story
Hello,
I was going to post something about local nutters and why i am off loony duties for a while but really they exhaust me just thinking about them, so have instead a little story i wrote in my head on the way back home yesterday when i really should have been paying more attention to my driving :-)
Malcolm stared with glassy eyes at the road ahead, half mesmerised by the flicker of cats eyes and of the white lines ticking off the miles as they passed.
He liked driving at night, he had been doing it for years and it gave him time to think and sometimes, to brood.
After 25 years on the road he prided himself that he could virtually drive on auto-pilot, passing lorries when necessary, with barely a glance, maintaining a nice smooth pace that ate up the miles between jobs.
He used to drive during the day but with the roads getting busier he preferred now to do his travelling at night when he could relax, switch off and enjoy having the road to himself.
-----------------------------------------
Slow Down, Accident Ahead.
-----------------------------------------
He snorted, the overhead signs were wrong 50 per cent of the time.
You would slow down for whatever obstruction they were predicting, drive carefully for a few miles and then you were in the clear, with never a sight of whatever they were warning about whether it was fog, llamas in the road or a traffic queue.
------------------------
Don't Drive Tired.
------------------------
He wondered at them sometimes. Who decided what was written? Was it all computerised or was there a gray room somewhere with a lone operative slumped in front of ranks of monitors showing grainy images of roads across the country. Did they ever get bored, he wondered, typing up "Don't drive tired" for the hundredth time that day, did they ever get tempted to type something else or were they constrained by a little book of rules and officially sanctioned phrases.
-------
Die
-------
His heart gave a lurch, did that say what he thought it did?
No, it couldn't have.
He laughed.
Someone was taking the piss. Oh well, perhaps after all there was someone stuck alone in a little gray room, wishing away the hours till the morning shift change.
Still, it wasn't very nice.
In his imaginings Malcolm might have thought the mystery typist might have indulged in some whimsy, praised him for his choice of car, asked a pretty girl out, teased a trucker for having eaten too many pies but not this, not this bald, stark...threat. That was creepy.
---------------------------------
You Are Going To Die.
---------------------------------
This time Malcolm saw it clearly. He was looking out for the sign so had plenty of time to read it several times. It wasn't his imagination. His hands grew clammy on the wheel.
Malcolm spent the next few miles mentally composing a letter of complaint to the Highways Agency, working himself up into a state of pleasurable indignation.
But still, he was unsettled.
He looked in his rear view mirror where all was darkness but far up ahead he could just see the red lights of a lorry and somehow that small indication of life comforted him. He was not alone.
The emptiness of the road no longer gave him any pleasure and suddenly he craved company, even the impersonal brief contact that you get from buying an over priced drink from a surly server in a service station.
Malcolm wanted to be among people and perhaps a coffee wouldn't go amiss.
He would stop at the next services, there was bound to be one soon.
Malcolm wondered if he would tell anyone at the service station about the signs. Perhaps they would laugh, perhaps they would share his anger at whoever was playing with him, more likely some spotty and tired teenager would stare with the dumb incomprehension they seem to reserve for conversations with anyone over 40.
Perhaps though the next morning the teenager would tell his friends of his late night encounter and an urban myth would be born.
Now where was that service station? There had been no signs for miles.
-----------
The medic zipped up the bag up, covering the bloody and still face of the middle-aged and nondescript man who, it would appear, had an hour or so previously driven straight off the motorway into a tree.
The medic had seen it all before. If someone drives off a straight stretch of road in the early hours of the morning, nine times out of ten they had fallen asleep at the wheel.
Stupid ****.
Didn't they read the signs?
The blue and orange lights of emergency vehicles reflected off the black plastic of the body bag as it was loaded into the ambulance.
Around them emergency workers got on with their jobs with quiet efficiency, sweeping up glass, taking photographs, winching the battered car onto a pick-up.
------------
------------------------
Don't Drive Tired
------------------------
Malcolm snorted, gee thanks, he thought, good suggestion, now how about providing a service station to sell me a coffee.
At least the sign was normal. He had been quite un-nerved about the last one.
He looked again in his rear view mirror and saw nothing but the darkness while in front the pool of his lights illuminated a small patch of road, the twinkling cats eyes, the broken line, stretching out beyond, on, ever onwards.
------------
The End
------------
I was going to post something about local nutters and why i am off loony duties for a while but really they exhaust me just thinking about them, so have instead a little story i wrote in my head on the way back home yesterday when i really should have been paying more attention to my driving :-)
Malcolm stared with glassy eyes at the road ahead, half mesmerised by the flicker of cats eyes and of the white lines ticking off the miles as they passed.
He liked driving at night, he had been doing it for years and it gave him time to think and sometimes, to brood.
After 25 years on the road he prided himself that he could virtually drive on auto-pilot, passing lorries when necessary, with barely a glance, maintaining a nice smooth pace that ate up the miles between jobs.
He used to drive during the day but with the roads getting busier he preferred now to do his travelling at night when he could relax, switch off and enjoy having the road to himself.
-----------------------------------------
Slow Down, Accident Ahead.
-----------------------------------------
He snorted, the overhead signs were wrong 50 per cent of the time.
You would slow down for whatever obstruction they were predicting, drive carefully for a few miles and then you were in the clear, with never a sight of whatever they were warning about whether it was fog, llamas in the road or a traffic queue.
------------------------
Don't Drive Tired.
------------------------
He wondered at them sometimes. Who decided what was written? Was it all computerised or was there a gray room somewhere with a lone operative slumped in front of ranks of monitors showing grainy images of roads across the country. Did they ever get bored, he wondered, typing up "Don't drive tired" for the hundredth time that day, did they ever get tempted to type something else or were they constrained by a little book of rules and officially sanctioned phrases.
-------
Die
-------
His heart gave a lurch, did that say what he thought it did?
No, it couldn't have.
He laughed.
Someone was taking the piss. Oh well, perhaps after all there was someone stuck alone in a little gray room, wishing away the hours till the morning shift change.
Still, it wasn't very nice.
In his imaginings Malcolm might have thought the mystery typist might have indulged in some whimsy, praised him for his choice of car, asked a pretty girl out, teased a trucker for having eaten too many pies but not this, not this bald, stark...threat. That was creepy.
---------------------------------
You Are Going To Die.
---------------------------------
This time Malcolm saw it clearly. He was looking out for the sign so had plenty of time to read it several times. It wasn't his imagination. His hands grew clammy on the wheel.
Malcolm spent the next few miles mentally composing a letter of complaint to the Highways Agency, working himself up into a state of pleasurable indignation.
But still, he was unsettled.
He looked in his rear view mirror where all was darkness but far up ahead he could just see the red lights of a lorry and somehow that small indication of life comforted him. He was not alone.
The emptiness of the road no longer gave him any pleasure and suddenly he craved company, even the impersonal brief contact that you get from buying an over priced drink from a surly server in a service station.
Malcolm wanted to be among people and perhaps a coffee wouldn't go amiss.
He would stop at the next services, there was bound to be one soon.
Malcolm wondered if he would tell anyone at the service station about the signs. Perhaps they would laugh, perhaps they would share his anger at whoever was playing with him, more likely some spotty and tired teenager would stare with the dumb incomprehension they seem to reserve for conversations with anyone over 40.
Perhaps though the next morning the teenager would tell his friends of his late night encounter and an urban myth would be born.
Now where was that service station? There had been no signs for miles.
-----------
The medic zipped up the bag up, covering the bloody and still face of the middle-aged and nondescript man who, it would appear, had an hour or so previously driven straight off the motorway into a tree.
The medic had seen it all before. If someone drives off a straight stretch of road in the early hours of the morning, nine times out of ten they had fallen asleep at the wheel.
Stupid ****.
Didn't they read the signs?
The blue and orange lights of emergency vehicles reflected off the black plastic of the body bag as it was loaded into the ambulance.
Around them emergency workers got on with their jobs with quiet efficiency, sweeping up glass, taking photographs, winching the battered car onto a pick-up.
------------
------------------------
Don't Drive Tired
------------------------
Malcolm snorted, gee thanks, he thought, good suggestion, now how about providing a service station to sell me a coffee.
At least the sign was normal. He had been quite un-nerved about the last one.
He looked again in his rear view mirror and saw nothing but the darkness while in front the pool of his lights illuminated a small patch of road, the twinkling cats eyes, the broken line, stretching out beyond, on, ever onwards.
------------
The End
------------