Archive of Our Own

The cloud looked like a penis. It did, it definitely did. Gwilym was just being a prude (“Shut up, you wanker!”) and the cloud looked like the most beautiful penis he had ever seen. And Joe had seen his fair share of choppers in his life, thank you very much. He spent his summers in outdoor pools, what was he supposed to do?

“Could you… could you just stop?”

Joe huffed in annoyance. “If I’m telling you that cloud looks like a penis, then it very well looks like a goddamn penis, Gwilym. I know what I’m talking about. I’m also very good at cloud-watching, so there. You just can’t deal with my superiority.”
“I want to see,” Rami piped up from the back seat.
Joe scooted to the side and pointed. Rami leaned over the backrest, whistling through his teeth when he spotted the intended cloud.

“Now that’s a John Thomas if I’ve ever seen one.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying! I-” Joe faltered. He blinked. “Did you just say John Thomas?”

Rami beamed.

“You got want you wanted,” Gwilym interrupted quickly, “so please lay it to rest now, Joe. I don’t want to fight about dicks for the rest of the day.”

Joe obeyed and settled down, cursing under his breath (‘John Thomas’, Rami wasn’t that old, was he? Christ) and fishing for his phone under the seat. Rami sat down properly again and rolled down his window.

When Joe had looked the last time (alright, three hours ago), Ben had been still awake, listening to some song on his phone, but when Joe turned around, his face was mashed against the window, little strings of drool sticking to the pane. Ew.

“You’re going to get a crick in your back if you keep twisting like that,” Gwil admonished him and turned on the indicator. “And if I brake now, your spine would-”

“Yeah, I got it,” Joe groaned and turned to face forward once more. He scrolled through his apps for a while, then he contemplated the chance of Gwil driving against a tree intentionally if Joe played Despacito. (He decided against testing it.)

After an excruciating hour of comfortable silence Joe couldn’t bear it anymore.

“What the hell, people? This is not how road trips are supposed to go. Why aren’t we talking? They always talk about something in movies.”

“I’m too lazy to talk right now,” someone grumbled from the backseat, but Joe couldn’t tell if it had been Rami or Ben, and Gwil said he wasn’t allowed to look, either. Life was hard.

“Well, sing instead.”
“Nnrreugh.”
“Alright then.”

Joe tried to look at Rami-or-Ben in the rear-view mirror, but he could only see part of the ceiling because Gwil’s head was higher than his, and he needed his space in the car. They had squished Rami behind Gwil because his legs weren’t as much in danger to be crushed by Gwilym’s seat. He could also just pull them up and rest them on the middle seat without cramping up too bad, so it was fine. Rami had complained about it for a while, but he also didn’t want to sit on the middle seat, so he surrendered in the end.

“All we hear is,” Ben suddenly croaked from behind Joe.

“Radio ga g- AGH!” Joe ducked to avoid Ben’s hands that were groping for his hair.

“Why are you always so handsy? Gwil, tell him to stop. He’s ruining my hairdo.”

“Radio goo goo,” Gwil answered, grinning like the mean meanie he was.

Joe slapped Ben’s right hand hard enough that he pulled them back where they belonged, which was not in the vicinity of Joe’s head. He skipped a few lyrics to his favorite part. “Raadiooo, what’s new?” he belted.

They all waited for a fourth voice to chime in, but nothing happened. Ben nudged Rami’s arm.

“Radio! Someone still…” he prompted, giving Rami a poke.
“Nnhfff,” Rami said.
“Close enough,” Ben decided.

Joe noticed he was already getting bored of watching Ben bothering Rami and watched the increasingly darker sky instead. He couldn’t see any schlong clouds anymore, but something else caught his eye.

A road sign.

It was a peculiar road sign.

“Uh,” Joe said eloquently. “Gwil?”

“Mhm?”

“You… you did use the navigator, didn’t you?”

Gwilym huffed. “I still am, as a matter of fact. What is it?”

Joe didn’t have to say anything. When they passed the next road sign, Gwilym looked unnervingly flabbergasted.

“That can’t be right,” he murmured, checking the route on the navigator’s screen. “There must’ve been a mix-up on street signs.”

“That’s a mighty lot of mixed-up street signs,” Joe said as soon as they passed another one. An uneasy feeling overcame him, sitting somewhere behind his molars and tugging at his throat. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips.

“But I’ve been following the nav to a point, look!”
“I believe you, don’t worry. Maybe we shoulda listened to Rami and brought a physical map. Do you know the story when he wanted to drive back home to his mom from a fancy hotel in Colorado Springs and ended up in some cornfield in Iowa because of the navigator? Man, mention Google maps to him once and you’ll never hear the end of it. Right, Rami? Still don’t understand how you managed to drive through six states without noticing it.”

“Wait, what was that?” Ben wiped his drool off the window with his sleeve and stuck his head between the front seats. “Are we lost?”

“No,” said Joe, at the same time as Gwil said “Somewhat”.

“So, yes or no? This is getting too cryptical for me.”

They arrived at another road sign and Gwil stopped the car. Ben’s jaw dropped to the floor.

“Okay,” he said weakly. “How did that happen?”

“Wake Rami up, won’t you?” Gwil said and opened his seatbelt.

It was almost pitch-black outside, but the road sign was still visible enough. There it stood, big and bulky and square and yellow, taunting them. Joe was inclined to flip it the bird, but he dismissed the urge.

Rami at his right side let out a stunned noise. “Radio, what’s new, indeed,” he said, scratching his head.

The sign read FERRY CROSSING AHEAD.

“Are you kidding me?” Ben said. “Is there a lake nearby or something?”

“No, not for like… the next state over. Which we are very far away from. As well as any kind of open sea.”

“Maybe they have a shipyard here somewhere…?”

Joe deadpanned. “A shipyard. Next to a country road in the middle of nowhere with no water around.”

“It was just a theory.”

“Well, what now?” Gwilym asked, noticeably exasperated. “Should we turn back?”

“It’s almost 400 miles to the hotel we stayed in last night…”

“Then we’ll change places and try again the day after tomorrow?”

“Come on,” Rami interrupted. “We drove the entire day! The next motel is probably just around the corner. I’d like to spend this night in a bed.”

“Yeah, this is ridiculous,” Ben agreed, “whatever this is supposed to mean, I’d say we just keep on driving. Maybe some country kids set these up as a joke and are filming us right now.” He demonstratively waved at a boulder on the side of the street. It didn’t wave back.

“Fine with me. Joe?”
“Ah, whatever. Let’s go. You wanna keep driving or should I relieve you?”

“I need some relief real quick,” Rami threw in and quickly scampered behind the next bush.

“Are you scared of the dark? Should I join you?”

“Leave me alone!”

“Gwilly, don’t turn the headlights off or he’ll get lost in his bush otherwise, I just know it.”

“Why do you keep bullying me? Did I do anything to you?” Rami called from behind the aforementioned bush.

“Certainly. Concentrate on weeing, now, we don’t want your John Thomas get stuck inside your zipper-“

“Do you ever stop with the dick jokes?” But Ben was grinning. The hypocrite.

Joe relented. “Okay, no more dick jokes for the rest of this journey. Hey, if there is a ferry, do you think it’ll take us to Narnia?”

“Mayhaps,” Gwil said, stretching out his long arms until his spine cracked. 

A quiet zzip sounded from the bush and Rami reemerged. “I found another street sign,” he reported. “It says ‘Road closed’.”

“And it’s just… laying on the ground? Inside a bush?”
“Yeah. Bush grew over it, in fact.”
“This is approaching Buzzfeed Unsolved levels. Why would someone rip it out and throw it into a bush? And why weren’t any of those standing at the beginning of the damn road?” Joe threw his hands into the air. “Fucking America, man.”

“Maybe this particular sign wasn’t legal anymore,” Rami tittered and got into the car again.

“There are- there are illegal street signs?”

Joe waved his hand. “Of course there are. These are the US of A, and the A stands for my ass, who isn’t happy with how our road trip is progressing.” He clambered onto the driver’s seat.

Gwil shook his head. “To be able to follow your train of thought…”

They took off. Two miles later, Joe stopped so abruptly that Ben’s head met Gwilym’s headrest.

“I am going to lose my mind,” Joe whimpered, looking at the ugly yellow sign that proclaimed WATER ON ROAD.

Rami reached for Gwilym’s phone that was still cheerfully displaying their route. “Gimme that. Do you have reception? You have. Alright.”

A short pause.

“Do you want the good news or the really bad news?”

Joe’s fingers grew sweaty. He wiped them off on his pants as discreetly as possible.

“One after the other, I’d say,” Gwil broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Well,” Rami started, drawing a hand through his hair, “the phone says there’s not even a puddle around for the next 600 miles. It also says that we’re only 50 feet away from out starting point.”

A slightly longer pause occurred.

“What. The hell.”

“Gimme,” Joe said.

Rami transferred the phone into Joe’s hands, and indeed: the little dot of their current position was positioned only a few inches to the left of their starting point at the hotel.

Ben, who was still rubbing his forehead, requested the phone as well. Gwil looked a little pale.

“It always worked before. Why did it have to glitch now?”
“No idea, man. We just had a lot of bad luck.”

Gwil’s phone was handed back to him and he promptly shut it off. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably.

“It’s okay. Bad luck, as Joe said,” Ben comforted him, and Rami nodded. “Here, let’s use my phone. I have a map app that doesn’t run on Google Maps. Maybe Google’s satellites are on the fritz.”

“A map app? A mapp?”
“Joe, no.”
“Sorry not sorry.” Joe took the offered phone and typed their destination into the mapp, tucking it into the phone retainer that was glued to the dashboard.

“Let’s try again, shall we.” He tried not to think too much about the fact that the route still pointed into the direction of the miraculous ferry.

He just happened to look at the phone when there was a little flicker on the screen. He stepped on the brake.

“What’s it now?” Rami asked. He sounded a little testy.

“It just jumped back,” Joe answered. His hands shook when he took the phone out of the retainer again. “Look.”

He drove a few feet, passing another weird road sign, and the screen flickered, leaving the position dot back where they started next to the WATER ON ROAD sign.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ben blurted, watching the screen flicker two more times.
“This is definitely not some satellites fault. Maybe there’s weird radio traffic around here?”

“Possibly. I’ve never read of an instance of digital maps going kaput by radio signals, though. You’d think they would warn you about that,” Gwil interjected. He turned Ben’s phone off and on again, made Joe drive a few feet backwards, but nothing changed.

“Okay, so what now? Should we call someone?”

“Probably.” Ben turned around in his seat, looking at the road sign that was illuminated by the car’s rear lights. “But…”

“What?”

“Aren’t you kind of curious if there’s actually a ferry? I mean, what if we discover a secret cavern lake or something?”

“Wouldn’t be that secret, seeing as there’re road signs for it,” Rami said.

“Yeah, but imagine. Cavern lakes are wicked cool, alright? I always wanted to see one.”

“This is a really stupid idea,” Joe exclaimed.
“Wait for it…”
“So I’m in.”
“I knew it.”

Gwil buried his face in his hands. “You two are a menace to society.” He looked at Rami, who was looking back at him with the sweetest begging eyes he’d ever encountered. “Correction: you’re all a menace. Let’s check out this ferry cavemen.”

With a whoop and a racing heart, Joe put the car into gear and actively started to follow the signs. They needed to guess where the road was more often than not now, since it had gotten only darker, almost to the point where it was impossibly dark.

Joe was so hyped up with inexplainable adrenalin that he gave a full-body flinch at Rami’s soft “Oh” from the backseat.

“Do you guys see any clouds?”

Gwil rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “No, I think they all dissolved around this evening, except Joe’s John Thomas cloud.”

Joe huffed. “And I’m the one making dick jokes all the time? You’re a hypocrite.”

“Guys, listen. If there aren’t any clouds, and additionally no streetlights, then why aren’t there any stars? Or at least the moon, for that matter?”

“I…” Gwil kept his head outside. “Er.”

“This is getting so damn creepy. Where’d the stars go?”

“Maybe there are clouds, and they only formed after it was dark?” Joe suggested. His voice was shaking. He tried to calm down a little.

“Yeah, that must be it.” Rami sounded a little squeaky. Joe felt a little sorry for him.

“Maybe we should just turn back. We’ll have to sleep in the car tonight anyway, no matter if we get off this ghost highway or not.”

“But Ben’s cavern lake!”

Ben slapped at Joe’s arm. “If anyone here’s scared, forget the damn lake. I don’t mind.”

Gwil turned in his seat and gently nudged Rami’s shin. “You alright?”
Rami gave him a weak smile, eyes still absentmindedly searching the sky for stars. “Yes, I’m okay. This is just freaking me out.”

“I feel ya, man,” Ben said, patting Rami’s shoulder comfortingly. “Should we turn back?”

Rami heaved a deep breath and thought for a moment. Joe slowed the car down to a crawl.

“As much as I’m pissing myself right now, I’m still really curious,” Rami finally said with an incredulous, breathy little laugh.

Joe snorted. “Same here.”

“Well, then it’s decided. Let’s hit the road, boys. Carefully, Joe.”

“Yessir.”

The car rolled down the empty road, passing a few more ominous signs, dodging a few small boulders that had rolled into their way. The further they came, the clearer it became that the road hadn’t been in use for at least a decade. The little bit Joe could see of the asphalt was chapped and splintered, big pieces of it ripped open from year-long exposure to the heat. Weeds were making their way through the biggest rips and holes. Where the drive had been relatively smooth before, now it was like driving in a handcart on cobblestone.

Joe could hear Gwil’s teeth clicking audibly against each other, but he wasn’t sure if it was because he was scared as crap or the bumpy ride.

No matter how much he stared into the sky, no stars appeared. Rami hadn’t found the moon yet, when Ben asked him.

The fact that it was steadily getting even darker wasn’t very comforting, either.

“I didn’t think it was possible for a place to get so dark,” Ben said. “I’ve been trapped in a cupboard once without any source of light, and it wasn’t as dark as this. It’s like we’re driving through a black hole.”

Joe couldn’t help but agree with him. The darkness seemed to swallow up the streaks of light the cars headlights produced, leaving him with barely a few feet of sight.

At some point, Joe turned on the high beams, but not even they managed to hold back the black nothingness for more than 100 feet.

Finally, they came to the last visible road sign. It read ALL YEAR and beneath it was an arrow that pointed away from the road, somewhere to the left. There wasn’t even a path there, just dry grass, gravel, stones, and a few sparsely leaved bushes.

“All year,” Rami murmured. “Those signs normally stand in school zones.”

“Y’all know what? We should have filmed all of this as soon as we saw the first sign. Nobody will ever believe us.”

Gwilym had taken out his contacts and put his glasses on. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So… do we follow it?”

“I don’t know, man,” Rami said, shifting in his seat. “This is breaking the record of weirdness we encountered today.”

“Consider this,” Joe said, “what is the worst that can happen? If this is all a deliberate trap to lead innocent road trippers into their death, they seem to have waited a really long time to pull it off. Maybe they served us some LSD at breakfast and we’re all tripping out of our minds right now. Either way, we’re four, and we have phone reception. So what the hell.”

“Let me just-“ Rami took out his phone, took a picture of the sign and sent it along with his position to Sami. Joe could hear him typing something, and he could feel himself relaxing a bit. Rami’s phone chimed; Sami had received the message.

“Okay-doke,” Rami said. “If we do go missing, at least they know where to search. Sami says hello, by the way.”

“Tell him that I miss him,” Joe said.
Rami typed. “He misses you, too,” he passed on the message with a smile.
“He’s a sweetheart. Here we go.”

They simultaneously held their breaths as the wheels of the car left the street, as if an UFO would suddenly crash down on them as soon as they left the road behind. When nothing happened, they exhaled audibly, and started laughing at each other.

“We’re a band of cowards.”

“No, we’re a bunch of morons with common sense. Just enough to have shaky knees, but not enough to not drive down some pitch-dark field with creepy signs for no good reason.”

“That’s the most accurate description that was ever made of me, Gwil,” Rami giggled. “Just enough common sense, but not too much to be healthy.”

“The most accurate description of all of us, you mean.”

“Probably, yeah.”

 “This road trip was the best idea we ever had,” Ben grinned and stretched one leg between the front seats. “If I’m gonna die today, at least I had fun in my last hours.”

“You’re such a flatterer, Ben,” Joe said flatly, but he couldn’t do anything against the corners of his mouth turning up.

Joe peeked at the fuel gauge, sighing in relief when it was still full enough to get them out of any unpleasant situations (a little too full, considering the time that had passed between then and the last refuelling). The feeling of “I have no idea what’s going on here” arose once more.

“You know,” Rami said while Joe puzzled over this brand-new development, “I’m really glad we didn’t do this road trip on motorcycles or bikes. I feel a lot safer inside a car.”

“Agreed. Much more comfortable to sleep in in an emergency, too. And we won’t get wet.”

“Very true,” Gwil said. “Why are you doing that face, Joe?”

“We wasted almost no fuel driving the whole day,” Joe said, squinting at the ground to avoid possible car-hating boulders. “It’s almost as though we only drove one mile or something.”

“This is getting weirder and weirder. Maybe we should stop worrying right now, and start again when zombies rise from the earth, I’d say,” Rami suggested.

“Maybe the zombies are captaining ferries nowadays?”
“Who knows.”

Despite the jokes, they couldn’t help but feel waves over waves of dread as not even the high beams held back the darkness more than a few feet. Rami and Ben shifted away from the windows and became an anxious little pile on the middle seat; the darkness seemed to lay itself over the panes like a heavy mist. Joe turned on the indoor light.

“You’ll see less that way,” Gwil started.

“I can see nothing anyway, that doesn’t make much difference,” Joe interrupted.

With a horrible crunch and the sound of stone hitting metal, the car came to an abrupt halt.
Joe could see Rami’s shock-widened eyes reflecting the light in the rear-view mirror.

“Did we just run into a stone?”

“Uhm,” Joe said defensively.

“Joe-“
“I said I couldn’t see anything! Also, I’m driving like two inches an hour. The car is fine. Probably. I hope.”

A piece of destroyed boulder came into their line of sight, bounced off the windscreen and floated upwards.

“I’m going to hurl,” Rami whispered miserably. “You did see that stone just flying away like some dandelion seed, didn't you?”

“I sure did,” Joe breathed. As soon as the last syllable left his lips, a slightly bigger stone, roughly the size of a human head, floated against Ben’s window.

Ben screamed in shock, Rami hid his face in Ben’s sleeve, and Gwil and Joe groped for each other’s hands. With a small ‘thunk’ the boulder bounced off and gently floated towards heaven.

“What the hell is this? Ouch, Joe, let go of my arm. You’re pinching me.”

“Did we go into space by accident? Are we on the moon? Is that why it’s so dark? Thank God we don’t have any windows open, we’re going to run out of oxygen,” Joe babbled, holding Gwil’s arm even tighter.

“No way,” Gwil said and rolled down his window a little. The air wasn’t sucked out and it didn’t get any colder, thus this theory was disproven.

“Okay,” Rami had bravely emerged from Ben’s sleeve, “I have to admit that that didn’t really calm me any. Being on the moon sounded more rational than whatever else is going on here.”

“Joe, if you don’t let go of my arm, you’re going to amputate it.”

Joe let go and held Rami’s hand instead. Rami was very okay with that.

“Hey mates, look,” Ben broke the short bout of silence. “It’s getting brighter again.”

He was right, but something was wrong with the moon light. For starters, there wasn’t any moon to be seen, or any other source of light for that matter. Additionally, the light had an odd pinkish tint to it. It was a remarkably cold color, the educated part of Joe’s brain supplied. He shivered involuntarily. The other part of his brain said “I wanna go outside.”

“I wanna go outside,” Joe said.

“Ah, no, mate,” Ben said, visually flabbergasted, hugging Rami protectively. “What if you float off?”

“Do we have something for a test run?” Rami squeaked from beneath Ben’s right upper arm. Joe wordlessly handed him some gum wrapper. Rami rolled down his window and let the wrapper drop onto the violet-tinted ground. It fell as a perfectly normal wrapping paper should, straight to the ground with no floating or bouncing going on.

“Huh,” Joe said. “I’ll hold onto the seatbelt. You’ll pull me in if I start floating, okay?”

“This is the worst idea you’ve ever, ever had,” Ben sighed. “Promise me that it’ll be the last bad idea for this trip?”

“Cross my heart and hope to… ah, that’s not really appropriate in this case, is it? Cross my heart and hope to not float into the pink sunset.”
“Be careful.”

Joe treated himself with a stare contest with the door handle, then he breathed in and out a few times, slung his hand around the seat belt, and pulled the door open.

The sudden feeling of weightlessness made his stomach do a flip not unlike one he’d normally feel in a roller coaster with loops. With his heart beating thirty miles an hour, Joe expected to lift off and having to hold onto the seat belt for dear life, but nothing of that sort happened.
Instead, his feet met the ground with an uninspired sound of crunching gravel, and he felt very similar to the wrapping paper: almost a little disappointed (as far as a gum wrapper could feel disappointment, Joe figured). He kind of felt like he was under water, though.

He walked a few careful steps, holding onto the belt with a grip so tight his knuckles stood out whitely. When nothing exciting happened, he turned back to the car. Gwil had reached out with a cautionary hand, Ben and Rami were glued to the window with wide eyes.

“Walking feels different,” Joe reported, “but I don’t feel like floating any time soon.”

With that, he let go of the seat belt.

A lot of things happened simultaneously.

Gwil threw himself over Joe’s seat in an attempt to hold onto his hand, forgetting he was still strapped into his own seat and bouncing back with such a force his head nodded like a metal guitarist. Ben screamed and reached out for Joe, hitting his hand on the window, and Rami full on threw himself against the same window, bumping his forehead against the glass and getting smacked by Ben’s reaching hands.

Meanwhile, Joe stood on the ground like someone who stands in a location with gravity and had the best look on the spectacle inside the car.

His friends stared at Joe. Joe stared back. And then-

“Ow,” Rami said with a very small voice.

Joe couldn’t help it. He doubled over and laughed all of his tension into the pink, humid air.

“Mate,” Gwil blurted in the short pause when Joe had to wheeze for air, “never do that again! I hate you so much!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I broke my promise, Ben, I’m so sorry! But your faces-“

“Stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” Ben grumbled, shaking out his hand and giving Rami’s cheek an apologizing pet. Rami nodded in thanks; it had sounded worse than it was.

Joe’s tittering was contagious, soon enough they were all cackling like moronic hyenas.
It helped against the almost painful tension that had taken hold of their bodies as soon as they left the road.

“Damn my curiosity,” Rami said after they had calmed down a bit, “but I want to go outside, too. Maybe only some rocks fly?”

Joe kicked one. It rolled a few feet but didn’t take flight. “Possible,” he said. “I’m not going to question physics at this place, honestly. I think it does that for itself already. ‘What part of me becomes airborne and what stays a boring ole piece of countryside? Who knows, I’m just rolling with it’.”

“Yes, that’s definitely what the countryside thinks of itself,” Gwil snorted.

“Kinda sad, isn’t it? It could use more self-esteem.”

Rami had left the car and stood next to Joe, still walking as if on eggshells and grabbing Joe’s arm as soon as he was in reach.

“Don’t worry, Ramster,” Rami huffed in appalment at the nickname, “good old stone-Joe will hold you down.”

“So I’m a gum wrapper?” Rami giggled.
“Sure, if you insist,” Joe said graciously.

“This is so weird. I feel as if I should float, realistically. I also feel like I should be cold. Where’s the light coming from, anyway?” Rami turned his head up to search for the source but was unsuccessful. He took a few more steps and let go of Joe’s arm, nervously clenching his fists.

“So you have that roller coaster feeling, too?”

Rami snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Roller coaster. Exactly!”

Ben got out of the car next. At Gwilym’s look, he shrugged. “I wanna feel the roller coaster, too!”

“You’re all overgrown children,” Gwil groaned, but he got out not long after that. “We should stay as close to the car as possible,” he advised the rest of the group. “Else it might fly off.”

“Like in Harry Potter.”
“Yeah.”

Rami had gotten a little bolder over the last few minutes he was outside, exploring the surrounding and throwing a stone here and there. He even jumped off a boulder, landing sturdily on both feet, making small pieces of gravel jump up and float away.

“I don’t get how this works,” he said, baffled. “Do things only float when they are thrown up by someone?”

He side-eyed Gwil.
“Gwilym, throw me up,” Rami demanded.

“No,” Gwil blurted before the request had fully registered.

“Come on, Gwil, where’s your investigative spirit?” Joe admonished him as he took off his jacket. “Gimme your leg, Rami.” He fastened the jacket sleeve on Rami’s ankle, the putting his arm into the opposite sleeve. “Now throw him, he won’t float away,” he explained at Gwil’s flabbergasted expression.

“And what if you float away with him?” Gwil said while already going into a slight crouch, wrapping his arms around Rami’s thighs.

“Then Ben will rescue us like the knight in shining armor he is, right, Ben?”

“’Course,” Ben said eagerly.

“Alright, here goes,” Gwil huffed and threw Rami in the air. It wasn’t very high because Joe was also hanging on, but Gwil had some strength in that arms of his.

The thing they hadn’t considered was what would happen if Rami didn’t start floating.
They quickly found out, because that was exactly what happened.

Rami fell like a stone and crashed into Joe with a loud “Oof”, leaving them both spread-eagled on the floor, hopelessly tangled in the unfortunate jacket. A few whirled up pebbles lazily floated away.

“The ground is uncomfortable,” Rami reported, untying the jacket sleeve from his ankle. To his astonishment, his pantleg was wet.

“Now, that didn’t work,” Joe remarked. “Sorry to say, but I’m stumped. I have no idea how stuff is working here.”

“Whatever,” Ben said, walking back to the car, “at least we can have ourselves a nice pink roller coaster midnight picnic.”

“Ooh, are there still marshmallows left?”

“How do you think fire will work here?” Gwil asked as he opened the trunk.
Joe shuddered. “I don’t really want to know, to be honest.”
“Me neither,” Gwil admitted and took out two bags of various groceries. “Who wants some yummy dry cereal?”

“Ah, damnit!” Joe called as the stone serving as their makeshift soccer ball left the ground and made for a hasty retreat. “I think I figured it out: things have to touch the ground first before they float.”

Rami, who was documenting the happenings on camera to show Sami later, repeated this new theory under his breath and shifted from one foot onto the other.

Joe found them to be dealing with the situation surprisingly well, especially since they had found out there was no phone reception in this weird parallel dimension they had found themselves in.
It also appeared that the “water on the road” didn’t like to stay on the road, instead floating around in small, cool bubbles that burst and splattered to the ground as soon as something touched them. It was certainly one way to take a shower, Joe thought. But not easy to keep track of. What did a man do if his shower water decided to lazily drift out of the bathroom window and vanish into oblivion?

He saw Rami putting his phone away from the corners of his eyes as he searched for a new stone to misuse for their entertainment.

As he kicked the new soccer ball in the direction of the ‘goal’, which consisted of two watet bottles, Rami was hopping around the perimeter, looking as lost in thought as one could be.

“Are you turning into a bunny?” Gwil asked as he looked at Rami’s skipping.

“No, but it feels strange,” Rami replied, skipping along. He had a wild smile on his face, lips curving upwards.
“I feel so light. Like I could jump around for hours.”

“Maybe they did serve us drugs. And we’re only imagining the pink light and are playing soccer in the middle of the night in some gravelly field like a bunch of idiots,” Joe reasoned.

“Mighty convincing drugs they are, then. I never tripped before. Is it normal to hallucinate exactly the same stuff, though?”

Joe shrugged. “I have no idea. Probably not.”

He and Gwil started to kick the ‘ball’ back and forth, with Ben as goalie.

Just as the stone rolled dangerously near the goal and Joe was about to holler in victory, a terrified shriek sounded from behind them.

They whipped around as one, and saw Rami helplessly floating upwards, kicking and thrashing in fear.

“Oh God!” Joe sprinted underneath him, but he was an entire body length too short to reach his poor friend.

“Get me down, get me down!” Rami wailed, waving his arms to stay belly down. His hair was flowing around his head in all directions, as if someone was holding a hairdryer into his face. As he did an involuntary flip in the air, his curls whooshed along, but it looked strangely delayed, as if his hair got the memo of movement later than the rest of Rami’s body.
Despite the desperate swimming motions Rami made, he was still steadily drifting upwards.

Gwil ripped off his jacket and shirt, hastily tying them together. “Jackets, shirts!” he barked. Joe and Ben obeyed immediately. Gwil was already tying the sleeves together before they had fully pulled their arms out of them.

“You’re doing good, Rami. Keep your eyes on me,” Joe called up.

Rami was shivering (and floating) like a leaf in an autumn storm. He stretched out his arms when he figured out Gwil’s plan.

On the first try the makeshift rope wasn’t long enough. Ben raced to the car to get the picnic blanket.

On the second try Rami’s eyes were so full of frightened tears he couldn’t see the rope. When he had wiped them, he was even higher and thus even closer to a total breakdown.

“We’re going to get you down, Rami, deep breaths,” Joe called up to him. He could hear him gasping for air from where he stood. Rami sniffled, wiped his eyes again and hiccupped “Okay, okay. Throw it again.”

On the third try Joe tried to climb on Gwil’s shoulders, and they fell over. Ben was already armed with Rami’s expensive coat that he had found in the trunk.

“Did you break something?!”

“We’re fine, keep swimming!” Gwilym got his pointer finger caught in one of the tighter knots, leaving him cursing and sticking it into the nearest water bubble.

The fourth try had Joe sitting on Gwil’s shoulders, while they stood on a boulder with Ben hugging Gwil’s legs from the side so they wouldn’t fall over.

Rami caught the rope. The rope didn’t give in. Joe dared to breathe again.

Gwil drew in the rope like one might draw in a net full of fish. Said fish was very out of its element, though.

“Oh God, holy hell” was the first thing Rami said when he had felt sturdy ground under his feet again. “Thank you,” was the second thing he said. His slender ribcage heaved underneath Joe’s hand.

They shared a group hug, taking turns in stroking Rami’s head when his breath hitched.

“You’re okay, you’re okay.”
“Yeah. I believe I can fly and so on.”
“I believe I will punch the sky for doing that to you.”

Just as they had calmed down enough to disentangle the rope of jackets and shirts, Rami safely sat against a boulder, a dark violet shadow was cast over them and the better part of the field they stood in.

Instinctively, they drew closer to each other, making one warm, protective pile on the floor.

“I know the rules now,” Rami said weakly, leaning his head against Gwil’s inviting shoulder. “Things have to bounce off something with enough velocity. Then they float.”

“Well, if we ever get famous, you’ll be the explorer of the hour. The discoverer,” Joe teased.

Rami gave him a little shove, but he smiled.

The shadow buried everything in its mid into absolute darkness. When they looked up, the were looking at the underside of the most massive boat they had ever laid eyes on. Its belly, once probably white, was rusted and discolored, and it was so tall they couldn’t even see the railing. The thing was at least as long as two or three baseball stadiums.
Its shadow reached the ground just in front of their car, putting anything beyond that into endless blackness.

It didn’t make any sound as it cruised by just above their heads, no blast of wind that threw them off their feet, there was just pure, utter unnerving silence and a really damn big boat floating in the sky.

“So… this is the Ferry,” Ben murmured, emphasizing it like it was a title more than a term, and they couldn’t help but find it appropriate.

They all stared up at the otherworldly thing in awe, barely able to grasp how massive it was.

“You think the dark clouds… that was the Ferry directly above us?” Rami concluded suddenly.

A peculiar feeling overcame them; the feeling of disbelieving fear, but also of wonder at having witnessed something so big and awe-inspiring.

A small click shook them out of their near hypnosis. Rami gave a sheepish little grin, putting away his phone.

“No one will ever believe this,” Gwil whispered.
“Sami will,” Rami assured him. “Do you think anyone could see it if they outrun the darkness?” he philosophized. He looked exhausted when Joe turned to him, eyes droopy and face pale from exertion.

Without saying a word, they packed up and went back to the car. Gwil moved to the back seat so he could stretch out his legs, Ben skillfully positioned an air mattress over the two front seats; he wanted to watch the Ferry some more.
Rami and Joe moved to the trunk. Rami had enough from weird sights and other things in that ballpark, but he didn’t want to sleep alone and Joe was just all too happy to join him. They put out the thermal mat Rami had brought for whatever reason and curled up around each other. It was a little claustrophobic, but with the trunk directly connected to the rest of the car there was enough air to breathe.

Rami pressed his face into Joe’s chest and yawned. “That wasn’t how I imagined flying would be like,” he whispered, shoulders shaking in gentle, exhausted laughter.

“Oh, you can say that again. This wasn’t really what I imagined when going on this road trip, either. But you gotta just roll with it, right?” Joe slung his arms around Rami and quickly found himself more tired than he’d thought just a few seconds ago.

“Right,” Rami sighed, snuggling as close as possible and falling asleep almost on the spot.

Joe followed not much later.

When Joe opened his eyes, all he could see was bright. The sun shone so brightly into the rear window it hurt his eyes.

The Ferry was gone.

“Rise and shine, my darlings,” Joe called, making Gwil and Ben jerk awake on their inflatable mattresses and Rami snuffle grumpily into Joe’s sleeve.

“Is it gone?” Ben asked, sitting up and squinting at the sky. “Looks like it,” he answered himself. Then he turned around.

“What the- you have got to be kidding me.”

Gwil, Rami and Joe lifted their heads to look into the direction Ben was pointing.

There, at the end of the street, was the motel they had started from the day before.

“So your app was right in the end, Gwil,” Joe said as if that explained everything. “Explains the little fuel we used up, as well.”

Rami blinked at the motel sign flashing cheerfully in the distance.
“You know… I kinda just wanna go home,” he said, massaging his temples.

“Same,” Joe said.

“Yeah. Gwil?”

“Me, too. I never want to see a street sign again.”

“I’ll call Sami, he’ll give us a ride. Then we can just give the car back to the motel.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Later, when they were all piled into Sami’s tiny Opel, Sami listened attentively to Rami’s report of unbelievable events, while the rest fell into comfortable silence, simply glad for the twins’ chattering and the little piece of normality. They still flinched at every road sign they passed, just waiting for everything to go haywire.

When they passed a construction site, Sami read one of them out loud.

“Road work ahead,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at Joe in the rear-view mirror.

“Well, I sure hope it does,” Joe said, but the joke fell flat. They all just wanted to get home, be save inside a house and get used to have solid ground underneath their feet again, without gigantic boats floating through the air like the Jolly Roger.

“We’ll try this road trip thingie again,” Joe made his friends promise, “but not this summer. And not in the middle of nowhere in America.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ve had enough of long drives in general. I’m gonna take a plane to the island in a few weeks, and that’ll be the last time for this year I ride in something that doesn’t drive on rails.”

Gwilym nodded, tipping back his head to bask in the warmth of the sun.

They were having a barbeque on the lush green lawn of Rami’s and Sami’s shared back yard, relishing in the burning summer sun. There were no clouds to be seen. Joe had a feeling that he would stay paranoid in the darkness for quite some time, and he was glad winter was months away.

Sami gave Rami a curious look, a look that screamed of adventure and daring. Rami shrugged, but as soon as the others were occupied with setting up the grill and distributing pasta salad with antipasti, he gave his brother a curved little smirk.

He certainly didn’t want to involuntarily fly ever again, but there was a certain charm to sharing secrets.
And Sami really wanted to see the Ferry. There was still so much to see. Maybe it could be boarded.

And well, the sign had said the Ferry was there all year, hadn’t it?

fin