The driver was a tall pale man. He sat in the immobile vehicle aimlessly gritting his teeth. He inhaled the last of his spliff before pushing his seat forward forcefully to reach the door and get out - all so fast it seemed simultaneous. Facing away from the old banger, he kicked it in anger from behind as raised his hand and slanted his sunglasses, braving the ever scorching sun and gaining winds. On his shirt was a name badge that read Joey, though it looked poorly made and unofficial. Narrow-eyed, peering back and forth at this seemingly endless highroad, his anger slowly turned to anxiousness. The man kept looking in every direction repeatedly, expecting something to appear. It was unnervingly ominous and repetitive with the highway for as far as the eye could see, and desert everywhere else.

   Now, Joey had come onto this highway for a shortcut at least 3 hours ago. Assuming it was the quickest route to the town known as 'Fatuus' for a new job offer he had got just the day before, he had taken the directions from an odd hooded traveller who had apparently just came from here. Though Joey was unsure of advice from such a person, and the fact he knew after just a while it would probably lead to the middle of nowhere like everywhere else, he saw no alternative. This wary man was already lost and clueless. Ever since he’d come into New Mexico's borders he’d seen nothing around but road, desert and distant mountains. Oh, and a tall lone cactus. Whether it was the drugs he’d started or the heat that got to him, he swore that strange cactus was following him. He hadn't seen it in a while, but it still unnerved him. With this thought, he figured anywhere on this highway was the worst place he could brake down as he just did.

   The heat from the tarmac of the road beneath his trainers started to rise through making his feet uncomfortable. Sweat dribbled down his face, blinding whatever vision he had left from sun and wind. He had to sit switfly back into the old car. Trying different radio stations with one hand for at least some news, he held a map with the other. The radio static with no signal, he then noticed this road wasn’t even noted on the map. It was this year. Joey felt frustrated and still cautious of that cactus. He tried the radio again. Radio station 64... Static, station 65.. Again, static. The dial went no further and he swore out, throwing the map into the back seat.

The door started to sway violently, joining with the windshield‘s creaking and rattling, before suddenly they both stopped. The winds had died down dramatically all of a sudden, so Joey took advantage of this. He shadowed his arm behind the front seat and unlocked the backdoor. He swiftly got out the car again and opened it with an unnecessary hard pull and got out a bottle of water, before starting to walk around and observe this isolated place more closely.

   Joey walked for about five minutes straight before taking a swing of his drink as he stood there stranded, and alone. Everything was exactly the same. Suddenly, the horn of his car went off in a continuous blare. This was starling and he nearly toppled over. Joey stared around as he took off his sunglasses and narrowed his eyes. Next to his car just across the desert was the same cactus. It was tall and shadowing, more so than when he last saw it.

   He wasn’t scared as such. It wasn‘t real, surely. He convinced himself there and then, being a man that lived inside his own sphere of experience, that the desert heat had combined forces with his previous joint to corrupt his mind and create a hallucination. To be honest, Joey couldn’t remember whether he had even started his spliff when he first saw the menacing cactus before, and so blocked this out. He rubbed his eyes roughly without so much of a blink. They were bloodshot, and his thick eyebrows no longer could hold back the sweat from both the heat and his half-hidden fear.

“It’s not there now,” he said to himself. “It isn’t. It can’t be, no, no. Fucking cactus - cacti - eh plants. Plants! Their only existence is for smoking.”

   Without thinking about it anymore, and despite the cactus still obviously swaying there slightly in the wind, he started walking at a regular pace back to his car.

   As Joey was just within a few metres of it, it was more obvious it had an anthropomorphic appearance. He stopped and nervously observed it in decreasing denial. It was at least one or two feet taller than him, and so the poor man dropped his sunglasses in his first signs of shock and fatigue, then rested one hand on the hot bonnet. The succulent plant just appeared much like any ordinary cactus in colour - a shade of myrtle in particular, however the spikes that covered it were an unusual amber. Also, separated near the bottom - much like legs to an extent, were uplifted roots and were in no way possible enrooted into the highway. Two arm-like branches that would usually be erect were instead down, and they rested limp against the road as if they‘d be been dragged along. 

‘It just looks so real, so human-like,’ he thought. ‘But it can’t be, it can’t be. A stalker cactus in a desert? If I was truly high or hallucinating I’d come up with something more original, than this?’

He sat in his car, ignoring it. The radio was playing on station 66, despite the radio only going up to 65. A voice on here in-between the loud static kept saying over and over ‘Avoid, avoid, avoid….’

   He started his car, turned off the radio, and drove off. Giving one last look in his side mirror at the cactus, which grew smaller and smaller in size and the faster he went.

Continue...
   An unexpected strong warm wind kicked up sand throughout an outskirt desert of New Mexico, then breezed slowly across a lone and soon to be shut off highway. An old maroon car in this midst of nowhere started to decelerate with this, until stopping sharply with a loud exhaust bang. The windshield rattled so hard in the growing winds it could no doubt shatter glass into the driver’s face at any moment. The radio was half-static but playing ‘Heartland’ by the band U2.

It sung: 'Sixty-six a highway speaks, of deserts dry…' before sharply cutting out.
HIGHWAY 66
Chapter I: Joey