![Park beyond](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/174.jpg)
![trunks popshot trunks popshot](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/78/b3/5978b3a4195a7fdaf265f067b7ac18e3.jpg)
His left ankle was stiff from hovering over the clutch. Nathan shifted his weight to alleviate the numbness of sitting in the same position for too long. ‘It looks big enough to have accommodation.’ ‘We should make it to Moolalling by tonight,’ she said on the afternoon of the third day. At least the roads and topography were the same, she said, as she traced her finger along the bold marking of the highway snaking across the faded ochre that demarcated the desert. The distance guide was in miles, not kilometres, and there were tears along the creases where it had been folded and refolded.
TRUNKS POPSHOT FULL
She had brought a large map that had belonged to her dad back when people still used them, one that draped over her legs like a blanket when unfurled to its full extent. Laura, feeling guilty in the passenger seat, overcompensated in her role as navigator.
![trunks popshot trunks popshot](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b0/f3/98/b0f3984859fe319c1e21fa11a271c2f2.png)
The column of corresponding distances would grow incrementally smaller until a welcome sign reared up unexpectedly, followed swiftly by another thanking you for visiting. The length of their names seemed to grow even as their size diminished, an ever-expanding array of consonants and syllables picked out in bright white letters. He watched for the names of these tiny settlements as they first appeared on the giant green signs that lined the highway, moving higher up the order each time another town flashed past the window. Nathan now drove for hours at a time, punctuated by brief stops at roadhouses of varying decrepitude where they used echoing cement toilet blocks and paid for overpriced petrol. Leaving the car running, she removed her crumpled plastic water bottle from the driver’s side cup holder and her packet of gum from the door pocket, barely waiting for Nathan to awkwardly manoeuvre himself over the central console before sliding into his vacant seat. Knuckles white on the steering wheel, the grey mound of fur in the centre of the road growing smaller and smaller in the rear vision mirror, she had continued on to the next rest stop, at which point she announced her refusal to drive any further. It disappeared beneath the roo bar and passed under the rear tyres with two twin thumps, Laura wincing with each one. Laura, who was driving, didn’t see it in time through the early morning lowlight. But on the morning of their second day, as they navigated truck traffic on the outskirts of a large mining town ringed with roundabouts and flyovers, a small kangaroo bounded out of the roadside scrub. At first they had tried sharing the load, carving up the journey into manageable chunks and marking their switchover points at convenient locations on the map in red pen.
TRUNKS POPSHOT SKIN
His watch, when he took it off at night before going to sleep at yet another roadside motel, left a strip of white skin around his wrist the shape of a hospital ID band. Nathan’s hands on the steering wheel were tanned an unfamiliar shade of brown from days of driving in the harsh February sun.
![trunks popshot trunks popshot](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3d/b7/fb/3db7fbf8557376e6298c415777805ba3.jpg)
A remote service station and its friendly proprietor are not all that they seem in Georgia Oman’s peculiar short story.
![Park beyond](https://loka.nahovitsyn.com/174.jpg)