The Road: Part One

by Wolf Rider

Tonight, a chilly moon crept across the sky like a spherical slug trying to escape a dank black tar pit. I parked my bike in the men's outhouse behind a local bar, because it was starting to smell like rain, and went inside to have a few drinks before the inevitable storm.
"What'll it be?" asked the barkeep. I jerked where I sat, but said nothing. For awhile, we just stared at each other. Something was wrong...the air was stale. I could feel it cling to my skin, and it tightened my jaw when I finally said:
"You don't...have any...," I began.
"...Alcohol," I continued.
"...do you?" I concluded.
The room was silent, until the muscles in the barkeeper's face pulsed and pulled at one another, and moved his lips apart and seperated his teeth, causing a thin strand of saliva to extend from his lips and snap in midair, and he said:
"I'm sorry sir, didn't you read the sign outside? This a non-alcoholic bar. In fact, this is J.P. McBasketfingers, the good-time family pizza buffet and Xtreme sport arcade!"
We both paused.

What happened after that, I can't recall. All I can remember is the last thing I knew, I was barely conscious in a field across from the now flaming colossus of splintered wood and charred brick which used to be a good-time family pizza buffet and Xtreme sport arcade. Suddenly, thunder. And rain. From above.
"Just my luck, NOW it starts raining," I wheeze as I pull myself onto my singed bike. Before long, I'm on the road again, where everything is exactly as it seems and there are no false notions or empty promises. This is home. But what had happened? Was this blood on my hands, or pizza grease? Or was it cheap gasoline?
"If the road could speak, might it be crying?" I pondered, before speeding up and over the hill and into the dark wet mountains.