The Road to Nowhere

Travis looked ahead and saw a never-ending road that was brown and burned from the sun. He tried to put a positive spin on his journey. This road was endless because eternity has no end either. At least, that’s what he imagined. This was a spiritual journey.

He looked down at his feet. He was wearing size 8 brown cowboy boots. Nothing special, but he felt his toes tingling, and when he looked down again, his feet had grown to the size of two Volkswagen beetle cars. He giggled, although he was not laughing. It was such an incongruous sight. 

Anything to help him on his way. As he tramped along, smashing each of his Volkswagen beetle car sized feet on the floor, he noticed a red robin at the side of the road. Ahh, spiritual messengers, he thought, but then there were a thousand of them, all pecking round his feet, which had gone back to their original size. “Get away, get away from me”, he shouted at the robins. The sound of their chirruping was louder than a jackhammer. His ears were ringing.

He ran then for a little, bored with the endless road, which wiggled to the left, then to the right. He couldn’t see all the way to the end. Of course not. It was never ending, but his life was ending, or so he thought. He wasn’t hot, and he wasn’t cold. Strange, there was no wind or rain. There was no weather at all.

Then the tears came. They slid down his face, big, wet, salty tears pooling at the foot of his body. Which formed a lake around him on the road. He tried to use his faded red t-shirt with the Nike Logo on it to soak up his snot, but to no avail. “Sod it,” he said to himself.

He stopped crying and, gazing across his pool of tears, he saw a little yellow rowing boat, just floating there. He always wanted to row a boat in his childhood, but each time he waded through his pool of tears to get into it, it rowed itself just out of his reach. Even though he tried many times, but it was always just a little too far for his fingertips. The tiny rowing boat seemed to taunt and mock him.

He gave up. The large pool of water receded, and he continued on his journey. There was no sunshine, but all along the sides of the road, as far as he could see, were flowers. Gigantic Sunflowers, the petals radiating out like the sun from the centre in a splash of yellow and gold. He thought they were beautiful and smiled until he saw the bumble bees. 

They were approaching the sunflowers in an enormous swarm. The bumblebees matched the sunflowers in size. Hearing the thrumming buzz of the bumblebees’ wings was alarming, but when he caught sight of the size of their stingers, it filled his heart with fear. Their stingers were like barbed lances, just waiting to impale themselves on some unsuspecting victim.

As the bees collected the pollen on their hind legs and furry bodies, they created static electricity, and pollen filled the air around Travis, making him cough and sneeze.

He knew he needed to get past the flowers and the bees as quickly as possible. As soon as he thought about it, a motorbike appeared in front of him. Just sitting on a stand, waiting for him. An old-fashioned bright green Kawasaki 250cc. Travis felt overjoyed. He got on it. A 250cc engine sounds like a sewing machine. It’s not what a true motorbike enthusiast hankers after, but Travis was in seventh heaven. All he ever had as a child was a red scooter, where you used your foot to push it along. His parents refused to buy him a bicycle in case he hurt himself.

I can get where I’m going faster now. Although he knew he wasn’t going anywhere on this endless road to nowhere.

The motorbike said to him. “Hey, I can go faster than this, you know.” 

Travis said “WTF.” 

The motorbike took umbrage. “Yeah, you don’t know about motorbikes, do you?” 

Travis overcame his surprise. After all, there were no rules or human logic on this road. 

“Nope, I know nothing about them. You show me what you can do.” He smiled.

The motorbike shouted “Yeeha,” and took off as fast as its 250cc motor would allow it to. Travis held on for dear life. He didn’t have a helmet or a biker’s jacket, just his old Nike red t-shirt, a pair of black Levi jeans and his brown cowboy boots.

A wall appeared, smack bang in front of them. A bright red brick wall, and Travis screamed like a banshee. They were going to hit it at full speed. He closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable smash and broken bones, but they drove into a white fluffy cloud. 

The Kawasaki said, “Ha! Bet that gave you a fright,” as it came to an abrupt halt, then disappeared, leaving Travis standing with bowed legs as though he was still on the motorbike’s saddle. He was shaking from the adrenaline of the fast ride.

“What the hell,” he said to himself, then checked his thoughts. Was this hell, it wasn’t heaven, but then he hadn’t reached his end point, had he? Would he ever?

He gathered himself together and set off once more. As he walked, he noticed the road had changed from brown, scorched earth to a black, sticky tarmac. How did he know it was sticky? His brown cowboy boots had disappeared, and he was walking with his bare feet. 

He sighed. He couldn’t control anything on this road, he would just have to go with it. As he continued on, he saw a group of animals in the distance. He kept looking, and to his surprise, they started moving towards him. There was a black rabbit, two multicoloured guinea pigs, a tortoiseshell cat, a green budgie, and a Siberian Husky.

He couldn’t believe it; these were all his family pets through the years. They were no longer alive, but here they all were.

He stopped and picked up the snowy white rabbit. Then he dropped it as it berated him. “Oh no, you don’t. Don’t you dare stroke me?” It told him off. “You lazy boy, you left my hutch undone, and the foxes got me.”

He put the rabbit down, because the more he looked at the rabbit, with it berating him, the more he noticed it was growing, morphing into a human being. It was turning into his neighbour from next door. A woman who nagged at her long-suffering husband. He stifled a giggle. It was more from nerves than anything else.

Next were the two guinea pigs, which attacked him, as well. “You gave us away, you didn’t want us, you gave us to your friend, Billy. He didn’t look after us and we died. Shame on you.”

Travis shook his head. He couldn’t believe what the animals were saying to him.

“I loved you all. I miss you all. Why are you saying these things?”

Again, as he watched, the two guinea pigs morphed into two brothers he knew at school, both with ginger hair and freckles. They were twins, one called Fred, the other called John. He tried not to stare at them.

The green budgie was next. “You drowned me. I know you were trying to give me a drink, but you drowned me.”

Travis hung his head in shame. Indeed, he was trying to help the budgie have a drink, but he drowned it by mistake.

He became horrified as he watched the green budgie turn into a boy from his neighbourhood who drowned in the local lake. When they pulled him out, he was wearing a green jumper, but he died.

He sat on the road. This was all too much now. He shook his head in despair.

“But you lived to 18,” he said to the cat.

“Yes, I did, and don’t worry Travis, I loved you too,” the cat purred. “But I wish you would put a plaque in the garden where you buried me. I want to be remembered.”

“So did I,” barked Blue, the Siberian Husky. “You always took me on long walks, gave me food, and lots of cuddles. But I wish you realised I was ill when I started fitting. Instead, you played on your Xbox.”

He stroked the cat and hugged the Husky. “I’m so sorry if any of you suffered. I was only a boy.”

The next moment he found he was stroking thin air, and they were gone.

 Travis stood up. He was hungry, judging by the way his stomach rumbled. But what about food? No sooner did he think it, than a huge hamburger with melted cheese appeared in front of him on the road. It was monstrous. He looked at it. It was hot, in fact it was steaming hot, and it had a gherkin on top of the cheese. He could see it poking out of the bun. 

“Nope, no thanks, nope. Not going to touch it.” He felt wary of this burger the size of a house. Seeing his animals put him off eating any meat. 

He walked past the burger and kept going. He sighed. If only there were some chips. Nice, crispy, salty chips. He would have eaten those for sure. 

He looked down at his feet. His brown cowboy boots were back on them. But there was something wrong with his legs. Then he looked at his arms. They were wizened, and his hands were gnarled. He looked like an old man. Unable to see his face, he used his hands to feel it. He could feel endless wrinkles. His face felt like it was melting. 

Ten seconds later, he was a small child, not walking but skipping along the road. He was only five years old, and didn’t know what to think anymore. Without doubt he felt happier being a child than being old, though, that he was certain of.

Beach balls appeared everywhere, all of different sizes. Large ones, small ones, coloured ones, yellow, green, red, striped ones. They were bouncing all over the road. Travis ran over and grabbed a green one. He bounced it, kicked it, and played with it. So simple, just a beach ball, but so much joy from it. 

There was sand on the road, piled up in different levels, just like the sand dunes you see at the seaside. 

Travis, still as a five-year-old, ran up and down the sand dunes, in and out of them, playing with the beach ball. Now he grabbed a yellow ball, then a blue one. He couldn't contain his happiness. 

Boing! Boing! Boing!

“Oh my God,” he thought. “I am a beach ball now,” and he bounced in and out of the sand dunes, then he rolled along the road, leaving the sand far behind, back to the boring, endless road. 

“Life as a beach ball wasn’t so bad,” he thought, and just like that, poof, he was back as a man again.

He held his hand up to his eyes to see how far he could see along the road. Nothing. It was a wasteland. Then he heard it. Sweet music, harmonies, pleasant notes, swirling and whirling. The musical notes made their way over to him. Spinning around, they sang their sweet melodies, crotchets, minims, quavers, semi-quavers, dotted minims, and a treble bass. There was even a coda. He didn’t recognise the tune, but he thought it was the most beautiful song he had ever heard. There were no words, there was no human voice. It was a tranquil and breathtaking experience. He felt serene.

This continued for about ten minutes, putting him into a meditative state, but then he heard a deeper sound, a resonating sound in the distance. He started laughing, for this was a big brass band. Travis, unlike most of his guitar playing friends, opted to play the trumpet at school, and he wasn’t bad at it.

Now he could hear a big brass band in full force. It was marching down the road to meet him as he walked along. No humans, no people, just the instruments playing themselves. But he loved it. Deep, loud, vibrating brass instruments, with a few wind instruments thrown in for good measure. Again, they were playing a tune he didn’t know, but it was as if they were talking to each other. First, the trombones, then the trumpets and cornets, and then the flutes and piccolos trilling in response. But the pièce de résistance was a huge bass drum, which was quiet, until the very end of the piece, when it let out a huge, resounding boom, which echoed up and down the road.

Travis stood and clapped until his hands were sore. The instruments all took a bow and then poof vanished as quickly as they had come.

He kept walking. The sand was gone; the tarmac was gone. What was this? Snow? He wasn’t in his cowboy boots any more, now he was wearing snow boots. The snow piled up on the road in small piles, but as he continued walking, it grew until he faced a long ski slope. A chairlift was at the side of the ski slope. 

Travis couldn’t ski and he watched in awe as skiers appeared, sliding down the slope towards him. They shouted at him to get out of the way. The chair lift was full of people going up to the top of the slope. He glanced and observed that the chair lift lacked any connection, yet it continued to ascend the slope. 

He couldn’t get out of the way. There were too many of the skiers whizzing past him. Then a snowboarder hit a mogul on the road and launched into the air. Travis looked on in dismay. There was no way he could get out of the snowboarder’s way. He stood there, waiting for the collision, but there wasn’t one. The snowboarder and his board sailed through him. They were transparent. His heart was pumping so fast, he thought he would faint. He’d experienced visions of the snowboarder decapitating his head. Just like that, in a whiteout poof of snow, they all disappeared. 

He remembered then. With his family on holiday. He went to watch his younger brother skiing. Travis wasn’t interested in skiing. He wanted to snowboard because he thought that was way cooler. His parents asked him to monitor his younger brother. He got distracted with his snowboard and left his younger brother to go down the busy slope by himself. A snowboarder smashed into his brother and broke his leg. But Travis didn’t know. It was only later when the medical centre contacted the parents to say his brother was in hospital that he found out. He was still playing with his snowboard. 

Looking up as he walked, he heard bells tinkling, chiming. He looked at the floor of the road. Each step he took was on top of a love heart. The old-fashioned sweets with a message on. These were gigantic. BE HAPPY, I LOVE YOU, BE MINE, ALWAYS, LOVE YOU, CUDDLE ME, FOREVER, HUG ME, FOR YOU. Each love heart lit up as he trod on it, all the while the tinkling bells were getting louder. Travis heard a ‘ta da’ sound out each time he trod on a love heart. Then huge red hearts appeared all over the sky. They were also flashing.

Travis realised that on this road to nowhere, he had experienced happiness, sadness, and emotional pain, but not physical pain. One thing he wanted to experience but had not so far, was love. Where was the love? He shook his head. “We all want love. Love is the answer.” He thought.

Travis experienced an epiphany. We are all on an endless road to nowhere. None of us know if eternity exists, if there is a God, a heaven, or a hell. We are given life to test us. We are in the school of life. Life leads to nowhere, or life leads to somewhere. It’s only when we die, we find out.

Big neon letters appeared on the road on a massive billboard. Not just big neon letters, huge pink ones, with flashing lights. Above it floated two angels, with large white wings and glowing bodies. They were trumpeting a beautiful sound, which was ethereal and haunting.

“TRAVIS WOODS, YOU FIGURED IT OUT. YOU DID IT. YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD, BUT NOW YOU HAVE A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION.

WE ARE SENDING YOU BACK. LOTS OF LOVE GOD XXX.”

And just like that, the road ended, and Travis was home with his family. He ran and hugged each one of them. They felt surprised. Travis rarely showed emotion or love.

“Was I away for long?” He asked them.

They laughed. His brother said, “Nope, you were asleep in your room, Travis. Dreaming, having nightmares, but then laughing as well.” 

He punched his brother after Travis hugged them all. “You weirdo.” He exclaimed, smiling at him.

“Just never ask me to go on a road trip.” He said wryly.  

“Mum, I want to put a plaque for all our animals which passed away. We can put it in the garden.”

She looked at him. “Are you feeling unwell, Travis?” 

“Nope, never felt better in my life. I Just think we should put a memorial for them.” 

He smiled. He knew love was the answer to everything. Especially the road to nowhere.