Halt
Bright sunlight fills the surroundings, making it difficult to open your eyes and see clearly. Once you get used to the brightness and look at your surroundings, you'll find yourself on a seemingly never-ending asphalt road on both sides, surrounded by a desert-like landscape.
On opposite sides of the road, there are concrete sidewalks that, like the road itself, seem to stretch indefinitely. The forever unchanging landscape of vast rocky plains is filled with dead bushes and rocks.
The ground is unnaturally tough, not only the asphalt, but also the dirt. Both the air and ground should feel hot due to the beaming sunlight, but surprisingly, neither are. Nothing feels hot or cold here. It seems like any sense of temperature has no meaning.
The desert landscape seems to go on forever, but it’s almost impossible to know for sure. If you attempt to leave the road for too long and walk into the desert landscape, feelings of insecurity and dread will appear until you return to the road. This makes exploring this area an almost impossible task. Because of this, the only reasonable thing to do is to walk the road, no matter the direction you take.
As you walk, you'll begin to see streetlights.
Are they on or off?
It's so bright everywhere, that it's difficult to know for sure. As you continue walking, you'll find more and more of them. The chance to find other people gives you the hope necessary to continue walking.
Where does this road lead to? Maybe a town or a city?
You keep finding streetlights, more and more at a time. At one point, you see one last streetlight from afar, with no more afterward. You keep walking, thinking you may have reached what you were looking for. Finally, you see it. The road suddenly and abruptly ends. There are no people, no reward, just a stop sign, mocking you from afar.
Has this all been in vain?
Halt was written by
Markuss11 with critique from
MrTripuler,
Wat9032, and
ZENAJ. The images used in the article were taken by