Shortcut Through Somewhere

“Mum said it was a shortcut, but I think shortcuts are meant to take you somewhere, not steal the road out from under you.”

I don't think the road had a name.

There was a sign, technically—but calling it that felt generous. It was more of a suggestion, really. A bent scrap of metal nailed to a splintered timber post that looked like it had been planted there generations ago, back when people still believed in naming things as a way of controlling them. The wood was half-devoured by white ants, its inner structure crumbling into a brittle lattice, so that what remained resembled something closer to bones than building material. The paint—if there had ever been any—had long since surrendered to sun and time, leaving behind the faintest trace of what might have been a letter, or maybe just the ghost of one. A curved line. A stroke of hope now overtaken by rust.

The whole post leaned like it was bowing in defeat, worn down by decades of heat and wind and indifference, barely clinging to verticality in a world that had stopped caring whether anyone read its message. It looked like it could fall with a sigh.

Mum didn’t hesitate. She didn’t glance at the sign, didn’t ease off the accelerator. Just turned. One hand on the wheel, her gaze fixed ahead as if the road were obvious and inevitable, as if any uncertainty belonged to the rest of us, not her.

The tyres bumped off the bitumen with a jarring crunch that felt final, like crossing a threshold we wouldn’t be able to uncross. Gravel sprayed up behind us in a chalky plume, billowing out like a signal to some unseen watcher, a dusty punctuation mark at the end of a sentence I didn’t understand.

I braced myself automatically, fingers tightening around Ribbons, who sat in my lap like a small, silent witness. The road—or what passed for one—rattled up through the car’s undercarriage and into my spine, each new bump a reminder that we weren’t following anything official anymore. No painted lines. No reflectors. Just hard-packed earth interrupted by rocks and roots and skeletal fence lines that seemed to sketch the memory of a boundary rather than enforce one.

Mack didn’t speak, but I could see his jaw clench in profile, the muscle just beneath his cheekbone flickering with restraint. His eyes stayed fixed on the scrub outside, scanning for... something. Danger, maybe. Or maybe just logic. Because from where I sat, logic had exited the vehicle somewhere back on the sealed road. We were off-track now, and the track itself seemed unsure of its own existence, winding between stunted trees and eroded gullies with all the purpose of a thought half-formed and already slipping away.

The steering wheel jerked in Mum’s grip as the tyres sank briefly into a patch of loose sand before finding firmer ground. She didn’t react, didn’t even blink. Just tightened her hold and pressed forward, like wrestling the car into submission was simply part of the plan. Her knuckles were white against the wheel. Her expression gave nothing away.

The main road—we could still see it in the rear mirror—had the decency to look like it led somewhere. Straight lines, predictable signs, the promise of petrol stations and towns and maps that didn’t lie. This new route felt... wild. Improvised. A whisper between the trees. A choice that couldn’t be undone.

Dust crept in through the car’s seams, through the windows we’d tried to seal against it, turning the air inside into something tangible. It settled on the dashboard, on the curve of the steering wheel, on Mack’s hoodie and my hands and Ribbons’ stitched ears. I could taste it on my tongue, dry and metallic, like old coins left too long in the sun. My eyes watered from the grit. I wiped them and said nothing.

We passed a sagging fence held together by rust and wire that had twisted into unnatural knots, as though it had been left to make its own decisions once its purpose was forgotten. A single gate leaned drunkenly on its hinges, its chain so fused with the latch that it looked welded there by time and resignation.

Everything we passed had the same weary look. Abandoned intention. Plans surrendered to dust.

And the road—if that’s what it still was—just kept going. Not in a straight line, not with confidence, but like it was feeling its way forward through the scrub, unsure if it would vanish entirely or somehow lead us out the other side.

“Mum,” Mack said eventually, his voice low and neutral, carefully devoid of accusation. It was the tone you used when you didn’t know how volatile the answer might be—testing the ground for mines. “Are we still on the map?”

The question didn’t explode. It floated, slow and heavy, filling the space like smoke from a fire that hadn’t started yet but smouldered somewhere just out of sight.

Mum didn’t respond. Not with words, not even with a glance. Her grip on the steering wheel didn’t change, her eyes didn’t flick from the narrow track that unspooled ahead of us like a dare. She might not have heard. Or she might have heard perfectly and decided it didn’t warrant a response.

Outside, the landscape closed in—scrub thickening on both sides, narrowing the track into something that barely seemed navigable. The sky overhead was a washed-out blue, too pale to feel friendly, and the heat had begun to rise again, pressing in through the windows like a warning.

Beside me, Mack reached into the pocket of the door and pulled out the map. The same one we’d been consulting since the motel, now softened at the folds and stained at one edge with what might have been orange juice or sweat. He unfolded it slowly on his lap, the paper crackling and flaring in the confined space. It sounded louder than it should have, like it was protesting.

“I think we passed the road to Collarenebri half an hour ago,” he said, voice flat, trying for logic. His finger traced faint lines across the faded print, pausing and retracing like he was trying to conjure something reliable from the ink. “That means we’re heading…” Another pause. He frowned. “We’re heading away from Queensland. This track—this isn’t even on here. It’s not marked.”

Mum’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, the knuckles standing out pale against the skin. Her response came fast, clipped. “I said it’s a shortcut.”

“It’ll loop back north once we clear this section,” she added, tone hardening with each syllable. “It’s quieter. That’s all.”

But the way she said it sounded more like justification than explanation. I could hear the edge of it now: the hairline fractures in her certainty, spreading like cracks in thin ice. Even she didn’t fully believe what she was saying anymore.

Mack didn’t press her. Maybe he’d given up. Or maybe he knew the difference between winning an argument and surviving one. Instead, he exhaled through his nose—a slow hiss that seemed to say more than words could—and folded the map with jerky precision, each crease sharper than necessary. He shoved it back into the glove box hard, and the door snapped shut with a sharp click, final and definite.

The silence that followed was taut, stretched across the three of us like wire. I stared out of the window, pretending to watch the scrubland blur past, though I wasn’t really seeing it. My stomach clenched in anticipation before it even happened.

Then the pothole hit.

The front wheels dropped with a jolt, the entire car lurching forward like it had been punched. My seatbelt locked across my chest, and my teeth clicked together. I grabbed the door handle on instinct, gripping it so tightly the plastic dug into my palm. The impact echoed through the frame of the car with a sick thud, and for a moment I thought something might actually snap.

Ribbons slid sideways in my lap, her soft head thudding into my hip. She righted herself slowly, her stitched neck twisting at a slight angle now, giving her an oddly resigned expression—like she, too, had accepted that this journey was no longer about direction, only momentum.

No one said anything. There was nothing left to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

I turned my face toward the window, pretending interest in the outside world, anything to avoid the tense atmosphere thickening inside the car.

There wasn’t much to see. Just the same weary scrub—low, stubborn growth clinging to life with a kind of grim determination. The plants here didn’t flourish so much as endure, grey-green and half-dusted with the same ochre powder that covered the car, our clothes, the insides of our lungs. Fence lines appeared intermittently, rusted and leaning, marking boundaries that no longer seemed to matter—lines drawn long ago by people who must have believed land could be ordered and tamed. Now they just sliced through the wilderness like scars.

An old sheep trough squatted beside a patch of wire fencing, its basin dry and flaking with rust. It looked abandoned, like everything else. Abandonment seemed to be the natural state of things out here.

And then—a cow. Just one. Standing behind the barbed wire, watching us pass with an expression that could only be described as mild, unbothered curiosity. Its coat was dusty and patchy, its ribs faintly visible beneath the hide, but its eyes were calm. Unfazed. It blinked slowly, as though we weren’t a family in a slowly unravelling crisis but just another oddity in the long stretch of its uneventful day. Something about its presence steadied me—a soft affirmation that life, however simple, could still exist in a place like this.

The track narrowed again, tightening to the point where there wasn’t even the illusion of choice in direction. Two tyre grooves carved into the dirt—uneven, sometimes vanishing entirely beneath ruts or grass or the contours of the land. No paint. No shoulders. No sense of belonging to any network of roads. It felt less like a place we were meant to be and more like a mistake we were now too far into to correct.

The car shuddered over a washboard section of earth, the steering wheel juddering in Mum’s hands. The whole vehicle complained in a chorus of rattles and groans—bolts straining, panels vibrating against themselves, the muffled thud of something shifting in the boot. It sounded like the car itself was begging us to stop.

“This isn’t a road,” Mack said suddenly. His voice was low but firm, the tone of someone who’d reached the limit of pretending otherwise. “It’s a rabbit track. Maybe a stock route. But it’s not a road.”

“It’s a road,” Mum muttered. But it wasn’t an argument. It was a spell, a superstition—something you said to keep the monsters away.

“No. It’s not.” Mack turned to her now, and his voice was louder, sharper, gaining power with every syllable. “Roads have numbers. They’re on maps. They go places people actually want to go.”

I could feel it all building—the tension like a barometric shift before a storm. And then Mum’s hand slammed down on the steering wheel with a force that jolted the car, the tyres kicking against the uneven track as her grip slipped momentarily.

“Do you want to drive, Mack?” she shouted. “Do you? You think you can do better? You think a ten-year-old knows more about navigation than I do?”

Each question landed like a slap, not meant to be answered. Just meant to hurt.

Mack turned away sharply, shoulders hunched. I watched his jaw tighten, his lips pressed into a thin, colourless line as he swallowed the retort. I could see how badly he wanted to answer her, to fling the anger back. But he didn’t. He clenched his fists in his lap instead, small fists that trembled slightly with the effort of holding everything in. There was something unbearable about it—watching him take that weight, knowing he shouldn’t have to.

I sank lower in my seat, pulled Ribbons tighter to my chest, and tried to fold myself into the shadowed corner of the car like I could disappear completely. The voices, the anger, the heat—it all pressed in around me, heavy and close. And for the first time, I stopped looking out the window and started looking at my reflection in the glass instead. Because even the dust and distortion felt safer than watching what was happening just centimetres away.

We passed what might’ve once been a shed, though calling it that felt generous. It looked less like a structure than the memory of one—a collapsing husk, sun-bleached and wind-eaten, surrendering itself piece by piece to the elements. The roof had mostly caved in, its remaining rafters jutting upwards like exposed ribs, brittle and skeletal against the endless pale sky. The walls leaned at uneasy angles, slouched toward one another like two exhausted companions sharing secrets too heavy to bear alone.

Faint shapes had been painted on the western wall—what remained of them. Faded now to ghostly traces, the design still managed to catch the eye: a swirl of white against soot-dark weatherboard, curling inward like a storm or a fingerprint or a portal. I stared at it as we passed, a chill creeping up my spine that had nothing to do with the wind that leaked in through the gaps in the car’s seals.

It looked like a symbol. A warning, maybe. Or an invitation. Something someone had left behind because they couldn’t stay, but needed to be remembered.

“What was that?” I asked, my voice thinner than I meant it to be, almost devoured by the car’s ceaseless rattling and the soft rasp of tyres on gravel.

“Graffiti,” Mack said, though his tone carried none of the confidence of a real answer. “Probably. Or maybe… maybe some kind of Aboriginal marker. Could be anything, really.”

He didn’t sound convinced. Neither was I.

Mum didn’t even glance at it. Her eyes stayed locked forward, glued to the snaking trail of earth ahead. The steering wheel twitched under her hands as the track narrowed again, bordered now by scrub that reached right up to the windows. The branches overhung the path like arms, knobbled and dark, and they scraped across the car roof in intermittent bursts—sharp, metallic screeches that set my teeth on edge. It felt like something alive was up there, clawing to get in.

The vegetation grew denser, more defiant. Trees bent in from either side as though trying to reclaim the space we occupied, as if the bush itself had finally decided we didn’t belong. I saw fresh breaks in the branches—marks of other vehicles, maybe, though none recently. The bark around them was torn and raw, weeping sap that glistened like wounds.

I found myself imagining the landscape as a living thing. Not just trees and dirt, but a consciousness—a vast, patient presence that watched and waited. That knew we were here. That didn’t particularly want us to leave.

Or maybe it wanted to keep us.

The thought settled over me like a fresh welcome.

Then came the jolt.

The car bounced hard, metal groaning as something deep in its guts gave a sound I’d never heard before—a grinding, crunching churn that sent vibration up through the seat and into my chest. I gasped and grabbed the door handle, the plastic warm from the sun and slick with sweat from my own hand.

Mum swore. Not softly. Not muttering. Proper swearing, like I’d only ever heard through thin motel walls or from strangers in public arguments.

Silence followed. Not the comfortable kind. Not the silence of shared weariness. This one was heavy. It filled the car like smoke—thick, sour, pressing on our lungs with all the weight of things we couldn’t say aloud.

I caught Mack’s eyes. He was looking back at me, his expression unreadable but full of something—apology, maybe, or regret. Or just tiredness. He held my gaze for a heartbeat, then turned his head and rested his forehead against the window, his breath fogging the glass for a second before disappearing.

Outside, we passed another rusted gate, swinging crookedly from one hinge. Beyond it, nothing. Just another paddock, another sprawl of empty land marked by the absence of anything alive.

I felt the question rising again—tight in my throat, heavy in my chest. How much longer? How far until the car stopped moving altogether? How long until someone admitted we weren’t heading anywhere that could be found on a map?

But I already knew no one could answer. Not Mack, with his silence and his clenched fists. Not Mum, with her hands welded to the wheel and her gaze lost in the tangle of trees ahead. Not even the cow from earlier, chewing through eternity behind a strand of barbed wire.

So I stayed quiet. I held Ribbons close, her stitched arm tucked into the crook of mine, her presence the only thing that hadn’t changed since this journey began. And I watched the scrubland lean closer, closer, as if preparing to fold itself back over the road the moment we passed.