Titan: The Dark Path

The Road

The road was long and lonely. Swaying golden fields and open space spread apart on either side. A string of old telephone poles dotted just past the shoulder alongside. There had been no cars in some time. It stretched into the horizon and crested on a slow rising hill in the distance. Presumably, the road continued after that. Eric Steele made no assumptions.

This is Titan. He is alone. His heart is dark, but his spirit burns bright. On the road, his legend grows.

Eric had been walking for a long time, a solitary figure in a tuxedo with his jacket thrown over his shoulder and his other hand clasped to his side covering a searing wound. His expression was weary, but hard. His face was pink and dry from the sun and his hair was hard and oily from the elements and the product that had been run through it a lifetime ago. His legs felt thick and raw, and his muscles screamed. Whenever he stopped it was agony to start again, so he kept moving. His feet were worse off in old work boots that were too big and rubbed him wrong.

Every step was a twinge of pain from his sole to his ankle, through his shin, and into his knees. Still he went on. Sometimes he saw a figure in the distance, but it disappeared whenever he blinked. His mind was playing tricks.

Occasionally, a low, cool breeze brushed over the flat land and him along with it. It soothed him for a time. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the wild air moving over him and around him. It provided brief solace and then it was gone.

Eric only thought about the past. Sometimes memories that belonged to other people drifted in. He once dreamed of the future and what it could be. Those hopes were lost. He thought of his mom and dad, a girl named Rose, childhood friends long gone, and he thought of his sister, Sarah. Then there were people and places and images he didn't know. Sharpest among them was a young boy, terrified and screaming, in a dark place. He was from the distant past, long dead. He knew this somehow. But Eric was never sure if these things were passing thoughts, daydreams, or fugue. It was unsettling not to know one's own mind.

From the recesses of his mind, a bony, craggily fist struck him.

Eric's eyes snapped open. He had been walking with his eyes closed, a waking dream. He hadn't slept in days and this happened often. He thought about the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies where characters seemed to be awake but were actually asleep and reality was an uncertain place.

The pain from the hit was real...

He had drifted into the road. He thought about stopping and laying down to rest. Then he thought about his father and he took another step and another. Each step encouraged the next. His eyes burned, but he was dehydrated and had no tears. The last water he'd drank came from a muddy stream miles or days behind him. He wasn't sure if he should measure time or distance, so he decided to forget it entirely. He walked on.

He had stopped reading road signs a long time ago. There weren't many here anyway. This leg of the walk had been big, flat expanses of unending fields and worn, distressed road. Monotony and silence. Stephen King once described hell as "repetition." Eric wasn't inclined to disagree. The green, sloping hills ended not long after Ohio. Of course, "not long" was an imprecise measurement. But it was the last place he knew for sure he had been. The rest was a feverish dream. Or nightmare.

Eric had never been too far west of Washington, D.C., before. He'd never really left the area at all for that matter. Other than infrequent trips to see his family in Buffalo, New York, and their one family vacation to Disney World in Florida, Eric had really only ever been in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. That was probably why he always dreamed of traveling. It was a necessity now, but at one time it just seemed like a nice thing to do.