I awoke to Adam shaking me. I opened my eyes and bright fluorescent light flooded in. Where am I? I thought. I lifted my head up and saw the orange ruffles on the waitress’s apron. She was holding a slice of pie that looked ghoulish in the light. I glanced over at the clock. It was 2:37 in the morning. I looked out the window. The vast expanse outside the small diner was completely black. The darkness was so thick I could have sworn I could cut it with a knife.

I looked toward the counter where a man -a trucker- was sitting on the green plastic seat; the kind of seat that your skin sticks to on hot summer days. The man was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and smoking a cigarette. The waitress leaned over on the counter and asked the man something, all the while chewing gum that had undoubtedly by now lost all its flavor.

I looked back over at Adam, who had barely touched the pie. He motioned for me to eat some, but I shook my head. The pie, like everything else at the diner, looked dead. It was like a still life painting or a black and white photograph. The clock was ticking, but the hands didn’t seem to move. Time was frozen, but time is always frozen after midnight.

I slowly turned my head and stared out the window at the pitch black night. The sharp, scraping sound of fork against plate resounded in my head. When I looked back, the waitress was hovering over our table again. She bent down farther than was necessary and placed the check on the table. Then she hurried back to the man at the counter and refilled his coffee cup. Adam pulled out a five and a ten from his wallet and placed them on top of the check, and a few coins on top of those. He slid out of the booth and I followed him. He nodded to the waitress. She smiled and winked at him.

As soon as I stepped out, the cold night air stabbed at my lungs. Adam shivered. We walked silently to the car. We got in and Adam put the key in the ignition. He immediately turned on the heat and rubbed his hands together in front of the radiator. Satisfied, he put the car in reverse. He backed out of the little parking lot and drove back to the highway, a silent expanse of road stretching to the ends of the earth. It seemed to go on forever, without a fluorescent gas station in sight. Neither of us said a word. I wondered how long it would be before we reached civilization again.

back to the highway that never ends