The Loop

It took a few seconds to realize I was utterly and completely lost. Not the kind of lost when you’re shopping in a grocery store with an unfamiliar layout and the bread is no longer on aisle three. No, this was the kind of lost that makes your head spin and question whether or not you’re even in the same country you started in. I knew I was in the Texas Hill Country, somewhere between Wimberly and my intended destination, Fredericksburg. At least, that was the case forty minutes ago before my phone died. “Mark, don’t you have a phone charger?” you might ask. Of course I do! In my room. Back at the hotel. On my nightstand by the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens. What? Reading it helps me fall asleep.

Up the hill without a map. Not my idea of a perfect vacation if I’m being completely honest. Maybe for some psycho who thrives off the unexpected and randomness of life, but that isn’t me. Give me structure and I will thrive. So when I saw the same, spindly oak tree for the fourth time, I knew something was off. I continued to drive anyway, just to confirm I was going crazy. The country road I followed seemed to be an endless circuit of dips and rises, which made no sense as driving up a hill was what got me lost in the first place. How I arrived at a circle around a hill was beyond me. And sure enough, ten minutes later, the same tree showed up on the left at the edge of a field. But this time, something had changed.

An ancient pick-up truck sat beneath the tree. I pulled over quickly. Maybe whoever owned the vehicle could help me figure out where the heck I was. A warm blast of heat, like opening an oven door, greeted me as I stepped out of my beautifully air conditioned Mazda. I forced myself to close the door and walk over to the base of the tree. The truck was probably blue at some point, but it was hard to tell beneath all the rust. Crates of peaches sat in the truck’s bed. There was no tail-gate. “Hello?” My voice stayed close in the thick, hot air. No one answered. Walking around to the cab revealed an empty seat and a half-full bottle of Mexican Coca-Cola. Someone had driven the truck here. They had to be close.

“Lookin’ for some peaches?” I nearly pissed my pants. Spinning around, I was met with the face of an old man. He wore denim overalls over a green checkered button-down. He was tall and spindly like the tree he stood under. His bushy, white eyebrows somehow balanced out the impressive length of his even whiter beard.

“N-no thanks,” I stammered, sounding like an idiot.

“You sure? Them be the sweetest peaches this side of the Blanco. My magic touch makes ‘em huge too, see?” The man held up a peach nearly the size of a volleyball.

“That is impressive. But I really just need to find the highway. Do you know how to get to the nearest one?”

“The highway?”

“Yes, one-sixty-five. I thought I had turned left, but I think I accidentally went straight.”

“Straight? As in up the hill?”

“Yes, I think so.”

The old man started to laugh, the sound causing a whistle through the gap where his front teeth should have been. “You done went up our driveway? Shoot! My wife really don’t like people doin’ that. She can be a bit of a witch about it sometimes.”

“I’m sorry. I didn't mean-” The world tilted. I clutched the side of the truck as a wave of dizziness crashed into me. I blinked back the sweat that had begun to drip down into my eyes. Was Texas in June always this hot?

The old man’s face went as pale as his hair. “Looks like my wife is hungry. You been here too long, boy. You gotta get out.”

“What?” My question was slurred as my head started to pound. What in the world did he mean by ‘hungry?’ With a surprisingly strong grip, the man pulled me towards my still running car.

“How many times you seen this here tree?”

“Uh, five times?”

He opened the door and shoved me in. “Drive ‘till you see it five more times and you’ll get out. The faster ya go the quicker you’ll break out of the loop”

“The…loop?”

“Just go!”

The urgency in the man’s voice left no room for protest. I put on my seat belt and drove off. With every minute that ticked by, the panic in my chest doubled. The tree came into view again. Six. I floored the acceleration. It definitely took less than ten minutes for the tree to appear this time. The old man waved at me as I sped by. Seven. The road refused to stay steady in my vision, but I somehow managed to keep on the road. Eight. The man and his truck were gone. Why was I smelling gingerbread? Nine. My body was becoming an inferno, and the air conditioner, blowing full blast, did nothing to ease my agony. The world turned upside-down. My body burned. Ten. Somewhere in the distance, a timer dinged.

~~~~~

“Sir, are you ok?”

My eyes flew open. A woman stood outside my window, worry etched into every line of her face. I opened my door and looked around. I was parked directly below the sign for the highway one-sixty-five junction. “Yeah,” I said, my voice shaking, “I think I’m fine now.”

“It looked like you had passed out.”

I couldn't answer. The woman insisted she stay until I drank a whole bottle of water. I sat there for a while once she was gone. Highway one-sixty-five stretched out to the right and the left. And sure enough, straight ahead, was a driveway framed by a metal gate and thickly overgrown with vines. A sign, painted blue, read, ‘Private Property: Do Not Enter.’ I felt it then. A pull. Something tugging me to the nearly hidden driveway. Whatever it was, I knew now that it was hungry. I turned my car around faster than a deer to a corn feeder. Fredericksburg could wait until I evaluated my sanity. It was only then, speeding back towards my hotel, that I noticed the crate of giant peaches on my passenger seat. A note was taped to the top-most peach. “Sorry about that,” it read, “my wife really don’t like when strangers use the driveway.”