Aberration Gray

By A.I

The sign does not say East and it does not say West. It does not need too, because the direction is not important to those who walk along that road. The road itself seems to squeeze painfully, tensely, like an unfurling snake, endlessly towards a direction which bares no description and requires none. The dust of the road seems, from a distance, to be caked and compressed, as if by no circumstances can it be disturbed or unsettled. There are no other travelers, living or dying, on the road. There are no sounds, nor are there foreign objects. It is just a road.

Surrounding the beaten path, the landscape is barren, harsh, flat, and tired. It is a timeless, monotonous, unexcitable place that sees nothing and hears even less. The flatness is bleak and austere, as if to express it's narrow-eyed, apathetic, indomitable spirit. Presently, animals are not crawling and writhing along the grass and rocks to bring life and complication to a subjective system of function; a system which creates neither prosperity nor destruction.

The sign itself is unweathered and unjustified. It is a square and jagged piece of metal, which bares no dings or patches of flaking rust because weather does not exist here. The letters are neat and precise, scrawled in a painstakingly controlled line across the face of the sign.

A man, presumably the only traveler on the road, does not read the sign. He ignores it with a forced concentration, as if the words could exert themselves on him without his wanting them. He does not believe the letters are important and he knows that he will learn nothing until he can read without seeing. There is something like hatred in his face and he is not aware of this. The hatred twists his lips into a snarl and screws his eyes into serrated holes of darkness. This makes him ugly. He wears a once-white shirt, the collar soiled beyond recognition, the sleeves rolled haphazardly to his elbows, creating a rushed and uneven line of dust that acts as a border to the clear, sweaty flesh that hides safely beneath the cloth. His hat is cocked arrogantly, and it makes the bones of his emancipated face jut with ghastly definition beneath the shadow it creates. He is terrible.

The road coils restlessly, slowly, beneath his bare feet. It is so full of malice that it would swallow him if it were not so choked with dust. The traveler walks slowly, mechanically, and without haste. He is unhurried in such an inhospitable atmosphere because he is not afraid of it. He passes the sign without ceremony. He seems well-oiled, like a whistler with moistened lips. He is calm.

This sign reads: Order.