The road and the 'urch of Go'

I drove down that road again.  The road I'm referring to connects a small town to my slightly larger town.  It is long and empty and the spend limit is fast. When I say empty, I don't just mean the traffic.  There aren't any trees out there either.  Just miles of flat farmland, and outside of the summer you can see for a long while in most directions.

And on this road resides one church, amidst all the farms.  Not sure why they picked that location, not sure who exactly attends services there, though I imagine the congregation is small.  I'm not even sure if it's even in operation.  I always drive by at night.

I've always wanted to stop there.  I don't know why.  I'm not sure what I would do if I were to stop there, in the middle of the night.  Take a flash light and look at it closer?  I'm not sure anything I found would be interesting in the slightest.  But something pulls me there.  Something small.

Something much larger keeps my foot on the pedal though.  Something stronger keeps my head straight ahead, and allows me to shake off this desire.

But my imagination, well, it is at that church. (More after the break)

The 'post-modern' story I am loathe to discuss or think about revolved around a fictional version of this church, in a less fictional version of this long road.

In that story, the protagonist (a stand in for me, if I am going to be completely honest) was driving down this road after his love (of the unrequited variety) rejected him after years of silent desire and dreams.  He is obviously upset.  And then it starts to storm.  Lots of lightning.  Actually, the title of this story was Keraunopathy, which is the study of the effects of lightning strikes on the human body.  Easily the title I am the most proud of so far.  Still, my workshop hated it.  To their credit I don't even know how to pronounce it.

Anyway, there was a lot of lightning.  Lots of descriptions of it striking across that empty horizon.  It was raining hard.  And I approached that church.  I'm sure my character would have just driven by it like he had every single time before.  But his car broke down, so no choice there.

It breaks down and he is forced to pull to the shoulder.  And then his cell phone dies. He looks at the "urch of Go" (the sign had degraded greatly), and sees that the lights are on.  So he gets out of his car and runs toward the urch.  As he runs he is only guided by the periodic flashes of lightning (it was at night, by the way, to make matters worse).  He runs through the gravel parking lot towards the door only to have his foot get caught in a large hole, filled at this point with rain water.

He starts to pick himself up and looks toward the church only to see a man with a beard looking back at him.  The man doesn't move, doesn't come to help.  Just watches.

The protagonist looks up to the skies as he picks his body off the ground, kneeling at this point, and is struck by lightning.  And killed.

The next part of the story takes place in a limbo of sorts.  The protagonist is alone, in a vast, seemingly limitless white void.  He just walks around, thinking about stuff.  It was terrible stuff. 

I should have submitted the story to a therapist instead of my writing class.

Anyway,. he began to rebuild his previous reality in this void, and he would relive crucial moments in each place he rebuilt, and then have a catharsis and the location would collapse.  He kicked his first home down.  From the workshop:

"When you revise this, I want more house kicking!  That part was awesome"

My professor disapproved.

Eventually the church was rebuilt.  The protagonist littered the road with glass to flatten the tires of the car.  He dug the hole in the church parking lot.  And he went inside the church and waited.  Eventually, he saw a much younger version (original protagonist was trapped in the void for a very long time) of himself pull to the side of the road and trip.  And he watched as he was struck by lightning.

The ending though, was beautiful.  It was the first part I wrote.

I was lying in one of those endless fields, staring at the stars.  Lying next to me was that unrequited love.  She turns and her mouth is next to my ear.

I feel the word love through her warm breath as the stars begin to fade from the sky, and finally, I close my eyes.

Fin

I was never suicidal at any point, even though the story had serious suicidal undertones.  I mean, David Foster Wallace wrote a lot about suic... Not a good example.

I hope I can revise this story one day.  Step back from who I was and see that sad lonely person more objectively.  Because it is a good character.  And it isn't me anymore.  That person is stuck in a void, waiting for me to write him out of it.  Waiting for me to give him the burial he deserves.

Thanks for reading my self indulgence.