The Scenic Route

As the chords of Look Alive by BlocBoy JB and Drake blared throughout his car became accompanied by undulating bass thumps that caused an errant soda can in the door handle to rattle, Sam realized it had been a long time since he’d taken the scenic route. A senior year staple, taking the road that cut through the woods that surrounded the cul-de-sacs separating them from the town-centers that were the buffer against the highway. Built when there was still need for development and housing was sparse, the roads were about as poorly maintained as one would expect of back roads but there was something about the winding woods that caused a blanket of tranquility to set in. The winter winds whipped at Sam’s cheeks as he sped up, though the cold didn’t bother him as he was lost in a cornucopia of memories. He’d driven this route almost religiously every night the summer before college, windows down letting the trees hear the throwback music he used to calm his nerves for the coming storm that was college. To say the woods were cozy would be grossly misleading but there was something tranquil even in the darkness as the headlights lanced through the dark, creeping forward and revealing the umbral landscape before him. Sharp lefts and sharp rights kept him alert, but he could feel a lethargic pull drawing his eyelids ever so slightly shut. He’d caught up on sleep while he was home but even in the nights when no nightmares visited him, Sam still felt as though something was hanging over him.

He wasn’t sure what to label it, though his therapist and the internet at large pushed for sleep paralysis. It wasn’t that he would awake with feelings of powerlessness, surrounded by night terrors; but the unease struck him as he was sleeping. He’d likened it to that strange sixth sense one develops when they drift off yet somehow able to detect someone in the room. The steering wheel obeyed his command as he pushed and pulled it this way and that in an effort to stay on the road as he careened through the most treacherous stretch of the drive where the road suddenly and abruptly shifted to gravel for no apparent reason, causing some unwary drivers to accidentally shift course the wrong way in an effort to find asphalt again. Those in the know realized the loud thump just meant to floor it until you hit the intersection that sat a few minutes behind the exit ramp to the highway proper, a move Sam would have done had the deer not dashed in front of his car.