The Road is a Lie

    Susan reared up and opened her eyes, her face peeling away from the frigid steering wheel. It was freezing. Her body felt almost numb with the cold. Her hands—which had been resting between her legs—were stiff and clawed, as if her entire body had been clenched while she had been unconscious.

    Describing the feeling of cold was tough to do. A painful dull stab that ran across your every pore like a white flash, causing goosebumps to erupt in waves and shivers to shake your bones. Susan felt like that now, but colder.

    With her teeth subconsciously clenching down to bite back on the low temperature, she studied her surroundings. She was in a car: a large van to be exact. She looked to her right at the passenger seat, noticing a flashlight, a first-aid kit, and a coat. She launched herself forward, desperate to grab the coat and let out a huff of escaped icy air as her seatbelt yanked her back. Stupid. She unfastened herself and grabbed the coat, contorting her body in the driver's seat to put it on. The material was cold but quickly absorbed her weak body heat.

    She turned in her seat, expecting to see another row of seats but instead gazed into a large open cabin space. This was definitely a large van. The space wasn't empty though. Stacked two deep on large neat rows in embedded shelves on one side of the cabin were multiple red containers with black screw-top lids. There had to be at least thirty of forty of them. Susan didn't recognize what they were at first and so her gaze moved over to the other items in the large space. Four large gray plastic tubs piled against each other on the opposite wall. They weren't labeled and Susan could only guess as to what was inside them. The shelves and the tubs took most of the space, only leaving a narrow isle to squeeze through. She could see double doors at the back of the van.

    It was then that she noticed the silence. The only noise she had heard since she woke up had been her own rustling and heavy breathing. Turning back around, she finally looked out through the windshield, noticing her surroundings for the first time. Apart from the gray cracked road in front of her that wound off between white smooth hills, it looked like Antarctica. Everything was blanketed in snow. Quiet flakes drifted downwards around the vehicle, conjoining with their fellow fluff. There was nothing that marked the landscape. Nothing even on the horizon. All she could see was gray sky and white ground—oh, and the road of course. Maybe those were mountains way out in the distance? She couldn't tell.

    How had she ended up out here in this van? Had she been in an accident? That didn't make sense. The vehicle wasn't hers, there was no trace of any crash, and no sign of anybody else—or anything else. Kidnapped? No, there was no one around and it was so cold she doubted anyone with any sense of self-preservation would have wandered off into the white-washed waste. Where had she been before this? At home? At work. She couldn't remember. What was her last memory? A faded-out image of petting a dog came to mind, but she couldn't associate it with anything.

    Susan felt panic start to encroach—a bubble that slowly rose up her throat. There's no point. She tried to tell herself. No one will hear you scream. It's not going to get you out of this situation.

    She racked her brain, trying to organize her thoughts. She was in a van, it was full of unknown stuff, and in the middle of nowhere. She didn't know how she got here and there didn't seem to be any sign of civilization for hundreds of miles except for the road in front of her. Think, think. Why? Why was she in this situation? She didn't know. How? Didn't know. Who put her here? Didn't know. She did know she was cold though. She adjusted herself in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position and her right knee brushed up against something, making a clinking sound. She examined the spot. Two keys. One was in the ignition.