A Rothko sky, blue against orange, as the setting sun casts its dying rays against the bank of cloud clinging to the distant hills.

The landscape a patchwork of browns and purples, the bleak moorland rushing past the windows of your car.

One thousand metres ahead. Turn left.

To back up the soothing electronic female voice, the blue arrow on the sat-nav display helpfully develops a ninety degree angle and begins to flash. You peer ahead, along the long straight road that cuts its way through the desolate landscape, searching for a roadside signpost. Seeing none, you ease off on the accelerator, slowing the car. The music from the radio fades out, is replaced by a buzzing which in turn is replaced by white noise. You reach to turn it off but then the music begins to reassert itself, Green Day hammering out 21^st Century Breakdown.

Five hundred metres ahead. Turn left.

You lean forwards and squint your eyes, as if the extra few inches gained will somehow enhance your visual acuity. Still no signpost but the junction can now be seen, just over the crest of a small rise. You lean back, start to tap your fingers on the steering wheel in time to the pounding rhythm of Billie Joe Armstrong’s guitar.

Turn left. Turn left.

“Yes ma’am!” you reply, braking, dropping down the gears and spinning the wheel with the palm of your hand. A slight dip and bump as the car moves onto the new surface – a much older road by the looks of it. You accelerate away, changing smoothly up through the gears. The red sky transforms from a reflection in your rear-view mirror to a stunning vista visible through your nearside window.

Stay on this road for two kilometres.

You shuffle in your seat, get the blood flowing again through buttocks numbed by hours of driving. Rotate your shoulders, loosen them up.

A buzz of static drifts into your aural landscape, the voice of the DJ becoming more distant like that of a long-dead relative communicating from the spirit realm. The sun touches the edge of the cloud bank, begins to sink into the swirling mass of it.

A shape looms at the side of the road, grows ever larger as you speed towards it. A deer, you see, a stag with wide branching antlers reaching into the air like skeletal fingers. The animal stands stock still even as you drive towards it, unfazed by your approach. This, you think, is his territory – why should he be afraid? The beast is magnificent to behold, noble is the word that springs to your mind, majestic – that too. You slow as you pass, gazing in awe at the animal towering above your car. It watches you, its eyes glowing an intense red, reflecting the setting sun.

“Beautiful...” you say, as you increase your speed once more, watching the stag grow smaller in your wing mirror.

Static now overwhelms the best efforts of the DJ and you turn off the radio. The light is fading so you turn on your sidelights... withdrawing your hand quickly from the dial as a spark leaps from it and a jolt of current runs up your arm.

“Ow! What the..?” your arm tingles from the shock and your mind reels, trying to understand how a plastic dial can give you an electric shock. Must be a crack in the coating, you think, not entirely convincing yourself.

One and a half kilometres ahead. Turn right.

Murky twilight envelopes the world around you. Darkness falls quickly this far out in the countryside and soon you’ll have to turn the lights to full beam, a prospect which understandably dismays you.  The car judders and jolts as you hit a pothole. The first element of doubt creeps into your mind that you may be on the wrong road.

One thousand metres ahead. Turn right.

The comforting, reassuring electronic voice is no longer comforting or reassuring. The road is getting worse and you slow in order to either navigate around potholes or minimise the impact when they are unavoidable. You see the junction approaching – the new road you must take is in even worse condition, no more than a dirt track.

Five hundred metres ahead. Turn right.

“I think not,” you say, the junction affords an opportunity to turn round, go back the way you came. Get back to the main road and take it from there. “I know you’ll nag me but don’t take it personally.  We all make mistakes!” You begin to slow the car to a stop.

Turn right. Turn right.

The car begins to pick up speed again despite the pressure you apply to the brake pedal. The steering wheel spins through your fingers, turning the car to the right, onto the track.

Panic hits you, the fear that you will crash on this lonely, deserted stretch of road momentarily displacing any thoughts you might have as to how this could be happening. 

Stay on this road.

“What!?” You are not going to crash – the car has aligned itself perfectly on the track and is continuing to accelerate. You pump the brake pedal but your efforts are ineffectual. You grasp the steering wheel, jiggle it from side to side like a B-movie actor in front of a back-projection screen but the car’s forward progress is unaffected.

Stay on this road.

Forever.

The blue arrow disappears from the screen of the sat-nav. In its place a red glow that slowly intensifies, illuminating the interior of the car.

“You’ve got to be kidding me...” You brace yourself with a straight arm against the steering wheel and pull on the hand-brake, scrunching your eyes tight shut, turning your head away from the expected impact of the airbag.

Which never comes. The car continues on and, on the distant horizon, the last vestiges of sunlight finally disappear and darkness fills the world.

Forever.

Incomprehension engenders panic which in turn battles with full on fear within your head, neither strong enough yet to gain the upper hand. The side-lights do little to illuminate the track down which you travel, your view restricted to no more than five or six metres. You reach for the ignition key, turn the power off, and find yourself unsurprised that still the car drives forward.

And then, something on the road. Shapes loom out of the darkness, bodies strewn across the dirt track, roadkill. You pass corpse after corpse, flattened, disembowelled, guts turned to mince scattered over the road. Rabbits mainly, but here and there the bodies of birds – partridges, grouse – and then, the carcase swollen and distorted, a deer – organs spilling out of a ragged wound in its abdomen, head thrown backwards on a broken neck, one antler broken to lie alongside the body.

Fear has finally won the battle in your mind and instinct makes you grab the handle of the door. Shake and pull as you might, the door refuses to open. “No..!” you cry out, frustration adding to the fear, choking the breath from you as soon as the word leaves your mouth. You release your seatbelt and shoulder-charge the door.

It takes five impacts before the pain makes you stop. Tears well in your eyes. You raise your hand to wipe them away but the pain that shoots down your arm stops the movement and you yelp. It’s then that the side-lights go off and your view ahead disappears completely.

Through the darkness, the absolute, all-encompassing, pitch-black darkness the car moves ever onward. You see your reflection in the windscreen, the angle of the glass distorting it like a fairground mirror, the red light from the (now silent) sat-nav casting a demonic glow upon it. It is not a comforting sight, fear all too apparent in eyes brimming over with tears.

The car lurches and you tip forward in your seat, your seat-belt unattached and allowing the movement. You reach out your hands, press them against the windscreen to prevent banging your head off the dashboard. The world outside your windows is invisible to you but you know that you are going down a steep incline. A new sound fills your ears, a loud crunching  - you have left the dirt track and are now passing over gravel or small stones.

“Where to now?” you ask the sat-nav, miserably, but no answer is forthcoming. The cyclopean eye continues to glow a deep, blood red. 

After what you gauge to be around ten minutes you feel the car level off. Perhaps another five pass before it comes to a halt. The engine continues to purr for a few seconds before cutting out. The resulting silence is deafening, oppressive.

You sit, waiting for the next development. Fear churns your stomach, your distorted reflection stares back at you, adds to your anxiety. You close your eyes but the images that spring immediately to mind are those of dead animals strewn across a road and you open them again to once more gaze at your reflected fears.

You wait. And wait. Nothing happens. Tentatively, you reach for the door handle and pull. 

This time you use your feet as well as your shoulders, swivelling around on your seat and launching double-footed kicks at the door. This time it is tiredness, a lack of energy that makes you stop rather than pain.

*

The first grey light of dawn wakes you. Moving your head sends a spasm of pain down your neck and into your shoulder. You wince and screw your eyes tight. As the pain in your shoulder subsides, that of your full bladder takes its place, a nagging reminder that egress from the vehicle should be achieved as soon as possible. Slowly, you start to move again, gradually sitting up from your slumped position in the car seat.

Wiping the sleep from your eyes you focus on what is outside. Tall cliffs loom above you, vertical walls of exposed stone that have a man-made look to them. You appear to be in a quarry of some kind. You are not, however, alone.

Far from it, in fact. You are surrounded by hundreds – no, possibly even thousands – of other cars. In front of, and to either side of you, sit row upon row of vehicles. Excitement grips you, the situation you find yourself in is still surreal, inexplicable but is closer to normality than the events of the previous night. 

You look out of your side window, across to the nearest car and – yes! There is someone sitting inside. You hammer on the window with your fist, shout, wave – anything to attract their attention. No response is forthcoming, not even a flicker of acknowledgement. “Hey!” you scream now, “Hey! Over here!”  The figure is little more than a silhouette, but a silhouette that does not move. 

You slam your fist against the window once more, this time out of sheer frustration. You turn to check the car on the opposite side. Maybe its occupant is actually awake, maybe between yourselves you can work out some way of getting out of this... predicament. Yeah, you chuckle, that’s the word – predicament.

So you turn and shuffle over to the passenger seat and you see him, sat there in the driver’s seat of the car next to yours. And, as you see him, you realise there is no point – no fucking point at all - in trying to attract his attention. You slump against the window, your head making a dull thump as it hits the glass. 

As the pressure building in your bladder becomes a cramping pain, it occurs to you that the way you now sit is a mirror image of the skeleton sitting in the car opposite you. The same no doubt applies to a high proportion of the occupants of this sea of cars in which you find yourself cut adrift.

Not the only one then.

The thought is not a comforting one.