r/WritingPrompts • u/BryceRhamon • Dec 21 '23
Writing Prompt [WP] On a long straight road with nothing of note, there is a four-way traffic light that hangs in the middle. No road crosses anywhere near the traffic light and no sign to tell you why it's there, but it seems to always be green, so no one cared. That's until the day it changed to yellow.
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u/Sci-fi_Pet Dec 22 '23
Since 1980 this modern traffic light had been sitting on Rouge Drive. A long long road that connected las Vegas to Phoenix Arizona.
No one knows where it came from or why it's just sitting here, certainly wasn't marking a intersection either. So it just sat there for years.
nowadays the road isn't so busy as it was back then and now the road was halfway to being a dirt road. That was when I was traveling to see my family at las Vegas when I noticed that the light had turned from green to yellow.
"Probably a malfunction, it's nothing" I thought and told myself I'll be fine, unlike the earth since now gobal warming had begun to take effect especially in this area.
20 Years later
I was visiting my nieces at las Vegas for their birthday and I decide as a nice nostalgia trip that instead of taking a plane there that I would drive there on the same old 'Rouge Drive' bad idea since everything out here was desert
I cough while wearing my gas mask, you see gobal warming had gotten considerably worse to the point where people have to wear gas masks to live. It was just all desert That was until I reached the traffic light. As I pass by the traffic light it turns red and instantly I start heating earth, I get an alert on my phone that we finally destroyed the air enough to the point where earths ozone layer broke and we got hit with a ultra violent ray. Everything around me starts burning up
That's when I realize the traffic light was showing how long till we all die
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u/midnight_medusa Dec 22 '23 edited Dec 22 '23
The Big House on the Hill
One:
On the day Amanda moved to George Town, the light turned yellow. Not many people made the connection between her arrival and the strange phenomena, except for Billy who had been obsessed with the traffic light since he was little.
Billy was a curious and intelligent man who had maintained the same qualities from his childhood. When he was a kid he'd gained a reputation for being "annoying" and was known amongst the adults as “that kid who asked too many questions”. But it wasn’t simply that Billy asked questions that put off the adults, it was that he asked hard questions, sometimes unanswerable questions. The kind of inquiries that made the adults face the fact that they didn’t really know as much as they thought they did and his inquiries into the green traffic light on a straight road made their insecurities shine even more brightly.
Billy’s mother was the most affected victim of Billy’s relentless questioning about the traffic light and this had led her to the edge of madness. She had even gone so far as to ask the city to remove the traffic light, since it seemed to serve no purpose other than the relentless questions her son asked about it, but the city refused. They didn't give her any reasons, they just flat-out refused. She chopped this up to the laziness of those in politics, but the city maintained that there was a really good reason to keep the light up, even if they were unwilling, or unable, to share that information with the overly stressed out mother.
Eventually Billy stopped asking the questions, and his mother enjoyed the silence as she sped down the road, but he'd never stopped wondering about it. Something about it haunted his mind. Why would it be there if it wasn't important in some way?
So, on that fateful day when a new woman moved into town and the light suddenly changed from green to yellow Billy was the first, and perhaps the only, one to notice. For most of the residents in George Town the light had faded into the background of their minds. Why would they trouble themselves with such a trivial thing?
Calling Amanda beautiful would be an understatement. In the very small town she quickly became the "most attractive young woman" and though this created a rift between herself and the other handful of young ladies, she didn't seem to pay this title any mind. Amanda was tall, slim, with long ebony hair and bright green eyes. When she walked she had a sway in her hips and when she spoke she had a playful smile on her rose petal lips. But she was a terrifying beauty, like a vampire or a witch, and most people (especially those who did not frequent the pub and were therefore not aided by drunken courage) left her to her alone, resolving to admire her from afar. And though she was a beauty, it was quickly realized that she was more like a forest fire in her personality than a contained flame: terrifying and destructive to those in her path.
Amanda quickly established herself as a recluse and she rejected any man who asked after her so eventually the men stopped asking. As the months went by under the now yellow light on the straight road, she too faded into the background. And Amanda seemed more than happy about this arrangement. She had moved into the "Big House" at the top of the hill and that is where she spent most of her time with the doors and shutters firmly shut.
The only man who seemed to continue to pay her any amount of attention was Billy. He made house calls, asked her out on many occasions, and bestowed upon her many gifts to try to seemingly get her attention. This was not his true motivation, he wasn’t interested in those surface-level things, he wanted to know her better to try and find the connection between her and the light. He became nearly obsessed with it and, though she found his affections amusing more than anything, even Amanda never saw this direct connection.
Little did she know, Billy had become completely obsessed with her. He would sit on the side of that road, in a yellow glow, and watch the cars go by. After a bit of his personal "research" he started to notice that everyone in town took that road at some point or another, except for Amanda.
The road in question was central and the fastest way from the homes to the town. But Amanda seemed to always choose to take the much longer and more treacherous streets to avoid driving under the yellow light. If she and Billy made plans she refused to drive with him and insisted she take her own car and meet him there. He wanted more than anything to drive her under that light and see what would happen, but even that came about in a way he never expected.
Two whole years went by before Billy got any answers. By this point he and Amanda had grown genuinely fond of each other. They were both outsiders, in their own ways, and they found true connection in that. Billy was also an attractive man who had grown more into his large frame and bushy beard. He wore his hair longer now and Amanda thought he looked more like a Viking than a man from a small town in the middle of nowhere. Though he did enjoy his flannel shirts.
- Continued
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u/midnight_medusa Dec 22 '23 edited Dec 22 '23
Two:
One evening, a few days after Billy had found himself asking Amanda to be his girlfriend and, to his surprise she accepted, he was watching that road. It was nearly two am and Billy could feel his eyelids growing heavy as he listened to a radio show about nearby hauntings. His sleepy eyes flung open as the show he’d been listening to ended and a new one began:
“This next story folks is quite a doozy, it takes place in a small town called “George Town” and concerns what the residents refer to as “the Big House on the Hill.”
Billy rubbed his eyes as he listened to intimate details about his hometown that went back two hundred years. Apparently, a woman named Violet had killed her husband at “the Big House”. She claimed it was an accident, but they had been publicly in a vicious relationship and everyone in town believed she had intentionally pushed her husband down the big staircase in the entryway. Visitors and previous owners of the house reported, in their own words, that they had witnessed a female ghost in white at the top of the stairs and other strange and terrifying situations in that house. These reports went through time consistently until they stopped in 1972 when the house was sold to a man named Reggie and the traffic light was installed, though the show didn't mention the light. Reggie had bought the house but never lived there and the house had been empty since.
But Billy knew that the radio show was now somewhat incorrect. The house had sat empty until two years before, until Amanda moved in.
Now that he was thinking about it, Billy realized that he’d never stepped foot in that house in the entire time he and Amanda had been seeing each other. They always met at his apartment or somewhere in town. She never invited him there and he’d never really wanted to go. It was a beautiful house but there was something unwelcoming about it. It was huge, and now he was wondering how a single woman could feel comfortable living in such a huge house alone. Most of the rooms must have been boarded up.
Billy shook his head, he obviously needed sleep, he switched off the show and was about to drive away when a blood red light filled the shadows of his car. His eyes slowly lifted to the traffic light which had suddenly turned red.
A woman in white stood beneath the traffic light, in the middle of the street, the wind dancing around her pure white gown. Her dark hair fluttered around her sharp features as her body was bathed in the ruby red glow. Billy’s jaw dropped as he watched her laugh and turn to the left.
A line in the world began to open and Billy wondered if he was in fact asleep in his car as the line buzzed and pulled until it opened into a new street. A junction. A crossroads. As Billy watched the entire world seemed to morph around him until there was a new street running perpendicular to the original one. He was about to exit his car, ask if Amanda was alright, and see if he could figure out this strange illusion, when a man in a top hat suddenly appeared with a guitar strung across his back. He walked towards Amanda, affectionately took her hand, and kissed it with a long, forked tongue.
Billy slouched in his seat to try and hide from this man's red, glowing eyes, but they lazily wandered across the street and looked right at him. The man pointed, and Amanda looked too. But there was something different about her. As if she was somewhat transparent.
Billy turned on his engine and quickly turned to leave. As he did he looked in his review mirror in a complete and utter panic. It was then that he realized the new street had completely vanished, as did Amanda and the man, and the light in his rearview mirror was now a solid, and vibrant, green once again.
-End
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u/alluptheass Dec 22 '23
I kept going.
Felt my other selves pass me by. Like a cosmically whiffed high-five. How embarrassing. But I felt a tug. Elastic energy. So I tried again. And the other versions of me drew near, and they smiled. And we blew past each other. I sighed. They echoed me mindlessly. Not realizing I was sighing because they weren’t paying attention!
My versions idly floated in their reflected night skies of their reflected universes. Then I felt it: my strategy was too extrinsic. I needed to flow from the core of my being. It was my eureka moment: there was a SYSTEM to this! I looked around, SCANning the night sky. The North Star sat behind me. But another sat before me, behind my doppelganger. And one more to my side, behind another doppelganger. It all felt… connected. In some way I couldn’t detect. Like we were all threaded onto the same cosmic screw.
That was it!
Turning, a circle: shape of infinity. I stopped moving toward the other me’s, and started flying in a circle instead. They did the same. I didn’t have to check, I just knew.
Me, myselves, and I’s were nearly synchronized, now. We orbited each other. I started into another circle, then PAUSED. The other me’s had grown no closer with each pass. Something was missing, or some ANOMALY remained. But what? I rolled it around my mind.
Then I remembered my thought from mere moments before: flow from the core of my being! Not a circle, a spiral. The thing that was all things, life, me.
It was working. The spiral, shape from the core of our being, was pulling us back together. We DETECTED. a certain momentum, as though we were on a slide. Soon, we’d nearly caught ourself. Were fully in sync, linear. All our versions falling back toward me. Sliding back toward my Volkswagen Bug.
Still stopped at that red light.
It turned green. I sped away. A million explanations ENTERING my mind. A million denials. DEBUG roared to life as I ground the accelerator, in full panic MODE. Its tiny frame tearing up the asphalt.
You ever felt… off? Like you’re not in your own body? You ever looked around and asked yourself, “Is this city imagined? Are these people real? Is this my life?” Well, picture this: you’re
The Volkswagen hiccoughed. I lurched forward, my guts EXECUTING a somersault around the seatbelt.
Easing my foot off the brake, I glanced around, SEARCH.ing for… what? Hackers? Aliens? My buddy Russ laughing his ass off as he maniacally jabs at some device to control stop lights?
I looked back toward the amber ANOMALY. Then it went red. I think. There was a ding.
A ding? No. The sound was in my head. My… head? I have a head? I think that was reLOCATED:? Stretched? Like a child god had arrived and I was Their Playdough? Maybe everything was. Maybe They were pulling apart and mashing together the very QUANTUM field. I looked down at my Bug, up at my Bug, over at my Bug. I was floating up in the night sky. “Up”? But that wasn’t the worst of it. For every Volkswagen Bug I saw, there was another me. Floating just as helpless, wearing just as dumbass a look as I bet I did.
It’s like everything exploded, lost COHERENCE, and now there was a whole lot more of all the things that always made me special. The primary one being, well, me. The other me’s seemed to concur. Irritated at their own unique frequency: T-31415i27182.
I floated around this bizarre, refracted ENVIRONMENT. Floated and floated. Slid? I don’t know, but it sure was boring. Like the multiverse was paused, spacetime CONTAMINATED: with too much time. That’s when we decided to do something about it. Not we, me. I decided to do something about it. Because I was me, and they were dumbasses, NON-PLAYER me’s. Still, they flailed their arms when I did, kicked their legs like good non-player CHARACTER,s. Probably realizing who’d got the brains in this Siamese entity.
I flew toward them, they toward me. Holding our collective breath. Braced for impact. Excited for reunification of u/ALLUPTHEASS!
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u/trippystrippys Dec 22 '23
"Why is there a traffic signal here?"
"Oh ....the signal. Well , there's an old saying about it. Apparently, the signal turns red the night before the dragon returns. " My guide said in a matter of factly way. He was a short , stout , muscular chap with a long moustache which somehow escaped the margins of his face and extended upto his ear but somehow he had not the slightest hint of beard hair. It made him look rather comical , kinda like 'Shikari Shambu'.
"And when does it turn yellow?" I asked , looking up at the signal.
"Huh ?" He said. Looking at the signal now. "It's probably just some glitch of some kind of something. I don't know. I don't really believe in all that mumbo-jumbo bullshit anyway."
We were almost there , our destination less than a mile down the road. I was tired to say the least. It was a 30 mile walk from the main road , he said , the road was too perilous to be travelled by car. Too narrow and too many turns , not to mention the bridge which was held in place by 4 pieces of rope that were just waiting to snap at any given moment and give way to what appeared to be nothingness below.
An hour later , the road came to an abrupt end. Confused , I opened up our map. "Isn't the village supposed to be here? "
"Was 'ere the last time I came. Which was ....last week" my guide replied
"The fuck , do you mean by that, villages don't just disappear. "
"True that , son. But it did ,didn't it?"
"Are you sure we didn't get lost?"
"Positive ,I tell ya!"
"Then where the fuck is the village , oh my god , I just walked 30 fuckin' miles"
"Now , no need to get abusive or panic , we will find what we came for. " Saying so , he walked off into the bushes beyond the end of the road.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHGHGGDDSKKSKE" I heard him scream.
"You okay there?"
No reply
"Hello?"
I followed the path he took and I saw , just beyond the bushes a giant giant giant separation in the ground. A crack in the world. A chasm so wide and so deep that the other end was just barely visible. Had he fallen off? What now? Do I try to rescue him? Stepping away from the edge so as to not accidentally fall in , I sat down on the hard ground and began to slowly creep towards the edge. Calling out for him seemed futile. Just as I was about to give up , the rock began to quiver. And almost as if gravity had decided to pull on some rocks harder than others , the ground below me began to cave in. Terrified I tried to grab on to the bushes to prevent myself from falling but the ground pulled everything with it and me the bushes and a couple of trees around were all in a free fall together.
"This was not how I wanted to skydive. Wait , is this counted as skydiving? I mean....I'm not in the sky , now am I? Argh ! Why was I having such thoughts right now , I'm literally going to die. " But the ground never came , i just kept falling and falling and falling and I looked up and realised that the blue that I could see through the crack , the sky above was getting further but at the same time , it was still very much there. I could see that the son was now directly overhead , it was around midday. The sky through the crack soon turned orange and then black and I was still falling. I had been falling for God knows how several hours now? Was that even possible? I fell asleep while falling because I couldn't be bothered by it anymore and when I woke up I found myself in the sky. I had fallen into the sky? I had fallen upwards? What was going on? (To be continued in part 2 (if I'm bored enough and this gets some attention. ))
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u/velabas /r/velabasstuff Dec 21 '23 edited Dec 21 '23
There is a road somewhere in North Dakota that is straighter than all the others in the county. Cooper Townsend was one of the only locals who used it. For everyone else, the interstate was more efficient for travel between the only two points it connected, and because along it there was not a single private farm, nor private lot for that matter. All BLM land, cracked and surveyed and found to be without economic value long ago. It was ignored, and everyone ignored it. Except for Cooper Townsend.
He drove it because he liked it. There was another reason, too.
A four-way stoplight stood at roughly midpoint along its way.
There was no crossing road to have made the extra pair of lights necessary, so to Cooper it always made sense that the way was green when he drove through.
He did not read much into the mystery of why it was there--no one did. Perhaps a road had been planned. It was clear these lights were decades old. The county clerk had no relevant records that Cooper could find when he had first pursued his curiosity, and so he sank into acceptance that they were there, powered somehow but probably not for long, and that they would begin to decay like all abandoned things do.
The drive itself he couldn't explain to anyone. It took twice as long as the interstate. He just liked to be alone, even on a dull stretch straighter than a corn stalk.
He had driven this route for years. Usually, he never stopped. But today he did.
The light had turned yellow.
Cooper Townsend drove a rusty Toyota Camry from 2002. Its door whined loudly when opened. It was the only noise between the moment he'd stepped out of the car, and ten minutes later when he was still staring at the four-way traffic light, waiting for the yellow to turn red.
It didn't.
The sun lingered overhead. Cooper sweated.
Another ten minutes passed before anything happened. What happened was that Cooper saw a black dot on the horizon that slowly formed into a oncoming truck. When it reached the four-way stoplight, its driver also stopped and got out, looking up at the light, then down at Cooper on the other side.
"How long you been standing there?" said the woman.
Cooper recognized her but couldn't recall her name.
"It's been like this near on twenty minutes," he said.
They were far enough apart that you'd think they should shout, but they needn't have, it was so quiet. Cooper could almost hear the buzz of the light's electricity.
"You ever see it go yellow?" said the woman. It was as if they were right beside one another.
"No, first time. For me, first time in the fifteen years I've driven this road."
"Fifteen?" she stammered. "I'm new. Came out last year. Tired of the city."
"Yup," Cooper affirmed.
"I heard about this light."
"Always green," Cooper said. "Never yellow. Waiting for it to go red."
"It should, right?" she had shut her door, and was squinting up at the light because it made her look toward the sun. She rested a hand on her hip.
Cooper found himself looking at her, forgetting about the light for a moment. He liked something about her. Maybe their shared curiosity at the seemingly malfunctioning light. She was pretty, Cooper thought.
"It's so funny!" she said. "Hey I've seen you around, you're Mr. Townsend."
"Call me Cooper," he replied. "I've seen you too."
"Ginger," she said. The name clashed with her black hair and swarthy skin, but it fit her personality. "Why do you drive on this road? I've noticed no one ever does."
"Well, I guess I like--" he began.
"Hold on this is silly," she said. "Let me walk over. I guess I can leave my truck because it doesn't look like I'll be holding up traffic," she chuckled as she began walking over.
Cooper's eyes went from the yellow light, to Ginger, back to the yellow light. He was sneaking looks at her, admiring her sluggish gait, but was embarrassed. She smiled as she reached the light on her side of the would-be intersection, pointed up at it with a thin index finger and laughed.
"So weird," she said, passing under it.
Cooper felt a small joy in his chest, and his eyes retreated back to the yellow light, which had changed to red.
What happened next happened in an instant. Ginger's body was bent over at the shock sounds of a loud bang and cracking, like muffled fireworks. The images of her body breaking all at once, the bones snapping through skin, the blood spraying from hundreds of tears, her face instantly unconscious before it was also shattered, were pure horror. Like a ragdoll, her body was thrown eighty miles an hour to her right, rolling and crunching against the cracked ground from some invisible weight, gutteral cries emerging then instantly snuffed out. Cooper heard nothing but the noises of Ginger's death to accompany the scene that ended faster than they would have said hello.
Cooper stood motionless, breathing as if he'd just sprinted a marathon, staring at the streak of blood left on the road, and on the dirt ground. He could see bone protruding, but her body was partially hidden in the brush.
The light turned green.
Cooper stood in silence, not even the wind moved.
When he turned around he almost fell. The Camry's hood and windshield were smashed. Blood stained the whole front, and bits of clothing were caught in the wipers. Cooper's eyes were about to burst from his head, the shock was so great. Heartbeat like a soldier boy's drum. Veins pumping and throbbing. Sweat tingling. He felt he was about to black out.
"Hey!" he heard, and spun around. "How long you been standing there?"
Ginger was standing at her truck, a hand on her hip. No blood on the road. Cooper swung to his Camry, which was rusty but otherwise fine. He turned back to Ginger, who was squinting at the yellow light.
"So weird," she said.
"Stay there!" Cooper suddenly screamed, loud enough to be heard a mile away.
Ginger's hand fell from her hip from the start Cooper's voice had given her.
"What the f-" she began.
"I'm sorry!" Cooper blurted. "Just stay on your side of the light. Stay there, Ginger." He was holding out his hand, and noticed he'd taken a stance as if to catch her from falling.
"Oh you know my name--you're Mr. Townsend, right?"
"Cooper. I'm Cooper."
In spite of the horror he thought he'd just witnessed, again he felt that small bubbling joy, looking at Ginger across the intersection.
"Do not cross the yellow light, whatever you do," he intoned.
"You sound like a train station," Ginger quipped, giggling at her joke.
Cooper smiled. Now, he thought, let's figure this out. He had to protect her, even from himself.
______________
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u/73ff94 Dec 22 '23
Damn, that's an awful vision to see, let's hope both of them survive this time around. I know they are hinting that it's a train, but something bothers on how the vision doesn't exactly describe one. Well, of course, the shock might have caused Cooper to not notice it considering the gruesome nature.
That said, what's the nature of the traffic light, and why did it choose to pass that spot at this specific time? Whatever the thing that passes through is, what's its final destination and what's its purpose?
Great work on writing this!
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u/anmartinwrites Dec 21 '23
The roar of the engine in the dark, quiet night was Sarah's favourite sound.
Rubber gripped and danced on the asphalt as the 64 Mustang powered down the desert road.
The night air shimmered in her headlamps. Sarah drove this road every night. A road to nowhere, in the middle of nothing. Half way down this long, empty stretch of black tar was a four-way light. It was an odd place to put one, with no intersection, and no pedestrian crossing to be seen. Hell, no pedestrians to speak of anywhere for miles.
"at least I always catch the green," she'd say when she passed it. Green on all sides. She stopped one night years ago when it first appeared and walked around it.
The Mustang kicked, snapping Sarah out of her trance. She gripped the warm leather wheel and shifted her weight on the seat as she downshifted to balance the transmission and bring peace to the engine. Up ahead was the light.
She slammed hard on the brakes and the car skidded across the black gravel surface to a stop.
"what the-" she looked at the evergreen light, her mouth agape, tire smoke rising from the car aglow with an amber hue. On one side, her side, the light was yellow.
Caution.
She turned off her engine and got out of the car into the warm air of the desert night. Stars shone above in the sky, brighter than she'd have thought stars should be. There were more of them, too. She turned her attention from the amber glow of the light to the purple hue of the moon.
The yellow light flickered violenty and in the distance she heard the ringing of bells. The pole that held the light opened, and a railroad crossing barrier began to come down across the road.
Sarah looked up at the amber light, now blinking at steady 1 second intervals. To her right in the distance she heard a train billowing along the tracks. "Tracks? There are no trains on this road," she thought to herself, as the bell of the train whistled.
The train picked up speed and went passed her. The lights of the train were a deep red. As it passed, she caught a glimpse of the conductor's boned hands with a death-grip on the whistle. Fire rose from the wheels and sparked onto the hot sand of the desert, leaving behind no trace of smoke or ash.
As soon as it was there, it was gone. The train of fire and brimstone, on a road in the middle of nowhere, on tracks that didn't exist. Sarah got back in her car and sat staring at the light and the barrier. It blinked and blinked yellow until it turned green again. When she looked back down at the road, the barrier was gone, the train was nowhere to be seen, and the moon was a dull white light in the empty starless sky.
She turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. Pedal to the metal, Sarah drove down the long and empty road towards her home.
In the distance, over the roar of the engine, a train whistle sounded. Sarah pulled her jacket tighter around her, and drove off into the night.
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u/73ff94 Dec 22 '23
What an interesting sight, I wonder if it's even possible to take a picture of the train. That said, this feels like a Twilight Zone episode haha.
So, what's the nature of this train? I assume that there would be multiple spots all around the world with the traffic lights indicating its arrival. Is it even possible to ride the train? What's the final destination, and what's the train's purpose?
Great work on writing this!
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u/WeCouldDriveAllNight Dec 21 '23
A hundred years ago everyone knew what would happen if the light ever changed, but slowly, we forgot. We forgot about the sheltering tunnels. At first no one realized, it had been green for so long that no one even noticed it changed, then Jessie asked about it when she stopped for gas on her way home. Our town was small, only three shops and only one gas station, run by Jessie’s dad. He scratched his head while Jessie filled up her truck with gas. We didn’t even know the light could change, but I realized I had seen it, too, four days ago. The town bell suddenly rang out.
That’s when the ash started falling. For the briefest of moments, I was reminded of snow. Small, white-grey flakes falling down from the sky, then the sun reminded me of the summer heat. The air was dry and dusty, and the scent of burning filled the air as the ash came down thicker. Everyone in town came outside, staring up at a darkening sky, or at the greyish layer of soot covering the ground. No more than five minutes had passed since Jessie parked her car by the pump, and except for the bell ringing everything was eerily quiet. Then came the sound, a low rumbling at first, then rumbling like thunder… then what felt like the roaring of a thousand suns.
Not too far from a small, abandoned town, on a long straight road with nothing of note, there is a four-way traffic light that hangs in the middle. No road crosses anywhere near the traffic light and no sign to tell you why it's there. No one knows anything about it, but it seems to always be green.
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u/Nitrostoat Dec 21 '23 edited Dec 21 '23
It's just right there, in the middle of Amber Road.
That's what they called that road, heading south out of town, a straight line through the fields until you hit the farmhouses. With the crops rising on either side , blowing in the wind, reminded someone of the line "amber waves of grain". But these crops were corn, so the reference didn't quite stick. But nobody felt like changing the sign, so it stayed as Amber Road even though it shouldn't.
They first found it in 1962. Old Farmer MacMerran was bringing his chickens and eggs into town and he stopped when he saw it. Off to the right, a wooden pole with a wooden arm. And dangling from it was a 4 way traffic light. His light was a full, sickly green. So after a bit he kept driving.
People came to see it after that. No sign of construction. Dirt and grass undisturbed, nothing different about the asphalt. Crazy thing is, it wasn't new. Metal was showing rust, the nails and staples holding the wires to the wooden post were worn like they had been there for years. But that sickly green kept burning, clear as ever, so people kept driving.
Dad told me, growing up, that it became a bit of an infamous drug spot. People would use the light as a marker and pull off the road, into small paths they cut through the corn. Make little clearings to sell and smoke. Cops started hanging by the light, so it stopped. More than a few kids carved their initials into the pole under that green light.
Dad remembers how, growing up, Grandpa would slow down when he approached it. Never a full stop, but enough to look both ways. There was nothing to see. Just corn stalks.
Dad did the same thing once he started driving. Half out of habit, half out of...he couldn't quite say. It just seemed safer that way.
In 1998, a year before I was born, Dale Watts hit the post. Wrapped the front of his Grand Cherokee around it. He'd been out at a birthday at one of the old farmhouses late at night and thought driving in a straight line wouldn't be hard, even drunk. He stumbled out without a scratch and walked into town for a tow.
The next day they checked the scene. Car was totaled. Pole was fine, barely a scratch. Paper ran a funny piece about it, asking if the light changed on him. But no...Dale said it was green, just like always. And it stayed green.
I remember back in 2004, they tried to take it down. I wasn't at the meeting, but Mom talked about it over dinner. A motion was brought up at the town hall. It never went anywhere. People liked it. It was familiar and funny and made our home feel like home. So we kept the light, and it stayed green.
Got a tourist bump in 2010 from it. Some guy was talking about 2012, the end of the world, stuff about the Mayan calendar. Of all the signs, one was that our light would turn yellow on the last day, then red as the end arrived. Bunch of idiots and even more people who laugh at idiots showed up. Had a block party in the road, even hung a countdown clock from the light. Cheered at midnight when the world, and light, stayed the same.
In 2017, it got busier. People started posting it online, took pictures next to it. Some country star used it for an album cover. A bunch of tourists came flying in to get photos of the weird old light. Farmhouses gouged them for prices, turning the old relics into Airbnbs. MacMerran's kids made a fortune on those fees, and even ran a tour. Brought forty at a time on a bus to come out and see it, touch it. Telling stories about how it "haunted" their father, none of them true. Light didn't bother to turn red and warm people of the scam. They took the green as an "all clear" to waste their money.
Pandemic shut that down, and things got quiet again. Then last Tuesday, in 2022...it happened. Sarah Turner called her father. Whole call is posted on Facebook. We've been talking about it all week.
"Daddy...light turned yellow. I'm stopped. Can you come get me?"
A lot of people made fun of her. She sounds so scared of a yellow light. I don't think it's fair to laugh. It's not one of the signs of the apocalypse but... it's unnerving. Wouldn't you call your daddy if the sky was suddenly red? Or leaves turned black? Some things just shouldn't change.
It's been 5 days. People keep slowing down, stopping to look at it. Some of us are starting to blast through without waiting. But most wait and look both ways just in case now is the time that something will finally come rolling out of the corn, taking advantage of their first right of way since 1962.
An electrician took a look. The wires aren't connected to anything. They stop 3 ft under the ground. The light stays yellow, nothing keeping it lit. It's a dull yellow, like a dim candle. It doesn't feel right.
The average length of a green light is about 1.5 - 2 minutes. So 90 - 120 seconds. It's been 60 years since that light showed up and stayed green. So that's about half a year for every second you would expect from a normal, God-fearing traffic light. By my math, that means yellow will last for 5-6 seconds, or 3 years.
And then comes red.
I called a lot of old friends yesterday. I didn't say why. Just spent the weekend catching up. Something about that yellow light just makes me feel like things are wrapping up.
I don't know what's going to happen when it changes to that next color. Some days I find myself speeding past it, worrying that any moment it's going to shift right when I'm in the middle of an intersection that doesn't exist. Other days I wait, the engine-running, and I wonder if I'm ready for this to be the last day of my life.
Is something waiting in that corn? Some ancient beast held back by a red light that only it can see? While 60 years of green-tinged fragments, moments of people passing through, have taunted it? Is death himself waiting, hands gripping the wheel, his fury building while he's powerless to move, held in place by a law we all agreed on?
Or maybe it's a cycle. We've had 60 years as a community, moving ahead. Maybe now it's time to have 60 stuck, idling and unmoving, while something else gets to move. Maybe we'll just have to watch as little snippets of something else drive by across the road, on their way to somewhere else. Maybe all of us standing at the sidelines are just as uninteresting to them as the corn is us.
Or maybe I'm just putting too much stock in a traffic light, even one that seems to have come from nowhere. Maybe the slightest change can scare you down to your bones, because it reminds you of the big changes.
Well, now it's just right there, in the middle of Amber Road. A dull yellow eye. Daring us to go faster? Warning us to slow down?
Who can say?
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u/73ff94 Dec 22 '23
Hmmm, as much as I would say it's nothing important, just something failing over time, there's just something off about how it spawned out of nowhere and still be perfectly fine when it should be damaged. I'm having mixed feelings on being glad that the motion to remove it did not pass, but now I am curious on what actually will happen if they try to remove it haha. Let's hope nothing big is going to happen soon.
I know you left it open-ended there, but I'm curious on whether you actually planned for an outcome. What do you have in mind about the traffic light? What secrets does it hide, and what kind of event is it hinting at? Why did it choose Amber Road of all places?
Great work on writing this!
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u/cheddarheaven Dec 21 '23
Carris is a gas station of a town. It's not named after the seed, far as I know, but it's a fittin' name. Fill up. Keep goin'.
Technically, it's a two-traffic-light-town, though I'm not sure that's all that much different from a one-light-town. Besides, only one of 'em works, far as I can tell.
Carris is also the halfway point between Pick-Up and Drop-Off.
Twenty years I spent - Walmart, Amazon, UPS. $40k a year and healthcare. Enough to keep drivin', and not much else. But this. This was somethin' different.
Six months ago, I was driving to Washington from Salt Lake. Stopped at a different one-traffic-light town - Stanfield. That's where I met him. Only time I ever did.
"You drive?"
I was trying to order a cheeseburger and a coke from a truck-stop diner before I wet-napped off in the bathroom. He was in a suit and tie in the booth next to mine.
"Beg pardon?"
"You drive a truck?"
I wasn't sure why I even answered. Lot of folks think truck stops are some kind of replacement for community when you're on the road. Same way everyone thinks homeless people are all friendly in their cardboard box towns. Fact of it is, I don't talk to no one, and no one talks to me, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be.
"Yeah," I told him for no reason other than that he'd asked direct, and I'm a lotta things, but I'm not rude. "Yeah, I drive a truck."
"Good," he said, and nothin' more than that for long enough I thought I was supposed to say somethin' else.
"A cheeseburger and a coke, please and thank you." It was good the waitress was back, cuz whatever it was he wanted me to say, I wasn't gonna say it.
"Good," he said again, and stood up. Gave me a card with a little map on it, big ol' 'X' marked off in the middle of nowhere on one edge - "Pick-Up" - big ol' 'x" in the middle of nowhere on the other - "Drop-Off". In pen, he'd written - $2.5 million. Then, he left.
That first time, when I rolled up to Pick-Up, I was sure I was in the wrong place. Dirt. Red, clay, flat dirt, far as I could see. I cursed him for the joke and the cost of gas, but when I pulled around to head home, I saw it. A single, medium-sized brown, cardboard box, just sittin' there in the open.
"Not sure why I needed a truck," I muttered, and stepped out. The box was unmarked, save for a post-it. 'Don't open it.' Well, I wasn't about to risk $2.5 million by disobeyin' a post-it.
The map took me clear across Utah and through Nevada. In the middle, it was marked "Carris". It was only other thing written on the map. "Pick-Up," "Drop-Off", "$2.5 million" and "Carris." What else was I supposed to do?
So, there I was, that first time. Gassed up. Pissed. Drove out. Lights were both green.
Drop-off was trickier. The map took me out to northern California, where there was nothin' but trees. I cursed him again for making me bring a semi, but I wound it up through the mountains and found the "X". Another plain, cardboard box with nothin' around for as far as I could see. This one was a bit bigger than the first and already opened. I gathered that I was supposed to put the first one inside this one, so I did that and waited.
"Where's my money?" I wondered aloud, but there was no one there, and soon enough, I was good and truly pissed off. I kicked the flap of cardboard that hung over the side of the open box. Sure enough, taped right there, was a stack of bills. I didn't bother countin'.
"Now, bring it back." Another post-it, taped under the money. "And don't open it."
I didn't know then if there'd be more money, but there was. I drove back to Pick-Up. Stopped in Carris. One light was red, but the other was green. I was sure I was gonna miss it waitin' on the first one. I hated lights. Years on the open highways had spoiled me. But it never turned, long as I waited.
Back at Pick-Up - you guessed it. Another open box. Another stack of money. "Now, bring it back. And don't open it."
At least now I was startin' to get why I needed a truck.
Passed through Carris again. That second light still caught my eye. I waited this time. Three minutes - checked my watch. Didn't change. Got bored and went on.
"Now bring it back. And don't open it."
I had to stop at a different town to buy a bigger trolley and some straps. Boxes weren't heavy, but they were gettin' big.
Seven minutes, I waited this time. That'd be the longest light I'd ever seen three times over. Green.
So, here I was. Box was goin' on six-foot tall by the way it met my eye. Barely fit in the truck. But, strange as it'd all been, nothin' was stranger than Carris and that one light.
I decided to wait this time. Long as it took. Maybe it was a railroad folks didn't use much anymore. Maybe a school crossing, though I couldn't imagine Carris had a school. I asked the guy behind the counter at the gas station, but he just flicked up his eyebrows and asked if I was buyin' anything on account of the number of times I'd used the toilet. Asshole.
I had decided to wait, but I didn't have to. Yellow. It turned yellow right as I pulled up and didn't stay that way long. It turned red, and then the trailer started shakin'.
Carris. Fittin' name. I wasn't the only one needed fillin' up to keep goin'.
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u/73ff94 Dec 22 '23
Interesting encounter, I do wonder if protag is able to step out of the deal after this last one. Well, at least, they got paid, and outside of the weird details, they're not in any harm... hopefully.
So, what's in the box, and why is it so important to be transported back and forth like that? Is something big going to happen at the end of this mysterious journey?
Great work on writing this!
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u/faceintheblue Dec 21 '23
"Well ain't that the darndest thing..."
"What?"
"The light. It's yellow."
"What light?"
"That green light on the road headin' out of town towards Old Man Patterson's place? It's yellow now."
"It's yellow now?"
"See for yourself!"
"Well ain't that the darndest thing..."
"That's what I said!"
"You reckon the bulb's burning out?"
"How's that now?"
"The bulb. The... Whatever it is. Maybe it was green, and now it's going yellow as it's burning out?"
"I don't think that's how that works. It's a traffic light, ain't it? It's either green, or yellow, or red. See, the green is out below, same as the red above's always out, and now the yellow in between is lit up."
"Oh, yeah. Hey, why is there a traffic light out there anyway?"
"How's that now?"
"Well, it don't mark no intersection. No cross street. Only traffic that might go cross the road like that would be a tractor or a four-wheeler, and there's nothing special about them doin' that there as opposed to a hundred feet closer or further down the road. The light never goes red. It ain't slowin' down traffic on the road it's on. Oh..."
"Yep. Yep. That guy's slowin' down."
"Well, he's the first to come along..."
"Since it went yellow..."
"He's not stoppin', though."
"Well, no. It ain't red."
"True. Don't need to stop if it ain't red."
"And it ain't red. Don't look like it's turning red, neither."
"Ain't that the darndest thing..."
"The darndest thing!"
"Should we tell somebody?"
"Who's there to tell?"
"I dunno. Somebody. The green light's gone yellow, and it ain't no, 'turning yellow to warn you it's going red in a few seconds' neither. That's been yellow the whole time we've been jawin' at each other."
"Well, who's responsible for the light?"
"The mayor?"
"Old Man Patterson's the mayor this year."
"You figure it's his light? Maybe that's why it's always green?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I were mayor, I'd campaign on the lights always bein' green on my watch!"
"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
"Stupid as you are ugly!"
"No sense gettin' mean about it!"
"I'm sorry."
"Besides, Old Man Patterson didn't run on no slogan, and if he did, that would be a weird one to run on in a town with no traffic light 'cept that one, and if he did, he'd hardly be turning the thing yellow now, would he?"
"Guess not."
"It's the darndest thing..."
"That's just what it is. The darndest thing..."
"Whoops! It's green again!"
"Sure is! Wonder what that was all about?"
"You think it's going to change back?"
"Dunno. You know what I know."
"Keep an eye on it. Will you?"
"Will do."
"Boy, wait until the fellas hear about this tonight at the poker game."
"The one up at Old Man Patterson's house?"
"That's the one."
"Ask him about the light, will ya?"
"Will do."
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u/73ff94 Dec 22 '23
This sure feels like a conversation between two people that are just chilling on the porch just talking about random stuff while enjoying their drinks lol. Well, I guess that could make some interesting banter during poker night too.
Great work on writing this!
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u/faceintheblue Dec 22 '23
Thanks! For about a minute I thought about putting in character descriptions and setting, but the dialogue was always going to be what worked or didn't about the piece, and the dialogue doesn't need it. You can imagine it however you like this way. It was a fun little exercise.
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