Kris woke with a start. Bright lights above him stung his eyes. His mouth was sand dry and his throat felt swollen. As his vision adapted, he looked about him. He was behind the steering wheel in his dark blue Thunderbird. It was smoothly running idle.
He checked the rearview mirror. His short-cropped platinum blonde hair was still well-groomed and nothing seemed out of place. However, his slate-gray eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He looked down at his light blue suit. It was relatively fresh and he didn’t note any wrinkles. He decided he hadn’t been asleep long.
Outside the car, he could see a long empty stretch of road.
Oh, it’s the tunnel! The I-21, Kris realized. It was what the locals in Clear Lake, Texas, called The Long Stretch. The tunnel was on his normal drive to work. He had recently been promoted to Operations Manager of a Healthcare Plan Center. The commute normally took about thirty-five minutes, most of it in this tunnel.
God! I fell asleep. How the hell did I manage to do that? he wondered.
He also found it odd that he couldn’t recall the night before. Was he drinking? He hadn’t had a black-out session in sometime but it wasn’t off the table. His love of Bourbon was infamous. Sherry, his wife despised his “only vice” and gave him a shit storm routinely over it.
He shrugged and put the car in Drive. There was no other traffic in front or behind him in the tunnel. His watch was missing, but he guessed it was near 5:00 AM. He found himself quite hungry and thirsty. The BP Gas Station near the office would likely have some hot coffee and maybe a few donuts.
Kris patted his suit pants pockets, but they were empty. Shitty time to lose his wallet and cell phone. He sighed getting disgusted with himself. It must’ve been a real party for him to walk out without his items.
Did I party? Or did Sherry and I fight again and I drank away my anger? Why the hell was this drive taking so long? Where’s the exit? His thoughts began to focus on the tunnel.
While he had driven inside it nearly twenty times this month alone, there were no details he could really recall. It was constructed with a plain, black tar road, three wide lanes, yellow painted stripes to mark the sides, a bike lane, and high gray concrete walls with white hanging LED lamps every thirty feet.
The tunnel went on and on.
Something’s wrong. The tunnel portion of the drive is only twenty minutes or so tops. I’ve been over a half hour already I think.
He looked at the odometer. Christ! It was way more than he remembered. 56312. Maybe a good four or five hundred more miles than he would have guessed.
Was it a road trip and an end-all be-all drinkfest? What the fuck? Sherry is going to tear me a new one when I get home tonight. He shook his head. Then he realized he wasn’t hung over either. He didn’t even have a headache. His thoughts though were a bit foggy.
After driving for an hour, he pulled to the side and parked in the bike lane. He punched the Hazard lights on.
He then opened the glove compartment looking for his phone. In it, stuffed in the left side was a silver flip phone, maybe one of the old Motorola ones. It was not his IPhone 13. There was nothing else in the compartment. His registration paperwork and insurance papers were all missing.
He retrieved the phone and examined it. It was fully charged, had the current time of 3:52 AM on it as well as the date 9/18/2029, but nothing else on the display. There were no contacts listed. He checked the history and only one listed number that had been called. It wasn’t familiar,but he dialed it anyway.
It rang three times before am automated robotic voice answered. “Kristopher Anthony Todd. Pending. 23 days.”
It disconnected without even prompting him to leave a voicemail message.
Pending what? And what did it mean by 23 days?
Starting to feel anxious and his temper beginning to boil, he again put the car in Drive. It was time to find the freaking exit!
Another hour passed in The Long Stretch. Kris swore the ceiling was lowering and the lanes were getting narrower. His world was crushing in on him. When the odometer hit 56412 — another hundred miles since he first checked, he hit the brakes and screamed in helplessness. He pounded his fists on the dash so hard a crack suddenly formed and split the smooth rubbery surface.
“Goddamn it! Where am —“
A flash of memory cut his thoughts off. Sherry was next to the dresser in their master bedroom. She was standing in a pink and purple pajama top and panties. He was coming out of the bathroom, shouting and stumbling. He was very drunk. His shirt was unbuttoned and had fresh drink stains. She was screaming, “I am sick of your lies!”
He had screamed, “Shut that bitch mouth!” right before he swung wildly and punched her. She flew back sprawled across the bed.
Guilt and shame washed over his features. So they did fight. He did get drunk and that’s why he could not remember.
Yet something nagged at him. The memory seemed distant. Wasn’t that months ago, he questioned himself.
Kris pressed hard on the gas pedal. No one was around so he got close to 110 on the speedometer. He was going to get to the damn exit and he was going to get there now!
An hour and a half passed. Nothing of the tunnel had changed. No other cars appeared. He was starting to question whether he even woke that morning. Started to question his sanity.
Eventually, the Thunderbird sputtered then stalled as it ran out of battery power. He opened the door and walked in front of the car with his hands on his hips as he tried to figure what to do next.
The dent is gone! His inner voice shouted at him. This wasn’t his car after all! Just the same make and model. He looked at the key fob and popped the trunk. Inside was an interesting trove of items. There was a package of bottled water next to a rolled up sleeping bag. A camouflaged backpack had food stuffs and a copy of The Green Mile by Stephen King which happened to be one of his favorite novels.
“Well we have everything we need, Dorothy. Let’s follow that yellow brick road after all!”
Kris took the items and as many of the water bottles he could cram in the sleeping bag and backpack.
Another instant vision exploded inside his mind. Sherry was in the backyard running. The side of her face and neck were bleeding profusely from deep slashes. He was also running, covered in blood.
The blood was not his.
He stood there shaking. The nightmare memory hitting him hard at his core. “What did I do, babe? Oh God…”
He started walking again trying to clear his thoughts of the vision.
Kris struck his palm against his temple. He could call for help with the flip phone!
He dialed their house, praying she was alright and could answer the phone. Another robotic voice answered instead.
“The phone number you have dialed is invalid. Please check—“
Kris hung up, cursing and muttering under his breath. He dialed his work.
“The phone number you have dialed—“
Dialed his mother.
“The—“
How about this? He punched in 9 1 1.
“The phone number you have dialed is invalid. Please check your number and try again.”
Sighing loudly, he called the only number that seemed to work. The robotic message came back on again.
“Kristopher Anthony Todd. Pending. 39 days.”
Kris scoffed. He had no idea what it all meant. He continued his hike.
At one point, he stopped and camped in the bike lane. He slept five hours on the cold tarmac, but the sleep was filled with chaotic, frantic dreams.
The infinite road went on and on. His feet blistered from the dress shoes. He ditched his suit jacket and his blue tie.
Seven hours later he made another stop to sleep. The cell phone told him ““Kristopher Anthony Todd. Pending. 47 days.”
At 4:12 PM the next day, he spotted something new! It was at first only a dark and square object. When he walked closer he realized it was the same car he abandoned. The trunk was still wide open.
Kris sank to his knees, broken and exhausted. How was this happening? Why was this happening? What do—
A tall slender man opened the driver’s door and climbed out. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a black leather belt. Under a police officer’s hat, the light-skinned man had on large reflecting sunglasses. His face had almost no clear shapes or details. He was blocky, similar to one of those people his nephew would make in his Minecraft video games. However, in the man’s right hand, he carried a black pistol.
Kris lunged and bolted back down the roadway. He pulled out the cell again.
He dialed by reflex 9 1 1.
An actual human answered this time. A serious but pleasant female voice said, “State the nature of your emergency please.”
“Please! Please help me,” he shouted, panting from his exertion.
“State the nature of your emergency please.”
“I’m being chased. He has a gun! I don’t know why or where I am!”
“Prisoner 56312, Kristopher Anthony Todd. Sentenced into CRIOSYS 65 days ago. Final appeal DENIED. Your execution date has been approved and moved to today 9/18/2029. Please remain still.”
“FUCK YOU, LADY!” He screamed back and threw the phone hard to the ground.
The past year of arrest, court, press conferences, prison, images of Sherry’s corpse — all rushed back to him. He had been charged and sentenced to die for killing his wife, Sherry Diane Todd almost a year ago. On Death Row, he had been forced into a new experimental AI-generated prison called CRIOSYS.
Kris didn’t care about anything at that moment. He only ran. He knew he had to. His body may be lying in some cold storage, but his mind and soul were here in The Long Stretch! In order to live again, he couldn’t stop running. He wouldn’t!
The eruption of the gun, two blasts, the shock of the sounds, and the agonizing bloody holes opening in his chest struck him all at once.
Kristopher Anthony Todd was no longer Pending.
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