There is a Road at the edge of town. No one ever seems to go down it, though sometimes there might be a house if you look hard enough. The Road is straight and level and long. So long that the ending is somewhere beyond the imagined vanishing point you see from the crossroads where it meets the main street. Del always wonders how far it goes when they walk by to work every day. Sometimes they stop a moment at the small sign that is the only indication of a name. It reads... well something, it's not important, and try as they might Del cannot recall it.
But the Road seems to draw them to it. The end, wherever it is, almost calls to Del. They resist the call day after day, year after year, but it never leaves. The constant nagging only grows until one day, Del turns down the Road on their walk to work. They don't think to look back until it is too late. When they do, the crossroad is gone, the main street they just left somewhere past the horizon. The long, straight Road seems to go on forever, and the only way to go is forward. Del begins to walk. Not back the way they came, for something still calls from the end of the Road.
Del does not know how long they have been walking. They only just left the crossroads didn't they? But looking back only shows the same thing it always does, a long straight Road stretching off to infinity. They continue walking.
At some point the land around the Road changes; from the thickly wooded hills surrounding the town, to the stark whites and grays of a snow-covered grassland, to the bleak, open emptiness of the desert Del always knew was there. But there is no desert near the town... You can't walk to a desert from the town. Despite the land around it changing, the Road is always the same. The same gritty, almost sandy gravel, always neatly grated. The same simple fence of wood and wire. Somehow Del knows that the Road is all there is, and that to leave it would be folly.
Still, though Del still follows the Road, they begin to fear what would happen if the Road split. For if the Road split, only one could be the right choice. Only one would be the true Road, and only one would bring Del to the siren call of the end. There begins to form in the back of Del's mind, a subtle doubt: What if that had already happened? What if they had already turned and somehow forgotten? What if this was the wrong Road? This thought is quickly quashed, for to doubt the Road is to doubt the world itself. Again, Del turns back forward and begins walking. Could that have been a sign back there? No. There were no signs on the Road. Was that a path to the left there, a link to the true Road? No, just a game trail. All the same, as Del walks, the fear of making the wrong decision, of being wrong, grows. From a small nagging idea, to a constant worry that begins to wear at Del's mind, it grows. Del begins to run. From what they don't know. To what they don't know. They only know that they must find the right Road. They must choose right, and they must choose now. They run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run, and run...
Del never knows if they missed the turn.
