Excerpt from the Highway to Glayden

Aaron had never killed a man and doing it had made his stomach feel sick. Bitter tears streamed down Aaron’s face making wet lines on his dirty cheeks. He hated himself now more than the life he just took. He looked down at his hand and tried to ignore the red stains that webbed around his thumb and wrist; it didn’t work. Even the blurry vision caused by the tears would not remove the scarlet stain. Aaron spit on his hand and grabbed a handful of dirt and worked it into his skin. The dirt caked into mud, but it still didn’t cover the man’s blood. Angry with himself, Aaron scram out and dragged his wrist through the rocks and dirt trying to let the ground take the stain away, but now his blood mingled with the other’s. He collapsed, clutching his wrist to his chest and cried. He cried for his mother, his father, and even for the man that he had killed. Most of all Aaron cried for himself and he wished in his heart that his family never tried to move to Weatherdale. He wished that none of this horror had ever happened.


Fighting the fatigue in his legs, Aaron stood and brushed off the dirt from his laced boots. He looked out across the land; light was barely gleaming from the town ahead; it was Weatherdale. Aaron began to walk, slowly at first, but then he picked up a swifter pace. His hair, light brown with streaks of blonde was drooping heavy across his forehead. His eyes were blue, an almost royal blue with a thin white circle around his iris. Aaron was young, a boy of only fifteen, but tonight he felt much older. Weakened by the night’s events, Aaron felt tired and sleep began to overtake him. He walked a little further till he finally came to the outskirts of town. On a hill he saw what was to be his resting place for the night, a rotted old stump covered with grass and moss would act as a pillow and his jacket for a blanket.

Sleep was the only thing Aaron wanted, but what he hadn’t gotten the past few nights. Ever since the attack all he saw when he closed his eyes was the look on his mother and fathers faces as they pleaded for Aaron’s life. It was bad enough that Aaron had to live that experience once, but to live it over and over every night he closed his eyes was cruel. The mind can be a great thing at times, but right now all Aaron wanted was just shut it off. He tried to think of better times, memories that happened before the move to Weatherdale. Just as he began to think of the life they left behind, sleep took him and he dreamed.