This is a story from my father of his days of hippyness and traveling.

I about the 1970s my father had ended up in Australia (a tale all by itself) and, having virtually no money, was hitch-hiking from Perth to Sydney to get money that his father had left sent him. Now, for those of you who do not know (as he didn't) this basically means getting across the entire continent, most of which is relatively uninhabited desert. On this journey he got a lift with one of the many truck drivers transporting whatever it was that they transported at the time.

Then, as now, truck drivers got payed for the amount of trips they made and although it is really only humanly possible to make about 2 of these long distance trips without killing something, this truck driver had decided to take his third without any sleep (meaning he had been awake for about 30 hours when he picked them up).

Now, after about an hour of driving, the truck driver began to swerve violently from side to side as he struggled to stay awake. My father, perceptive man as he is, decided this was not the healthiest place to be and asked the driver to stop and let him and his companion off before they all died. After this rather unsubtle hint, our truck driver decided it probably would be a good idea if they camped out at the side of the road for the night.

Sitting around a fire and after a little drinking, the truck driver began to explain that he used to be able to do the 3 trips with no problem. This is because he, as many truckers do today, took speed in order to keep himself awake for the long periods of sustained boredom that is truck driving. However, not to long ago, this particular trucker had decided to give up the stuff and he proceeded to give the story of his epiphany.

A few months earlier, while the trucker was driving late at night and high as a kite he saw a beautiful woman wearing flowing white clothes walk out onto the road in front of his speeding truck. Not wanting to kill the woman, he slammed on the brakes and slid across the road, nearly over-turning the truck and killing himself in the process. After surviving his braking he got out of his truck to discover that there was no woman anywhere to be seen, and blamed her appearance on the speed.

A few months after this, on another speed supplemented trip, out trucker was driving down another dark and lonely road when before his truck materialized a camel. Now for those of you who know about Australia, camels are not part of the indigenous life and the truck driver assumed this was another speed induced hallucenation and didn't even slow down.

(You are going to have to imagine the accent of a slightly drunk Australian trucker for this part)

"So what happened?" my father asked.
"Fucking thing was real, camel all over the fuckin' road and my truck."

Now it turns out that camels had been brought to Australia at some time in the past and some of them had escaped into the wild where they flourished in the arid environment with no natural predators big enough to kill them on the entire continent. Our truck driver had managed to kill a camel as it came out of the desert for one of it's infrequent drinks.

He never took speed again.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...