Four smokes. Just four smokes left and no new pack in sight, at least for another 150 miles. If he was lucky, there would be a shop along this desolate stretch of desert highway before he ran out. He wasn’t feeling too lucky.
The last 24 hours had been surreal, and not in a this-will-all-be-funny-when-you-look-back-on-it kind of way. More in the the-world-is-fucked-and-no-one-would-believe-you-even-if-you-could-tell-them kind of way. That was actually probably looking at it through rose colored glasses, though. In the depth of his soul he really believed it to be much worse than that.
He had been traveling across the country for the last week, taking minor layover here and there when something caught his eye. Most of the roadside “exhibits” he saw were just a means for locals to bleed a little more money from those passing through. A giant ball of twine, an area where “the laws of gravity did not apply” (thanks to well placed mirrors), the world’s largest battery (which he was sure was made of plaster), a two-headed animal museum (which was certainly more authentic than most and definitely more morbid) … and then the last stop.
The sign looked plain, easy enough to miss as you were driving along in the desert. It was that plain sign that hooked his curiosity. Why have a small, nondescript sign if you wanted to pull in the curious traveler? Surely far more people blew right by that sign, set up along a stretch of straight and desolate state highway that pleaded for drivers to test the maximum speed of their vehicle, than actually saw it. But he was not your normal driver, and his car was not really built for speed.
As a result, the simple sign seemed to leap right out at him from the bleak landscape.
“See the Immortal Man! $5 Admission! Turn right in 5 miles.”
He had expected to simply see someone’s grandfather sitting on a rocking chair, and almost drove by, but his curiosity got the better of him and he turned down the desert road. The lack of visitors was obvious from the state of the road itself. He would have been surprised if anyone had driven this way in the last month or more and was sure it was just going to end out in the desert with nothing at the end of it.
But two miles into the desert he came upon the house.
It was an old structure, and looked more like an old Victorian than the typical buildings he had seen in the last few days. The older houses had all had a more rustic feel to them, certainly more like shacks that had grown into houses rather then the house he saw, with the columns in front.