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An original story by Jeff Mariotte, with sound design by Mark Duggan.
Jeff Mariotte knows the road home. Or maybe not.
Once, while reeling from personal loss, he left a holiday party and began a long, lonely drive back to an empty house.
As he set out, he found the hum of tires on familiar pavement was a measure more comforting than the Christmas songs on the radio. But somewhere past the turn he’d taken a hundred times before, the familiar route became an alien territory.
At first, a ruined farmhouse, not at all familiar. Then, a hairpin where before lay a straightaway. Soon, low hills swelled where flats once stretched.
Jeff Mariotte didn’t make a wrong turn, but he’d lost the road home.
“I pulled off, killed the engine, got out. I looked back toward the farmhouse, but it was gone, swallowed by darkness. Or never there at all.
I could turn around head back to the highway. Or I could keep going. This road would end sometime. Somewhere. It had to.
Didn’t it?”
About Jeff Mariotte: Jeff was born in Illinois but with a father who worked for the Department of Defense. He grew up in Paris, Germany, San Diego, and Arizona. He is a graduate of San Jose State University.
He’s been a senior editor for several publishers and owns a comic book store with his wife. His writing has appeared in several sci-fi and horror anthologies.