Stumblin' in the darkness

Sometimes the only thing you can do is leave everything behind and hit the road. The boy made his way through the darkness, reluctantly lighting his way with a torch for fear he might come off the road. It was a long and empty stretch that cut through the hill like the wind cut through the boy's thin shirt. The moon was nothing but a whispered promise in a cloud too far away to make out any shape.

As he walked he felt a vehicle coming up from behind. He couldn't hear it, because he had music playing in his ears, and he couldn't see it, because the lights were obfuscated by the hillside. But he felt it, and moved to the side of the road. Ten minutes later it came up, a red four wheel drive towing a trailer. The boy  felt it slow down, nearly to a walking pace. Much slower than caution passing a pedestrian would dictate. The boy stared at the ground, continued to walk and adopted the face he had perfected when he used to wander around the city late at night. The don't fuck with me face. Whether it was the look or the stride, the four wheel drive picked up its speed and disappeared around a bend. By the time the boy reached the top of the hill, it was nowhere in sight.

A little bit further down on his return journey, the boy stopped and lay down on the road. He felt the cold fingers of the tarmac slide through his shirt, arguing with the sharp stones as to who had strongest claim on his soft flesh. While they debated the boy stared up at the stars.

Sometimes the night sky looked just like a ceiling with lots of fake glow-in-the-dark stickers patched up carelessly. When he craned his neck back the ceiling stretched on, and he could fancy that it was slowly descending upon him, a black sky trying to meet the black road, with him caught in the middle. Sometimes it looked so big that he felt it existed solely for himself. Something so big couldn't have any other purpose than to serve the person looking through it.

The boy glanced sideways and saw the moon, now bloated and yellow, not so much floating up into the sky as being reluctantly pulled. Its colour made him think of the sun, and he thought of the moon as simply the sun sliding back from its track, slipping down an unseen slope to another life. If that happened, the boy thought, would we all develop night vision, or would we just create more lights?

After maybe an hour the cold part of the road finished its argument with the sharp part. The boy rose, teeth chattering, and was unsure as to whether he was the shivering figure standing upright or the black shadow stretched out down the hill. There's something about a shadow cast by the moon that is infinitely more life-like than one cast by the sun. As the boy walked he tried to tell the difference, but had little luck. This time he left the torch off and both he and his shadow, whichever was which, slowly made their way back down the hill as the moon watched on, thinking its own thoughts.