House on the Highway

He had seen a house on the highway as a kid, and now he was riding inside of one. Young Paul had been so astonished that he had shrieked at the sight of it. His old man had reached into the backseat of the family sedan and struck him in the temple.

“You sound like a f--got. Enough!”

He remembered his mom looking back, her troubled hazel eyes that did nothing. She had nodded when his dad frowned at her.

Gazing out the window of his back foyer now, gripping the railing along the staircase for balance, he saw a kid in the passenger seat point at him excitedly. The boy’s mother only glanced down, probably at her phone. Paul waved to the boy and struggled up the steps.

In the living room he had to crouch low as the semi towing his house navigated a bend in the road. The house shook and rattled and the last red cup in what used to be a triangle skidded off the table he had set up for beer pong. Early in the three-hour trip, Paul had frantically nailed ropes taut wall-to-wall and secured the table in place. But it was only a matter of time before the game proved unsustainable. The stench of Coors Lights soaking into the carpet turned his stomach. On top of the motion sickness.

“On top of the shitty pancreas,” Paul laughed.

He grabbed hold of a rope and then dove for the railing that led upstairs. He caught it as his hip thudded against the floor. He pulled himself up the stairs to the oak hallway, grabbed the skateboard in the corner, anchored by a brick. Paul wondered how much time he had left to land an ollie before they reached their destination on heavenly Elkhart Lake.

He checked his phone. Twenty minutes left and 21 messages from his fiancée. The phone rang. He wretched puke and blood down the staircase. On the sixth ring he answered.

“Yyyyello?” he said, wiping his mouth.

“Where the hell are you?!”

 “Jen. Sometimes you gotta say… chemo/ shmemo. So, I sorta did go through with relocating my house. And I kinda snuck onboard.”

Jen erupted. Paul cried, waited.

“I had to come home. In my house, not theirs... They can’t hurt me anymore. I’m not a kid anymore. It can finally be perfect now.”