You travel beyond Thunderdome despite the chipper warnings of a talking dog.<\/p>\n
You follow a broken road that leads only in a single direction. Behind you only the black nothingness of despair.<\/p>\n
A sign stretches across the road. Its original message obscured with an ominous warning scrawled in blood.<\/p>\n
“NOT KANSAS”<\/p>\n
A chill penetrates your body. You kill a passing wizard for his cloak. With his dying breath he utters a curse but the words you choose to hear are gibberish.<\/p>\n
Ahead a man is tied upside down to a post. A crude mockery of a scarecrow. He has no eyes or tongue but you hear his whispers inside your head.<\/p>\n
A child appears by your side… no, a man no taller than your waist. He clutches a length of rope, the other end tied to the head of a lion dragging behind him.<\/p>\n
Through a crooked smile and blackened teeth he sucks at a lollipop. His gaze turns to your cloak and soon fear fills his deadened eyes.<\/p>\n
He glances back at the scarecrow and mutters “the road is a liar” then shuffles off into an ash covered cornfield.<\/p>\n
Ahead the road forks. A signpost offers a City of Jewels to the left, Plain of Despair to your right, and a blank sign points to your feet.<\/p>\n
Looking down, you can make out words carved faintly into the uneven yellowed bricks. “You have no choices, the road is a circle.”<\/p>\n
Here among unfamiliar ground, the wisdom of a coin is the only guide you can truly trust.<\/p>\n
Taking the right fork, you soon come upon a man in a silver suit seated at a barren table, drinking from an empty soda bottle.<\/p>\n
He frowns at you, then picks a pair of spotless white galoshes from beside him and hands them to you.<\/p>\n
“For the puddles.”<\/p>\n
He waves you away, clearly intent on finishing his drink.<\/p>\n
A sunless sky dims behind you, urging you forward. Soon colorless fields give way to regimental arrays of perfectly trimmed trees.<\/p>\n
The road becomes a parody of a funhouse. Crimson liquid oozes from between the bricks;<\/p>\n
bubbling and popping with the sound of mocking laughter;<\/p>\n
filling the depressions;<\/p>\n
surrounding you in blood.<\/p>\n
Remembering the galoshes in your hand, you ease them over tattered shoes while your reflection stares back at you from a mirror of blood.<\/p>\n
Gingerly you cross through a crimson sea to higher ground. The road ahead snakes into fractured cliffs. Fading footprints mark your passage.<\/p>\n
A hot air balloon drifts low overheard, a figure leans over the basket and gestures you towards a narrow passage between the rocks.<\/p>\n
Sharp rocks tear at your cloak as you squeeze yourself through a final crack.<\/p>\n
You rejoin the ruined road and descend into hills of golden grass.<\/p>\n
The yellow bricks become sparse as the road narrows to no more than a dirt path. On a hill ahead you see a muddy hovel adorned in shards of emerald glass.<\/p>\n
Desiccated corpses of a dozen crows hang from the eaves, swaying in a nonexistent breeze to ward you away.<\/p>\n
Through grime caked windows you glimpse a fleeting figure. Suddenly you find yourself bathed in shadow as a silhouette eclipses the sky.<\/p>\n
Confusion rapidly gives way to joists and floorboards. Your last sensations are tiny hands tugging at your feet, tearing at the crimson galoshes.<\/p>\n
The words of the dying wizard become suddenly clear:<\/p>\n
“In Which Mel ‘Mad Max’ Gibson Finds Himself Unexpectedly Deceased Via a Falling House” echoes in your head.<\/p>\n
Then blackness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"