I wake up in my car, parked on the side of a dusty, two-lane road. I guess it was just a dream. But why am I here? Where am I? I’ve never seen this place before, I don’t think. The air is dry and hot, and makes it stuffy inside the car. Of course, the A/C isn’t turning on. The sky doesn’t seem quite so blue out here, either. It’s wide open, so it should be vibrant, but it’s just kind of, gray, I guess. The sun doesn’t seem too bright, either. I always expected the desert to be beautiful. In fact, I thought just before that it could make a good honeymoon . This place, though, is just pretty dismal.
Well, the radio works at least. Commercial, commercial, commercial… every channel has the same message. I stop and listen to it, and it says in a dry, unenthusiastic voice, “Craig, welcome to the town. In about a mile, there will be a service station on your left. Turn in there, and we’ll be able to give you the lowdown of what’s going on. And don’t forget, buckle up, save lives.”
I drove the rickety car down the highway until the station came into view. It was dirty and grimy and rundown and smelled like something had died. I walked into the yellowing garage building. It was empty. Like, overwhelmingly empty. The inside was a pristine, overwhelming white color, with nothing but four blank walls, an empty floor, and a vaulted ceiling. “Hello?” I called out, hoping for a response back. There wasn’t one. I turned around to walk out, but there was a man standing in the opening. Well, almost. He was more of a corpse than a man. He was sopping wet, and the front of his body was as flat as the wall. He did not approach me, nor talk to me. He only stared back. “So, uh, I got this message on my radio telling me to come here?”
The corpse spoke in a garbled voice, almost like he was underwater, and had a thick Brooklyn accent. “You Craig? he asked. I gave a slow head nod, and then he walked away, quickly adding, “Come with me.” I followed him out of the garage, and there was a rusty, old R.V. next to the building that I had not noticed before.
“Please step into my office,” he cracks. I try to flash an uneasy smile, but find that I cannot. It’s like the muscles in my face are locked. I can’t move my face; a smile is impossible, as is a frown. I can’t raise my eyebrows, I can’t give a smirk, I can’t scrunch my nose. It’s like my face forgot how to show any emotion.
“So how’d you do it? Corpse asked.
“Do what?”
“You know, do the deed. How’d you get here?”
“I don’t get what you’re saying.”
“Just, why are you here? What happened?”
“I really don’t know. I just woke up in the car and I was here.”
“So you really don’t know why you’re here?” I shake my head. “Well, guy, you’re dead. Apparently, you killed yourself, ‘cause you’re here.” I feel the blood rushing out of my face, and don’t know what to say. “This place, well, is an alternate dimension, to put it in layman’s terms. I guess Purgatory, if you believe that sort of thing.”
I slink back into the chair, and put my face in my hands. He continues, “This place doesn’t have a name, but I call it the Wasteland of Eternal Bleakness,” he said with some twisted sense of grandeur. “Webville, for short. Anyways, really the only option you have around here is wandering aimlessly. You can’t really turn around, you’re pretty much on a never-ending loop. You’re bound to meet other people, so you’ll probably want to-“
“Pills,” I interrupt, breaking my silence.
“Huh? No, I don’t have any. Stuff’s no good here. Alcohol either. No way of numbing the pain.”
“No, I think it was pills. I guess I OD’d.” I continue. I mutter to myself, under my breath “Which means it was all real, then.”
“Yep, coulda guessed. You looked pretty pristine. You never really know, though, with all the different folks that breeze through. We bridge jumpers are usually pretty easy to pick out of a crowd though, even out here.”
“So is there a way to go back?” I ask trying to change topics to something less morose.
“Nope. You’re stuck here, guy.”
“Well, can I see what happened after I, you know?”
“Died? Yes, actually. We offer the details of the funeral, if there is one, to everyone when they get here. And it’s… right here,” he says, pulling a crumpled paper out of his soggy pocket. “Oh, sorry. Should be able to read it still, though.”
I take it and skim through the dripping letter. Seemed like it was a nice funeral, I guess. Lots of flowers. Buried next to Dave. Whole family was there. Lots of my friends. But I didn’t find what I was looking for. “Was there anything about Karen Lindsey?” I implore.
“Um, I really don’t know, that’s all they gave me. Why?”
“She was my fiancée,” I lied.
“I guess I could look in the database, then.” He takes a seat in front of a dusty, old box computer. It seems like it takes forever to turn on, and is slow in getting to his database. After around a half hour of silent waiting, he pipes up, “Oh, found her. Says here that she killed herself a few hours after you.  Walked out in the ocean with a cinder block and drowned herself. I wonder what that was about,” he said sarcastically.
I can’t believe it. Karen’s dead, too? But she was always so full of life, so full of happiness. She seemed invincible, like a rose that wouldn’t wilt. I always felt like she could do so much better than me, and I was just holding her back. I wouldn’t dream of hurting her.But maybe she’s here, too. Maybe I could find her in this wasteland. After all, I think I love her still. It wouldn’t be quite so bleak here with her, you know.
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“Not really, I don’t have a way of knowing. Somewhere in Webville is all I can tell you. Everyone enters this world in a different place. We just get notices sent to us when someone comes up in our area.”
“So how could I find her?”
“You’ll just have to search and hope you run across her, my friend.”
I abruptly get up and walk out of the RV, and walk over to the car. Corpse runs out and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Um, I’ll keep an eye out for her. There’s not too many feel good stories out here. You might be the closest we get. Good luck, my friend.”

I’ve been driving down the Webville Turnpike for a few hours now, and haven’t seen much. I went over a big lake that smelled something fierce, a rest station made up of an empty vending machine and a line of well-used Port-a-potties, and a gas station with an “out of order” sign on every pump. I really wasn’t sure what to look for. I figured I would come across what I needed when I needed to. And hopefully, run across Karen. The hope of her kept me going. Death may come, and this place may seem forsaken, but my hope hasn’t left me completely.
The sun is completely down now, and the sky is pitch black. Not a single star has penetrated the unsettling darkness of the sky. No moon is out either, so I have to depend on my dim headlights and the occasional, sporadically flickering street light to illuminate my way. Pretty soon, a sign slowly starts to appear in the distance. As I get closer, I realize it is only half –lit and tough to make out. I turn into the property, and realize it’s a motel. It’s shady and dirty, but not really that much different from the motels when I was alive.
I am able to locate the office, when a rather pretty woman with wavy black hair and subtle blonde highlights is seated at the reception desk. She has bright blue irises, but they are rather bloodshot. “Need a room?” she asks softly in an unassuming southern drawl.
“Uh, yeah. Do you have any vacancies?”
“Oh, of course. We always have vacancies.” She turns around in the squeaky chair to grab my room key, revealing the gaping bullet wound in the back of her skull. “Here ya go, hun. I put you in room 2. You’re our only guest, but there is an old man that lives in Room 5, so don’t be freaked out if you see him wandering around. Other than that, you’re good to go. Holler if you need anything.”
I walk out and head to the room, but then hurriedly run back to the office. “Hey, I have a question,” I blurt. She looks up and I continue, “Has a woman named Karen come here recently?”
“No. Sorry. Someone from your life?”
“Yeah. Okay. Um, good night, then.”I walk to the room for real this time, opening the creaky door and walking in. It has a dank smell and I could hear the rats scurrying around in the dark. There’s nothing but an unmade bed and a small bedside stand. It’s dark, but as my eyes adjust I find a candle and a box of matches on the stand. I pick up the matchbook and take out one. It takes a few strikes, but it eventually lights. I hold it against the wick of the candle, which is being stubborn in lighting. It finally lights after several seconds, when the flame has travelled about halfway up the stick of the match. I pull the match away, half expecting it to burn my finger. I throw the match away, and look in shock at my hand. My index finger has a small flame at the end of it, my finger tip burning like the candle. I quickly wave my hand and extinguish the flame, realizing that my hand has a pretty gnarly burn on it. I never felt the burn, though. My hand never felt the heat; actually it is pretty numb. I knock on the wall, and I can’t feel it all. Pretty soon, I feel the wave of numbness spreading through my entire body. It’s almost like I’m dying all over again. My legs go shaky, I fall to the ground, and black out.
I realize that my vision is gone, but I can still hear everything around me. I lay on the ground, hoping that my vision will come back soon. Amongst the crickets’ chirps I can hear padded footsteps, and then a knock at the door. A wild, geriatric voice invades the air, screeching out, “What are you doing in there? That thud was pretty intense, do you have a wild animal in there?”
  “What? No! I fell, and I can’t see anything. Can you get the lady in the office to help?”
“We don’t need Bridget! I’m coming in!” I hear the man beating on the door, and then the door lands on top of me. I hear him rush in and pull me out by my feet. “Do you need CPR? Can you breathe?” he yells.
“No! For God’s sake, no! I told you, I can’t see! I can’t feel the rest of my body either!”
“No worries, I’m a doctor.”
“Good then, what’s going on with me? What’s happening?” I say, with a heightened awareness of the panicky tremor in my voice.
Well, usually I’d say a stroke, but seeing as you’re dead already, we know it’s not that, right?”
“Right, now get on with it.”
I am, I am! Lucky for you, I OD’d too, so I know what’s going on. These are some of the lasting effects from whatever you took; it used to happen to me too, kid. Drink this,” he commands.
Before I can offer up any objection, I feel him jam a flask into my mouth and pour this sweet-tasting, thick liquid down my throat. He explains, “This is a special mixture I came up with. Red wine mixed with some wafers of unleavened bread, and Grape Jell-O thrown in for taste and absorption. Should clear you up in a jiff.” Within seconds of him saying that, my vision suddenly snaps back, revealing my inept savior. He was a wrinkled old man with a long white beard, a bald head, and small beady eyes hidden behind a grimy pair of bifocals. He had a goofy smile as he looked down at me He stretches out his arthritic hand and says, “Dr. Ed Harrington. What’s your name, kid?”
“Uh, Craig Hall. Thanks, I guess, for the help.”
“No problem, carrying this everywhere finally paid off,” he said, indicating a titanium hatchet strapped to his belt.
“Yeah. So, um… when will I get the feeling back in my body?”
“Probably never. I’ve only been able to fix the vision part so far.”
“What? What the Hell am I supposed to do if I can’t feel anything?”
“You’ll have to figure it out, kid. Feeling isn’t really a luxury that all of us can afford anymore.”
“Well are you paralyzed all over too?”
“Of course! It’s just something you’ll have to deal with out here. It’s rotten luck, but that’s the fate we picked, kid.”
“Okay, fine, fine,” I get up, and am stumbling around trying to get my balance. Doc’s mood shifts and he begins to laugh at me.
“Nice moves, you klutz.” he mutters, chuckling at my endeavors to walk.
“Wait, what are you doing? How can you be laughing?”
“That serum, it starts to fix your soul back up, kid. It’s not quick, but it just sort of happens over time. You really have to dedicate yourself, I guess, to the lifestyle of it.”
“Are you kidding? Doc, do you understand this? I mean, you could fix me up, right? Could you save people, get them out of here?”
“I hope so. I designed a machine that I think might be able to send them up to the good place.”
“Doc, that’s incredible. Have you tried it yet?”
“No, I haven’t. This is actually the first time I’ve given someone else the serum. I wanted to make sure it works before I try to go see Martha.”
“Martha?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I really can’t…” he stutters, trying to avoid eye contact with my imploring eyes.  “ Okay, well, um, you see, Martha was…” he sputtered out, as he started choking up. “She was my wife. I was serving in an army hospital in Korea and got word that she…uh… oh, God…” he was completely blubbering now, and tears were streaming down his face. He slumped down, and sat on the ground.
I clumsily sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. He returned the favor to me, and continued, “She was my wife, and um, she was pregnant the last time I saw her. I got a notice from the mail boy on one of my shifts. I remember it was at exactly 3:16 in the morning when I got word. She, uh… she had some complications with the baby. They, they… they both died, is what they told me. She died within minutes. My son only lived for a few hours, apparently. They told me I would get leave to go back and mourn.” By this, point I was feeling the tears welling up in my eyes. It was hard not to empathize with his own terrible tragedy, but the emotional tears felt somewhat relieving after the last several hours of insouciance.  He continued, “That wasn’t soon enough for me. I wanted to be with them. So I went to the cabinet in my office and took a few of everything in there. I never had any idea of this place.” He was struggling to hold his composure, and took several moments to recollect himself. He stared up, seemingly through the ceiling, and continued, “But, yeah. I’ve, uh, I’ve tried to make lemonade from lemons, so I made this machine, hoping to get back to her.”
“Doc, I have a hell of a proposition for you,” I said. “I’m here looking for my fiancée. She killed herself after I did. If you help me find her, I’ll be your guinea pig. If it works for us, then you’ll know. You’ll know that your invention works, and you’ll know that you can get back to her.”
He just nods his head, and wipes away a last, singular tear saying, “Deal. We have work to do, kid.”

Before I know it, he has a double-wide coffin dragged out to my car. It has all sorts of weird gadgets and contraptions attached to the lid. I’m pretty sure I even saw a flux capacitor. “Come give an old man some help, will ya, kid?” he calls out. So I go over, and he instructs me to hoist the machine onto my car. I struggle for several minutes to slide it onto the car roof, but it gets up there eventually, and he goes to work tying it down with some rope. He makes a couple thousand knots, and finally becomes confident that it will stay.
He says, “So a lot of the newcomers end up going to TacoTime, a nasty old food truck an hour or so down the road. I hope you like terrible Mexican food, because that’s the only food there is around here, and TacoTime has the best terrible Mexican food around.”
We both get in the car, and I start to drive away. I pull out onto the road, and floor it, overcome with anticipation to get our plan underway. I decide I’d like to hear more about the Coffin contraption tied down to my car. “So how does this work?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to explain, kid. Pretty much, it filters out your breath and interchanges it with the fumes of the serum. As you breathe that it in, you start to breathe this place right out of you. It regenerates you. The serum infiltrates your lungs, your blood, your whole body.”
“So what do all the gadgets do?”
“Well, some are the filters that absorb your breaths, others pump the serum in. Then we have a back-up generator, some fail-safes, and a cycling system that hopefully will slowly infuse your soul into a separate supply of serum. That’s what allows your soul to be drawn out and carried up.”
“How did you build it? Like, how do you know it will work?”
“I don’t know that it will work. I’m taking a leap of faith as much as you are,” he said quietly. He remained calm for several seconds, and then continued, “I just felt this voice… this driving force in my head. It told my hands what to do. I don’t know how to explain it. I think this will work. Why? It’s going to work because it has to. It’s as simple as that.”
Why am I going along with him? Why am I putting so much trust in this crazy old man? I want to tell him that it is foolish for me to follow him, that it is ludicrous to think that his invention will even work. I can’t tell him that though, because I don’t really feel that way. He is a light in this drab land. He is that light tower that stands out in the thick fog. I feel like, in some twisted way, fate brought me to him, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that fate is something you shouldn’t manhandle. It is an unstoppable train that we are riding, and we don’t control where it takes us. The most we can hope for is to be able to make the best out of the journey.
We continued talking for several hours, traversing the bleak countryside. When I first arrived here in Webville, I thought everything was ugly and drab. Now though, I’m starting to see the beauty in the little things. The desert here is like an ocean of sand, with occasional raves of rocks and sparse, brown vegetation. The gray of the sky seems to blend seamlessly with the stretches of sand. It’s sort of strange to not see any trees or birds or clouds or anything. It’s a strange, peaceful calm that comes over you. I’m starting to feel that tranquility out here in the wasteland, and I don’t know what influences me more: the hope to see Karen again, the human compassion that I’ve received from Doc, or being inebriated from the serum. Honestly, I don’t really care what it is; I’m just content, and I know that whatever happens, this will work out.
Before long, while the sky is in its strange array of being partly day and partly night, we begin to see a speck off in the distance. As we get closer, Doc confirms that it is TacoTime. The speck seems to be forever away, and it takes us a half hour to get to it before we finally pull up next to it. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it is surprising to see that it is just a typical food truck. It smells awful, and looks like it has mud splattered all over it. At least, I hope that’s mud…
Anyway, Doc swears this is the best place around to get food, so why not? I’ll try it. We walk up to the little window, and a man is slumped over a chair, asleep. He has a bald head, and his eyes are shut tightly behind a pair of bifocals. He is snoring loudly, and his thick, brown mustache quivers each time he breathes out. We don’t know what else to do, so we ring the bell on the counter, which tings with a dull thud, like dropping a coin on metal. He blinks up, and says, “My apology, what can I do for-” he paused as he saw Doc, and muttered, “Ed.”
Doc livened up, and said, “Dave! Hello! I didn’t know you were working here. We’ll take an order of churros and I’ll have two beef tacos with cheddar, one soft, one hard. This is Craig, my new apprentice; what’ll you have?”
Sensing the tension, I look around panicked, and then see “Dave” staring at me, seemingly annoyed. “Uh, I’ll take what he’s having?” Dave snorts audibly, and goes to making them without saying another word. I look at Doc, and whisper, “What’s the deal?”
He leads me to a decrepit picnic table, and tells me, “Dave was my last apprentice. He actually helped me build the coffin.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, he lost hope, to put it simply. Most people in this place just complacent, like they won’t ever leave so why bother? That’s what happened to him. He lost faith in the serum, and it stopped working for him. Eventually, he became so resentful of me and what I stood for that he just lost it. He flew into a rage, wrecked the coffin, and left.” Suddenly, I heard the bell go off, and saw Dave standing there with our food.
I went up to get it, and said, “By the way, has a girl been here recently? She’s around five-four, has black hair that goes down to her back. She might have been-”
“Kid, let me stop you there. You aren’t gonna find her here, no one ever does. Let me guess: you’re wife?”
“Sort of,” I replied, not sure where he was going with this.
“He told me the same thing when I met him. ‘Oh, I’ll help you find her! I’ll even help you two get out of here.’ There’s no getting out of here, kid. The sooner you accept that, the better. Take your food.”
I meekly reach out and grab it, and then start walking away. Before I get too far, he says, “Make sure to ask him about the Spiders.”

Because of how anxious Dave made me, I decide to just go to bed early, and that I will talk to Doc in the morning, once we get on the road again. I climb into the backseat, and try to get as comfortable as one can in a backseat. After around fifteen minutes of staring into the black, starless void, I feel my eyelids struggling to stay open. I slowly fade into sleep, and then snap back awake. You know when you fall asleep, but don’t dream, and it feels like you slept eight hours in a snap? That’s what it felt like. It was bright out, so my eyes hurt, and took several seconds to adjust. I looked up and saw three bonfires set up in front of the food truck. I looked at Doc, who was passed out in the front seat, and tapped him on the shoulder, waking him up.
“Hey Doc, what’s the deal with those fires?”
“Fires?” he asked, snapping up suddenly. “Damn, we need to go!”
I handed him the keys, and he struggled to get the engine going before it finally started up. I lurched back as he floored it and swerved out onto the road. About a mile behind us, I could barely see flashing red lights coming down the road. “Doc, what’s going on? Where are we going? Who is that?” I ask, trying to subdue the fearful tremor in my voice.
“They call themselves the Spiders. They ride around in a fire truck, and apparently Dave signaled them when he lit those fires. They’re a gang, I guess, but they think they are serving the people in charge.”
“What? There’s someone in charge here?”
“No! No one knows who is in charge! There is no way to know!”
“Okay, okay! You said that they think they’re serving the people in charge, what do you mean?”
“Before I tell you, do you trust me?”
“What?” I answer in a panicky shout.
“I need you to have faith in me. These guys think it somehow goes against the law of this place to try to leave, so they… punish… anyone that they catch even planning to try it..  ”

“Punish?! Doc, are you kidding me? What do they do?”
“They tie up the people they catch and send them floating down the river.”
“But you can’t die here, right? What would that do?”
“How brushed up are you on your Greek mythology?”
“I don’t know…”
“You know Tartarus? It’s where the gods banished Kronos; it’s pretty much a deep, abyssal chasm.”
“So… what are you getting at, Doc? There’s a chasm?”
“Kind of. There’s a waterfall, and no has ever been down to the bottom. We have no idea where it leads, and some people think it’s infinitely deep.”
“Okay, so we don’t want to get caught then, what’s our plan?”
“Drive as fast as we can until we can hide.”
“Doc! It’s a barren desert, where are we going to hide?”
“I don’t know, but we have to try. I don’t have any better ideas.”
Suddenly, a fire truck appears from around a curve, and starts heading straight for us. At the last second, Doc tries to swerve out of their way, but they manage to clip our back end, sending us into a tail spin. We finally come to a stop in a ditch on the side of the road.
I soon notice that the coffin had flown off the roof, and was now lying on the edge of the road. “Oh no, Doc… do you think it’s okay?”
“Oh, it’s fine. Made of Hickory. It’s them we need to worry about,” he mutters, pulling out a revolver.
“Jesus, why d you have a gun?!”
“I can’t kill ‘em, but it still hurts like hell to take a bullet. Let’s go!”
Doc rushes out and is immediately hit in the shoulder by a bullet, and falls to the ground. I rush out, and hear a sharp, feminine voice screaming, “Freeze!” I look and see a slender, dark-haired woman with wet hair matted to her face. I recognize her immediately.
“Karen, oh my God…” I stutter. She gasps, not knowing what to do. I walk up ambitiously and wrap my arms around her tightly. We pull away, and she shows that she is wearing the ring I got her on her hand.
Before she can say anything, another woman comes from around the truck, and starts yelling at her. “Karen, what are you doing? Get off of him, they’re dangerous!”
“No, this is Craig, he’s the one I was telling you about!”
“Well, then… I’m sorry I’ll have to do this.” She raised her gun, but quickly falls over, hit by a volley of shots. Karen rapidly runs over and grabs the woman’s gun, and I look over and see Doc, lying against the car with his gun raised.
Struggling to breathe from the pain, he pants out, “You picked… yourself… a hell… of a shot.” I laugh, and kneel next to him. I ask what we need to do next, and he retorts, “Well, you’ve got to figure out a way to get in that coffin with you.”
“What about you, Doc? I mean, the rest of them can’t be far away, and who knows when she’ll come to again?”
“Kid, I’ll be fine. I’ll take the fire truck, and leave them behind as soon as you go. I can come back for the coffin later.”
“Okay… okay. Doc, thanks for everything. You have no idea how much you’ve-”
“We don’t have time, send me a Hallmark card. Go get her!”
I run over and grab her, saying, “Let’s go! We have to leave!”
“But, where? What are we going to do?”
“We’ve got to get in the coffin.”
“The coffin? I’m not getting in a coffin!”
“No, we have to! The Doc built it, it uses this serum stuff, and has gadgets, and it can get us out of here!”
“What do you mean, ‘out of here’?”
“It can take us out of Webville!”
“But that’s impossible. They told me when I got here that a lot of people tried to leave, but everyone had died in the process. They said it’s the only way that they’ve seen people die! It’s like the life is sucked out of them, and just the body is left. We can’t get in that thing!”
I look over at Doc, seeing him stumbling over to the truck. I hear my conscience say, “I trust you, Doc.” I look at Karen, and step into the coffin.
I stretch out my hand and tell her, “I trust him, and I’m going to do this. I need you to trust me. If you love me at all, I’ll need you to come with me.”
She looks around nervously, and finally takes my hand and steps in with me. I quickly pull the lid over, and pull the lever. Suddenly, a blur of colored lights fill the coffin, and the sound of surging electricity seems to run through us. An ethereal, flowery smell fills the space, which I recognize to be the smell of the serum. I start to feel sensation slowly spreading throughout my body. I can feel her fingers interwoven between mine. I look over and see what I haven’t seen for the whole time I’ve been here: a smile. She is grinning from ear to ear; I see that and know that we will never be separated again. We are going to make it. As I feel myself start to become lighter, and I realize that I am being pulled out from my body, I manage to smile too.
THE END