So The Earth Is Flat After All...

One wrong turn everything goes to hell...

It was night on the edge of downtown Dallas where every street is one way but never the way you need to go. All I wanted to do is get on the highway and get my ass back home. I got more and more angrily frustrated as I felt the streets pushing me into a corner where I didn't want to be. I kept thinking "There has to be way out! It would be insane for this to lead to a dead end." But my screaming instincts told me otherwise.

Part of what bothered me was nobody else was going same way as I was. What do they know? I was in an area I'd never been before, just wandering aimlessly as I have no place to go and no place to be. And no one to be. But my boiled rage had had enough and I wanted out, my direction home. But I was denied with every imperious one way sign until finally, eerily, I saw no lights ahead. But I was doomed on the one way road I'd chosen.

And then, nothingness.

Yes, I was still moving as I saw the lights behind me grow farther and farther away. But the road noise stopped. Any relational points of reference vanished. I had, it seemed, driven off the edge of the earth. I gripped the steering wheel as hard as I could as if that would make a difference. I also pondered the idea my gasoline engine needs oxygen for it to combust and in space there's no air. But then like an irrational child, I feared mental inquiries would make my fears come true. So I stopped questioning.

It was then I truly learned the meaning of the word 'disconnected'.

I had left the world behind and I would die alone, a freak in outer space who thought he could do without. Please don't let anyone catch me dead out here! My heartbeat slowed into a panicked crawl like a slowly hit bass drum. My head compressed as if an ever-tightening vice squeezed forbidden room for thought. I'd always wanted off the planet but not like this!

I would go down as the biggest fool in history. Who gets so lost they drive right off the edge? I didn't even know it was possible. Aliens could be watching me, wondering what the hell this crazy lunatic is doing. These thoughts kept running through my head but all I wanted to do was get back before anyone found out what I'd done. Of course, in the back of my mind, I'd always know what I'd done. But I would deal with that later.

Truth is, I was too panicked to panic. If I were to ever get back I knew I had put my hysteria on hold. Without any visible reference points - black was here, black was there, black was everywhere - one only has one's self. The timing for this couldn't be worse! In a fit of madness and fear, I had destroyed my hearth and home. Horrified of my own hands, I'd begun to disconnect. Perhaps...perhaps that's why this is happening. To die alone in space could be my just desserts.

But I tried to find my way back in spite of my certain judgement of a deserved death. I just let go, surrendering to the car's path, closing my eyes, not daring to utter even a prayer. And in time, I found myself back on earth. You could say I survived, but I certainly paid a price.

What I say now I expect no one to believe. I write this for me alone, a testament to God. Yes, I made it back, but not to the earth I knew. The sky was a brownish orange; burnt and forlorn. Gone forever was the blue I knew. When I tried to point this out I got quizzical looks. "What are you talking about? It's always been this way. You need your eyes checked." Yet in the books I saw, the sky was blue in older photographs. A creeping horror seeped within me, impossibly bubbling to the surface. "Oh, God, no."

I adopted a stance of silence. I observed as one person put it, "Laughter carefully acted and tears carefully crafted." That's when I knew: they did know the sky was once blue. But no one dare admit it - even if they said it. To what other lies had they agreed to pretend? I began to wonder if I had entered a space-time warp when I drove off the edge. I don't know how it happened, with a bang or a whisper, but a Great Darkening had descended on the land. They feared to face it, as if silence could keep them safe from something over which they felt they had no power. But to my exasperating dismay, I knew they were deadly wrong.

CODA: I wander alone now in quiet disorientation. Maybe others have driven off the edge of the world too but are too scared to say so - just like me. I feel a heaviness that was not here before. Do others see in my eyes what I see in theirs? It's as if someone has died. We each feel something must be done - but nothing is. An ill wind pushes us forward - and that end is to a cliff from which there is no return. I feel I've joined a brotherhood of self-betrayal. Sometimes I tell myself none of this could be true. But the sky does not lie - nor answers to Man.