The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

there were times on my journey when the horrors outside threatened to overwhelm me; when reason trembled in the face of unreason.

It is said that there is a price that every traveller through the Wastelands must pay. A price beyond the mere cost of a ticket on the train.

That they would open their mouths wide and call to each other in clipped and cluttered English, and they would hold all the sins of the train in their claws like a stone, so hard and bright that it hurt to look at it.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. He will be with God soon and no longer troubled by the decay of this world. You should save your sympathy for yourself.”

the guide to the Wastelands is different; his certainties fall away; the more he looks, the less he understands. No wonder he could never find his way back to who he was before.