prompt together, and I was picturing the scene that I now have written about.
Feel free to try and listen to the song while reading if you like – it might add something extra, at least to me it does.
Her road to nowhere
Her car out of gas, no cell reception.
She had started walking, smiling.
Just further down the road, she had thought.
At some point there must be a house or at least a car passing by.
On the road to nowhere.
She had walked for hours.
No one behind her, no one in front.
No car passing by.
When she had lost her smile, she started to hear the marching music, the stomping.
The reassuring. Baby, it’s all right.
And there was a city in her mind.
But it wasn’t all right.
She walked on and on and on.
Ha. Ha.
The first blister on her right foot.
It didn’t hurt that badly.
She didn’t even feel it that much.
Until it opened up.
She didn’t know where she had been.
She wanted the future to be certain.
And kept marching.
On the road to nowhere.
Ha. Ha.
She had run out of water.
No houses, nowhere.
Here we go, she thought.
And kept marching.
Ha. Ha.
Maybe you wonder where you are.
She didn’t.
And she didn’t care.
Just take me there.
Not just a city in my mind.
Her neck and her face burnt.
It hurt like hell.
Her mind numb, hardboiled, dried out.
The view got blurry.
Her head hurt.
On the road to nowhere.
The marching and stomping faded.
Into walking.
Into going.
Into stumbling.
Then falling.
On the road to nowhere.