"How Much?"

 

The troll looked like a ball of mud until, having rolled onto the middle of the wave-swept path, it popped open like a pillbug, in this case revealing short, stubby limbs and a face like squished clay. "Not so fast," it said as it stood. "There's a toll to pay if you want to go forward." The group looked at the troll, then at the path ahead, or at least what they could see of it. "What do you say?" the troll asked them. "Do you want to continue?"

"Where the Wind Takes Me"

 

The would-be traveler had just left her parents' house, ready to go wherever the wind took her, when she glanced up and saw, dangling in the breeze, a pair tennis shoes hanging from an electrical wire.

"Maybe I'll just see where the road takes me to start," she told herself, "at least until I get out of the subdivision." She bent down and double-knotted her shoelaces for good measure before heading off.

"The Oddities Market"

 

She had heard that a lot of people-watching took place at the oddities market. Only when she stopped to look at the merchandise, and the merchandise turned to look back, did she understand what that meant.

"Oh, the Places You Won't Go"

Got a bag almost ready for C2E2! An 'Infamous' bag, no less!

Alex knew what she risked by running in the store, and she saw the look the old man in the "World History" section gave her, but she couldn't afford to be late. She turned so quickly down the hallway where the bathrooms were that she was running with her body at an angle. Only when she came to the spot between the door marked "Women" and the door marked "Men" did she stop. She stood in front of a third door, which appeared only once every month, tapped a precise and musical rhythm on its surface, and entered when it opened. Inside, next to a swirling, pulsing purple vortex, the gate agent sat behind his table.

Alex approached the table and emptied the contents of her backpack. Dried flowers, a picture of her house, a letter opener, a set of keys that worked with no lock that she could find, and one of her little brother's baby teeth came out of the main pouch. A towel, a bottle of water, a pair of socks, and a change of underwear came from the front. The gate agent almost looked amused, though it was difficult for Alex to tell for certain, as he appeared to be have been carved from onyx.

"I brought everything I need," Alex said to him. "Please let me through before it closes."

Was the gate agent still amused, Alex wondered, or had he turned sad? "I'm sorry," he told her, "but this isn't what I need to see. I can't admit you at this time. Please collect your belongings and move to the side."

Alex couldn't speak, even though her mouth was open. The gate agent tipped his head toward the stuff cluttering his table, and Alex, bewildered, swept it back into her bag with a huff. As she stepped away, she saw the old man from "World History" enter the room, an enormous hardcover in his hands.

He saw her, of course, but in the light of the portal his raised eyebrow looked to Alex no longer dismissive, but mischievous. "Had to go shopping before I came here," he said. "I mean, whoever heard of traveling without a book?"

The old man winked at her and faced the gate agent, spreading his book open in his hands, leaving her to run, run, faster than a whisper, back into the store with the hope that, this time, she could go somewhere.

"The Road Less Traveled"

 

For a while, I thought it was the one I saw in front of me, stretching from left to right like a smile and crossing my entire range of vision. I observed only one car moving along the road the whole time I was there. It motored forward swiftly and steadily, its pace like that of a hawk approaching prey.

Then lights came on above me. I saw them reflected into lanes across the rolling sky. A large bird rose from the top of a telephone pole and traveled west along that overhead highway. It was just a trick of the eyes.

Yet knowing that it was a trick--does that really make a difference?

"The Bus Stop at the End of the Line"

Hard to see, but there really is a bus stop next to the traffic signal, just at the edge of this forest preserve path.

You can get drunk before you write your farewell note, if you think that'll make it easier. You can put pills and razor blades in your bag, along with whatever else you choose. You can drop your keys through a gap in the sewer grate once you lock the front door and then say, "No turning back now."

You can do all of these things, and the bus driver will still let you board the bus, so long as you keep quiet and pay with exact change. 

The bus driver will let you ride the entire route, all the way to the stop at the end of the line. The stop won't look anything like the gritty terminal you expected, though. Instead, when the door opens, in front of you will be a simple path leading who knows where, it's tough to see in the dark, but leading somewhere. You'll look at the bus driver, confused and uncertain. The bus driver will smile sadly and say, "This is the end." 

What he means is, "It doesn't have to be if you don't want it to."

"Keys"

This isn't my home keyboard. Mine's dustier.

She began typing out her search term but had to stop when she came to the "S." The "S" key wouldn't budge. "S for 'stuck,'" she said. She jabbed it a few times with all the power in her index finger. When that failed, she wedged her fingernail beneath the key and snapped it free.

Lying in the space it had occupied on the keyboard was a small, flat piece of metal, jagged and toothed along three edges, smooth along the fourth. "Odd," she said, picking up the shard. She set it next to the keyboard, replaced the "S" key, and continued typing.

But not for long. The "E" key stuck next, even though it had worked normally the first time she pressed it. She popped that key off of the keyboard and found underneath it another piece of flat metal, all edges jagged except one.

She found similar pieces of metal beneath the "A," "R," "C," and "H" keys, in that order.

It wasn't hard for her to see that some of the pieces' rough edges fit together. She placed the shards next to each other and found that she had a key. She glanced around at all the room's doors, trying to study their locks, and wondered: was this a room people were meant to enter, or one they were meant to leave?

A second time she said, "Odd."

"To Go"

 

Harriet was putting away the dishes when, suddenly, her teenage daughter, Elena, appeared next to her, holding a box.

"Oh, hi, hon," Harriet said, closing the cabinet door. "I didn't even hear you come in. Did you have a good night out?"

Elena looked as if she had just seen a car crash. She stared ahead for a few seconds before her eyes shifted toward Harriet. "Night?" she asked quietly. "How long have I been gone?"

Harriet crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Well, Chris came to pick you up around six, so, yeah. That long. You okay?"

"You still remember who I am? Quick: which bedroom is mine?"

"Second one on the right, the one painted green like you've had it for the last three years. Ellie, you're scaring me."

With one hasty leap of a step Elena stumbled into Harriet and, still holding the box, wrapped her arms around her. "I love you, Mom," she said. "I'm sorry for scaring you."

"Please don't let this be drugs," Harriet whispered into Elena's shoulder.

"What?"

"I said," said Harriet, stepping back, "I miss you giving me hugs." She nodded at the plain white box. "What do you got there? Leftovers?"

Elena glanced down as if the box had just appeared in her hands, the way she had appeared in the kitchen moments before. "Oh," she said. "Yeah, I guess. In a way. Just something from where we went." With a resolute nod, she smiled and held the box outward. "I want you to have it, Mom."

"Oh, honey, we just ate dinner not too long ago."

"No, not like that," Elena said. "Just--whenever you need something different." She passed the box to Harriet, who raised an eyebrow and placed it on the counter. Elena smiled at her again. "I'm going to go take a shower," she said.

"Just let me know if you need anything," Harriet said. She watched Elena climb the stairs. She knew she wouldn't have many more chances to watch where Elena went. The box on the counter was small and simple and begging for Harriet to open it. So she did. And her eyes went wide. She could barely begin to imagine how far her daughter had gone.

"Safe from Dragons"

This is our dragon, a.k.a. our furnace. Lately it hasn't been behaving the way we'd expect a furnace to behave.

Oh, how the villagers hated that fire-breathing dragon. Loud it was, and smelly--its stink seeped from deep within its mountaintop cave and flowed all the way to the valley below like a river of vaporous sulfur. The villagers gathered in the inn to discuss the dragon and often were joined by foreign mercenaries and quest-bound knights, all of whom asked the same question: "What should be done?" The mountain was the tallest in the land, and the mouth of the cave poured forth dragonfire almost constantly, great geyser plumes of flame that could be seen in the village day and night. Danger lay in wait on the mountaintop. Surely that danger was waiting to invade the village.

The people assumed their time had come the day the dragon left its cave and flew over the valley. They ran inside their homes, not knowing what else to do, except for one small boy who stayed outside while the dragon, so close to them all, neither roared nor breathed fire but simply glided overhead on its thin wings like a parchment kite. The boy was confused, amazed, and humbled. He was also, however, deeply human. "Go away, dragon!" he screamed. "We don't want you here!" He never told anyone that the dragon looked at him.

Not once in all the days after did any of the villagers catch the torturous odor of dragon flesh on the wind or hear a wild, clawing bellow tumble out from the high-up cave, and it was for the better, they said. Who knew what that dragon had been up to? And now they were safe. The inn began to close early. The mercenaries and knights who still passed that way left town with a quick nod, there being nothing else for them to do. And the villagers, instead of gathering to talk, went to bed every night not long after supper. They slept in a place that was dark all around, as any place without a dragon is bound to be.

"A Package"

 
Instead of a packing label, a note had been taped across the top: "A Mysterious Journey Awaits You."

The husband and the wife looked at each other.

"You sure you didn't order anything?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Everything I got off eBay already came in."

She poked the corner of the box as if she expected it to squish. "They really beat the hell out of it, wherever it came from."

"And it's soaked. It's probably going to start to get moldy soon," he said.

He threw it into the recycling bin, on top of a wealth of glass bottles, told himself that he didn't hear any sounds coming from inside, and went back into the house to get ready for "A Game of Thrones."