March
You are going home
The door swells when it rains, and has to be lifted to shut. You have lifted it through more springs than you meant to.
This morning you woke before light and lay a while, looking for a reason to stay. Virginia, then, and whatever is standing there.
You took the rail gun and what gauze was left, and penciled the street name inside the lid of the tin, in case.
First one came through the reeds at dusk. Moved wrong. Too many joints. We shot at it and the sound brought two more from the water.
Don't shoot.
The Sunken Road
Ruiz has not been back
Behind you the stilthouse is locked. He took the key as far as the tollbooth, and the water has come up since.
Fire once, then walk back. See what the shot woke.
Louisiana, the first mile
The Sunken Road
Keyboard and mouse, or touch. Headphones, if you have them.
The water is too high today
It may go down in a little while.
The road went quiet
It stopped partway. A slow connection, maybe.
- Overpass
- The gap
- Tollbooth
- AD Move
- Shift Sprint
- Hold S Crouch
- E Examine, hold to use
- LMB Fire
- RMB Knife
- Esc Pause
- EscEsc Back to the page
The reeds
The lanes are empty this morning
Years ago you fired once off the east slab, and for a week after they stood out in the lanes, facing the house, while you kept away from the windows.
The same road from the side, and what sleeps along it. Make a sound wherever you like.
The key is in your pocket.
Other ways across
- A place on the road
- Asleep
- The way a sound goes
- Heard you
No HUD
The gauze is where you left it
There is no health bar and no ammo counter. When you are hurt, you see it and hear it. Your rounds are the ticks on the rail gun, and your medicine hangs on your belt.
Some days are worse than this one. Pick one, and see how far you get.
Five ticks on the receiver.
Worse days
-
Behind you on the boards, a trail.
-
The ground keeps moving after you stop.
-
You cannot hear your own feet.
-
The rail gun weighs twice what it did this morning.
-
Bubbles rise past your face, fewer each time you look.
The belt
-
For bleeding.
-
For a clear head, for a while.
-
Hold to wrap a wound.
-
Hold to wrap a wound.
Four on the belt.
A stilthouse
The windows here were boarded from the inside
Find what shines back from the corners. Then put the lamp out.
Notes on this room
Louisiana to Virginia
It is nine hundred miles, if the bridges hold
You leave in March, with the water high.
Scroll to walk it, and the line goes north with you.
-
Louisiana
Drowned highway and cypress. The water is warm at the knees, and you know the sounds here.
-
Mississippi and Alabama
Flat river country, open for miles at a time. Fresh boot prints under the bridge, going the same way.
-
Tennessee
At night there are lights on in Nashville. You watch them a while with your boots off.
-
The Appalachians
It is cold up here, even in June. Something keeps pace along the ridge for two days, and does not come closer.
-
Virginia
The trees are the right kind again.
-
Home
You still know the name of this street, and take out the tin to read it.
The hazy rings are places the old maps left blank.
You pass them on the road north
-
Wisteria
Gone wild over a bridge rail in Mississippi, heavy enough to bend it.
-
Camellia
You find them in a dooryard where the house has fallen in, blooming by the steps.
-
Dahlia
In the rows, as they were set out.
-
Aster
Along the shoulder for miles where the road climbs into the hills.
-
Thistle
The Blue Ridge.
-
Lotus
One lotus open on a pond outside the last town, and the light going.
Life After
August
The light lay low and gold across the porch, and you knew the hour by it. Inside the lid, under the street name, you wrote two more words in the same pencil.
Back to the bayou