strange drive

it was one of those high school reunionish things (i could tell because these things almost always take place somewhere that has fragments of our high school gym in it, and this place was an odd combination of said gym and my folks’ house’s second floor balcony), only i was fifth wheel at table with four friends from college rather than high school. they were paired up, and one of them was an ex-girlfriend i had broken-up with a while back and haven’t spoken to since, so needless to say, it was awkward. thankfully, just as i was starting to get an inkling of just how unwelcome i was at the table (despite it being our balcony for chrissakes) the skies clouded over menacingly, and it was time for everyone to head home.

a proper high school buddy of mine who had not been at our table needed a lift, so i said i’d take him home. the drive was a welcome relief: he was one of my best buddies, and the traffic was light enough so i could push past a hundred if i wasn’t in such a laid back mood, but didn’t have to because there wasn’t anybody edging up behind me to goad me into squeezing down on the accelerator: so much better than hell at the table. we were talking about all sorts of meaningless kerfuffle, and at one point i was telling him about Avenue Q, how a friend had given me a copy of the soundtrack and how hilarious it was and how i’d lend him the CD when i could get it to him.

by that time, we’d just crested an overpass. some cars were calmly heading towards us. apart from going the wrong way on the highway, there was something else odd about them. i eased on the accelerator.

that was when the first of the cars hit the bottom of the overpass: the car, a T-bird or Mustang convertible, was the pale green of fresh mint leaves or maybe thyme, and no, we weren’t afraid of collision: the car had coasted gently to a stop at the bottom of the overpass, climbing a few inches up the incline before rolling back down to settle in the trough.

the top was down: nobody was in it. over the horizon, we could see several more cars coasting our way. the entire scene was oddly tranquil, the highway was almost brutally silent, at odds with the very nature of those roads: with our own motor idling quietly, we could tell none of the other cars had their engines on. there was nobody in those cars either.

we decided to turn back. i made a U behind the T-bird/Mustang, drove the car back up the overpass, and headed on north.

at some point we’d decided it was better to leave the car, and we found ourselves on foot with a slowly growing procession of strangers.

we had no idea what was happening, where we were going or what we were going to do, only that we had to head north, that that was the only place we could go, and marching on was the only thing we could do…

*

and because this seems oddly relevant, and is at least every bit as disturbing, probably more so to some of you...

a disquieting update i found this morning on the new I am Legend movie in the works.

looks like Francis Lawrence is starting a tradition for himself, somewhere along the lines of what the Mummy movie guy did to classic horror tropes.

so i've officially turned off my expectations for this one as i did for Constantine, and only hope that the movie is, at the very least, an entertaining if mindless and sacrilegious bit of cinema.