This is Junction

I know how to read a map
was starting to sound like
Jesus Christ have mercy on my soul
And so Adver Blythe pulled into a gas station and Dorge Kas could taste the grit. Dorge hated places like these because all they meant was stopping, and he hated to stop. But at the very least he could get out and try to refold the map on the hood of the car, and the thing in his mind that twitched like a tiny diving board would stop twitching.
I wouldn't describe diving boards as twitching, as it were.
Dorge's molars came together like pressure-sealed doors in sci-fi movies and he kept quiet while Adver walked into the gas station.
Adver asking for directions was a bad sign and Dorge was keen on signs. More so since they'd been driving for days and there was nothing to latch on to. Not a dead cat, not a drop of rain. Now the sky was crazy blue with those wisps of white all across and Adver was going to ask a stranger for help.
Dorge looked at the map stretched out across the hood and wondered if he were stupid. He didn't think he was, but at the same time he had watched a simpleton fold this map perfectly and now he couldn't do it. Maybe he wasn't stupid, maybe what he really was was an asshole. He started folding the map in a deliberate fashion, the skin on his face heating as he imagined some...someone watching him and sneering.
The imperfect smash of paper was pushed back into the door compartment and Dorge headed inside to find Adver leaning over another map that the clerk had spread across the counter. There is no one else inside and there's that gritty taste again. Dorge looks at his hand from where he touched the door handle and scans it for feces, or just leftover dumbness that idiots leave on surfaces.
Adver is nodding and following along as the clerk guides his index finger along some route that they've presumably been on.
We just passed Culvert
Correct
And this is Junction
Correct
Looks like we just need to keep going until Redtree
Correct
Dorge brought the cinderblock down against the clerk's neck, right where the head meets, the stem, the stem, the stem. But he'd never done that before and so second-guessed his aim. The effect he wanted was the same, though, as the man's strings snapped and he fell against the counter.
Dorge wondered at how simple that had been, the way the weight of the block had just carried out most of the job after he had just lifted it so high.
There really wasn't even that much blood, not like he'd imagined, and so he was a little disappointed. He wondered if this would keep him up tonight and gently placed the cinderblock down beside the crumpled body, while he eyed the Funyuns.


Back in the car Dorge studied his hands, palms up in his lap and thought they should be shaking.
Adver wet his lips and asked Why did you do that?
Because I know you hate when people say "correct" to you when you're talking to them. I just thought you...should know I'm still with you.
Dorge did not tell Adver that he basically thought of him as a god and wanted to express some devotion. Dorge did not tell him that he was the one he wrote for, these words and so loved him and needed him and used him. Dorge did not tell him that he thought there should be blood in the ink.
He didn't have to say anything like that; gods know that kind of stuff.
He also didn't need to tell him that they should probably find a dry-cleaner before they got to where they were going.


The horizon was doing that purple thing when Adver said Where did you get that cinderblock?