The Road

The night was long, dark and dreary. Not much light about and the way was not one he was accustomed to. Every now and then he would stumble, catch himself and curse; every now and then he would see something that lightened the heavy mood that hung about him. Will-o'the-wisps sometimes or sometimes a flower lingering on, at the edge of the trodden path, after the last human eye had passed over it, unmolesting, into the darkness that beckoned. Not an easy task on the brightest of days, this was turning out to be really difficult in the unrelenting, heavy gloom. And all this all alone! Of course there were others on the road but they were all either much slower or much faster than he was. All contact was a mere brush. A few words and a little time. Then pass on as polite as can. Nobody to travel the whole long road with. Difficult under the circumstances! Really very difficult!

But he had to keep to the path. Hadn't he been warned? Hadn't they told him of all that lay lurking in the murk ready to snap up the unwary or the adventurous? Not that anybody knew what exactly lurked but there were some who had heard of people who weren't heard of after crossing into the unlighted realm. Not much light on the road for that matter, just enough to know if one was on it or not. And the insects. Ah! the insects that buzzed fables of a Land beyond the darkness, beyond the confines of the road. So much trouble keeping them off one in the darkness.

Some kept to the road because it was easier; some because it was the more difficult proposition. One could always despair and wander off while it took all the reserves of the human intelligence to keep to it. Or it is always easy to make one's own the nightmares of the old, or was it the young, and the unimaginative, or was it the imaginative, learnt in the cradle. One never will know what exactly made him keep to the path. There were more stones on the path now, assuredly, than there were before. And if only there were some light one could catch sight of every now and then. Something to stick fast to. A thought, even a hallucination. But then how was one ever to know one had not wandered from the road? Where will the mind stop that has let itself roam free? Where will the questions end and where the answers begin? It wasn't easy. No; even if there were people who seemed to do it easily. People always did go on this road every night. And only by night as if nobody knew what it was to take the road by day. Or maybe people did that too and only were not heard of after.

And the heavy burden. It bit into one's shoulder long before the end seemed near. For sometimes one felt the end nearing. With trepidation sometimes and sometimes with joy too. But it wasn't an inerrant faculty driving the thought. Often it was just a thin blue reed of light, the kind that wavers for an instant showing everything in its macabre glow, and vanishing into the black of the night when it is done mocking the burden-carriers. Yes, that was what they were: burden-carriers. Doomed to an existence not of their asking, not of their choosing. Born into a free servitude where all was allowed as long as one stuck to the road.

And those who returned from the beyond had temples sometimes too. But the apotheosis was a strange affair. There was a general stoning and only a few survived that to be condemned forever to a worship in stagnating stasis by the mass. And they never spoke of what lay in the beyond, or weren't listened to maybe. Anyway the prodigals were not of the people any more. They were below them or above depending on where they stood. And sometimes it did not matter. They did not matter.

It was all tiring and he wilted. A few more steps and he knew he would be done. But then the insects flew away, and when there was no more temptation, he was at last free to be tempted. And he stepped off the road. To be never heard of! What a notion! What bliss to rub one's back when one felt like it! But to run away when the end was near! Or was it? A few steps only and then maybe he could turn back to the road. Or could he? Did it matter any more after a journey so long and painful? But should it not, for that very reason? Anyway, he went his way and so another was lost to the road. But another night dawns and another traveller, wearied and confounded, lost in sense and intellect, numbed with his heavy burden walks this way. The night again is long, dark and dreary.