“GREY NOMADS” (SHORT STORY)
A man stands alone on an empty outback road as a sunset bleeds across the sky.
His motorcycle lies twisted in a ditch. There is no blood. There are no wounds. He cannot remember the crash.
The road ahead is long and dark, and the stars above hold secrets he may not want to know.
“Grey Nomads” is a supernatural short story about life and death.
Can he find the way home?
Or is he lost forever?
2,000 words / 8 minutes of haunting reading pleasure
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‘Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.’ Robert Pirsig
STEFANO BOSCUTTI
GREY NOMADS
Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti
All Rights Reserved
DEAN stands alone on an empty, dusty outback road at sunset.
Dark red shadows drag behind dead trees snagged on the side of the road. There’s a twisted wreck of a motorcycle in a ditch. Spots of rain on his shoulders. A great silence surrounds him.
He looks over the bleak landscape and can’t remember how he got here. He knows he’s heading home to Adelaide. The motorcycle must be his. But he doesn’t recall any accident, any crash. He thinks he can taste blood at the back of his throat. But there’s not a mark on his body. Not a hair out of place.
He glances back at the road behind and imagines he sees a cluster of stars fluttering on the horizon, hears a rim click and driving cymbal. A mambo bass line snakes towards him as he realises the stars are fairy lights on a black motorhome driving towards him.
“Break On Through (To the Other Side)” by The Doors is pouring out of the black motorhome. Raw, unfiltered, a version he’s never heard before.
Day falls before him as the night sky blooms infinite. The black motorhome rolls to a stop beside him. Inside the front seats are a retired couple in their seventies, GABRIEL and MARY.
Both are grey-haired and dressed in white linen, smiling. Gabriel is behind the wheel. He reaches across the dashboard to turn down the song as Jim Morrison staggers through the lyrics. Mary beams.
‘You look like you’re a long way from home,’ she says.
‘I’m heading to Adelaide.’
‘Why we’re heading the same way.’
‘I’ve got to get to my sister’s birthday.’
Mary nods. Gabriel leans forward.
‘It’s a long way to Adelaide from here. We’d be happy to give you a lift.’
Dean looks up at the ocean of stars. Why does he feel uneasy?
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘It gets pretty cold out here at night.’
‘Thanks. I’ll be okay.’
Gabriel isn’t so sure. Mary beams.
‘Sometimes the longest way home is the right way,’ she says.
Gabriel nods. Mary is rarely wrong.
The black motorhome rolls forward and drives off down the road, fairy lights glinting and music fading away.
Dean starts walking down the road, waiting for the cold to come. Scrubland all around him. Occasionally he hears an animal scurrying away. Above him, stars swirl and shine.
He’s having trouble piecing together why exactly he was going home to Adelaide. Sure there’s his sister’s birthday. But he’s never been that close to her, never made a point of crossing the outback to celebrate her birthday. What birthday is it? Did he even buy a present?
He checks his pockets for his phone. He pulls it out, it’s charged but there’s no reception. He holds it up the stars, twists it this way and that. Nothing.
There’s a roadhouse up ahead. Surely there’ll be a mobile phone tower, or maybe a pay phone. For some reason, he worries that the black motorhome and the grey nomads might be there.
What does he have to worry about? They weren’t sinister or threatening. Just your typical retirees escaping the cold winter for the open road, camping wherever they like. There are tens of thousands of them on the road these days, living free.
The roadhouse parking lot is empty. There’s a few rusted cars to one side and a young ABORIGINAL BOY trying to put the chain back on his broken-down bicycle, his GRANDMOTHER by his side.
His grandmother stares at Dean while the boy tries to lace the chain onto the front sprocket. The boy looks up startled.
Dean says it’s best to hook the chain on the rear sprocket and turn the pedal backward so it catches and turns around the front sprocket.
His grandmother stares Dean down, shoos him away, muttering about wrong side business.
Dean tries to smile as he heads to the dining room. The windows are frosted in red dust. There’s no reflections. There’s no one inside.
He notices there’s a tip plate on the worn counter with a few coins. He checks his phone again. There’s still no signal.
When he steps outside he hears a haunting blues-fuelled piece of music ripple all around him. Spots of fresh rain on his shoulders.
He knows this song. It’s a live version of “People Are Strange” by The Doors. He sees the black motorhome spangled with fairy lights approach just as Jim Morrison sings the opening lines of angst and alienation.
Gabriel turns the song down as he pulls up the black motorhome.
‘Bootleg recording,’ he says with a kind smile.
The live recording was made at The Matrix nightclub in 1967 in San Francisco before The Doors launched their first album. Before all the radio hits, before all the stadium shows. Before all the whisky and heroin.
Raw and unfiltered. A surprisingly awkward, self-conscious Morrison searching for his rock and roll persona, his mythic lost poet facade. Even the band is smouldering, never quite catching fire. There’s only a handful of people in the audience. Polite applause between songs.
The simple two-note bass line pounds through the song. Gabriel is nodding in time. Mary is smiling
‘Laid down by Peter Abram on his Akai reel-to-reel vacuum tube tape recorder,’ says Gabriel. ‘Four Calrad mics on stage and an Electrovoice 676 for Jim. Still sounds glorious.’
‘Gabriel loves The Doors.’
‘Everyone loves The Doors.’
‘Do you love The Doors?’
Mary aims her question at Dean, who blushes, a little confused.
‘I guess they’re okay.’
Gabriel scoffs.
‘I guess you haven’t listened to enough of their songs. Six studio albums in five years, multiple live recordings and too many compilations. Music was never the same after they came onto the scene.’
Dean looks at Gabriel and Mary and wonders whether they were hippies back in the sixties when The Doors crashed through the charts with their blues-propelled psychedelic rock.
‘We’re more than happy to give you a ride to Adelaide,’ says Gabriel. ‘Give you a chance to listen to their songs. I’ve got more than a dozen versions of “Riders on the Storm”.
Dean laughs off the offer. He can’t really picture himself in a black motorhome with two grey nomads listening to the gothic-twang epic over and over, rolling drums and burbling electric piano as Jim Morrison sings about broken love and a broken serial killer, bass pulsing the song forward with overdubbed thunder pounding down.
Mary asks him if he’d like a cup of tea, herbal tea.
‘I’m good, thanks. Really, I’m just going to walk to the next town. Organise a car. Thanks though.’
‘It’s no problem. We just want to help.’
‘On the road, you want to help people.’
‘A load shared is a load halved.’
Dean can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong, that something is off. What is he worried about? In their white linen and grey hair and happy demeanour, Mary and Gabriel look like the perfect retired couple.
Dean needs to learn to trust people. He just needs to gather his thoughts, pool his memories. The walk will do him good, he tells himself. Clear his head.
‘You’ll miss your sister’s birthday.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
Dean notices there’s no rearview mirror behind the windscreen of the black motorhome. Thinks there must be a rear video camera with a screen on the dashboard. Probably side cameras too. The black finish is immaculate. No dust, no mud. Not a speck of rain on the windscreen.
The black motorhome rolls forward as Gabriel and Mary wave goodbye.
‘Safe travels.’
The black motorhome rolls on down the road, fairy lights glinting and music fading away. Candy red tail lights receding into the night.
Dean starts walking, convincing himself that everything is going to be alright. Above him, the night sky is ablaze with constellations of stars and galaxies. He feels like a wild, untamed soul.
He hears light steps following him, light panting. He stops and turns just as a stray dog behind him stops and looks up.
‘Are you following me?’
Dean is pretty sure it’s not a dingo. There are three collars around its neck. He takes a step forward and so does the dog. He takes two more steps forward and so does the dog.
‘So it’s going to be like that, is it?’
The dog cocks its head. Dean turns back to the road and starts walking. The dog follows in step like a shadow.
‘You’re going to follow me all the way to Adelaide? Okay then.’
Dean tries to remember what led to the motorcycle accident. Was he speeding? Probably. He was always in a rush, always trying to get to the next thing.
‘Did you see the accident? You seem to know your way around here. Do you know what happened? Maybe you heard something from your friends?’
How did he lose control? Was he riding too fast? Was he overtaking? Did he hit something? Slide out on the dirt on the side of the road?
Did he crash into something? Did something crash into him? A car? A truck? A motorhome?
It was definitely his motorcycle in the ditch. Mangled, twisted metal. Thinking back he realises his helmet was missing. Black Shoei, full face. If it had torn off in the crash there’s no way he wouldn’t have facial trauma or worse.
No wounds. No blood. All his bones are intact. It’s a miracle he walked away unscathed.
‘You’d like my sister. I’m pretty sure she likes dogs. Who doesn’t like dogs, right?
He can’t even remember the last time he saw his sister. Was it in Adelaide? He’s trying to picture her in his mind, her house, her furniture.
Maybe the accident wiped his memory. Maybe it will all come back to him when he gets closer to Adelaide, when leaves the outback.
He hears a cattle truck hurtling down the road. He lifts his thumb in the air to hitch a ride. On the road people want to help people, right?
The cattle truck hisses and accelerates and hurtles past in a rolling cloud of dust and heaving metal.
Dean laughs as he blows the dust away from his face. Before long he hears another truck approaching and looks at the dog.
‘Don’t scare anyone away this time, okay.’
He puts his thumb out but the truck rushes by without pausing. He shakes his head and takes out his phone. There’s no power. He presses and holds the side button. Nothing.
The black screen in his hands reflects the heaves above. As he tilts the screen closer to his face he sees only the reflection of the empty, dusty outback road behind him. In the ditch where there’d been the twisted wreck of his motorcycle there’s now a small, plain, white wooden cross.
The dog starts to whine as Dean hears another vehicle rolling down the road. Even without looking, he knows it’s Gabriel and Mary coming to take him home. When the black motorhome rolls to a stop beside him, Dean smiles at the glimmering fairy lights, opens the narrow side door and steps inside.
As it heads down the road, Gabriel switches on a live version of “When the Music’s Over” by The Doors.
And as the syncopated instruments dance against each other, the glimmering lights shimmer into endless stars.
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Copyright 2024 Stefano Boscutti
All Rights Reserved
The moral rights of the author are asserted.
No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or copying and pasting, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing.
Stefano Boscutti acknowledges the trademark owners of various products referenced in this work. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorised or sponsored by the trademark owner.
This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of retirees and others, the characterisations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author’s metaphysical imagination. This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It should not be resold or given away. Thank you for your support. (Couldn’t do it without you.)
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