 Picture this, you're walking home one evening, you're alone and the streets are empty. You walk a path you've walked a thousand times, suddenly you spot a road, a road you've never seen before. Maybe there's suddenly a cozy bridge crossing the large river that usually forces you to take a detour. Maybe there's a meandering path crossing a flowery meadow where there should be a construction site. Maybe you find that a tranquil alley has replaced the busy motorway in front of your home. The road looks completely different each time, but some things are always the same about it. It's short, it's peaceful, and it will grant you your deepest desire. Imagine that. Imagine that taking it will give you whatever you want most in life. Start on one end and reach the other. That's all you have to do. But there's a catch. Of course there's a catch. There's always a catch with these sorts of things, isn't there? I live in a small town surrounded by steep mountainous hills. A little road behind my house leads up a steep incline, circling one of these hills until finally ending in front of an old vineyard. The place gets busy in autumn when harvest season rolls around, but right now you'll at most encounter the occasional hiker along the route. I've started hiking up there myself. Part of my New Year's resolution. I hike up there three times each week, a bit higher each time. It was on one of these trips that I encountered, the vagrant. I'd sat down on a large rock in the shade of a lone pine tree and was about to bite into the sandwich I'd taken along as provisions. Suddenly, a disheveled figure stumbled into view. He was thin, his dusty clothes too wide for his scrawny body. A thick beard covered his face, and dirty strands of hair hung down from his skull in a wild, tangled chaos. He took a few steps, dragging his feet over the asphalt. Then he noticed me. He approached. His hungry gaze fixated on the food, then looked away, feigning disinterest, and dropped down to the ground where he pretended to massage his ankles. I instinctively scooped away from his figure, protectively clutching my food closer towards my chest. He watched me from the corner of his eyes. What was this guy doing here? There was nothing up this dead-end road. There were no cars, no people. There was nothing up here. Did he just get lost? I was about to scoop away even further when I noticed his shoes. It was hard to even call these things shoes considering the state they were in. The souls were wore down to the point they'd basically ceased existing. His bare feet were clearly visible through the large gaps, coated in dirt, swollen, calloused. Something had recently torn into the skin beneath his big toe, clotted blood spread all around the fresh injury. I instantly felt regret at how I'd reacted to the stranger a moment ago. All that suspicion and distrust. I cleared my throat. Hey, um, you want a bite to eat? I leaned slightly towards him and held out the piece of bread. His head snapped up as if he'd just waited for his cue. Oh, yes, he said with a raspy voice. Yes, thank you, thank you. He rose back up and took a few more steps towards me, limping slightly whenever his injured foot touched the ground. As soon as he was close enough, he reached out, hesitated for a second, then snatched the sandwich from my fingers and with a sudden motion as if afraid I might withdraw the offer at any second. His body dropped down into the dirt again. Thank you. He managed to say with bulging cheeks as he hungrily took the first few bites. The bread vanished in record time. He wolfed down the food, clearly not bothering to chew half of the time and I looked away to give him a bit of privacy. Have you ever heard of the road that'll make your deepest wishes come true? He suddenly said. He was still chewing, but he'd slowed down enough to become a bit more intelligible. Um, I… no. I answered with some hesitation. Picture this, you're walking home one evening, you're alone and the streets are empty. You walk a path you've walked a thousand times. Suddenly you spot a road, a road you've never seen before. He paused to take another bite. I leaned closer, still slightly confused by the direction our conversation was taking. Was he just sharing some sort of hobo legend to repay me for the food? Maybe there's suddenly a cozy bridge crossed in the large river that usually forces you to take a detour. He continued, maybe there's a meander and path crossed in a flowery meadow where there should be a construction site or maybe he suddenly stopped and looked into the distance, his eyes unfocused. Maybe you find that a tranquil alley has replaced the busy motorway in front of your home. He shook his head and pulled himself out of whatever vision had suddenly haunted him. The road looks completely different each time, but some things are always the same about it. It's short, it's peaceful, and it will grant you your deepest desire. He looked down at the last few bites that remained of the sandwich. Imagine that taking it will give you whatever you want most in life. His fingers tensed against the bread and a few crumbs of the crust fell to the ground. Start on one end and reach the other, that's all you have to do. He raised the last bite to his lips. But there's a catch, of course there's a catch. There's always a catch with these sorts of things, isn't there? His mouth opened and the sandwich disappeared. For a bit he just sat there silently chewing while I nervously tapped my fingers against my knees, waiting for him to continue. What's the catch? My voice finally broke the silence. I'd gotten more involved in his narration than I could have anticipated. He looked at me, then down at his now empty palms as if waiting for more food to magically appear there. The catch, he mumbled. The catch, right, the catch, is that you have to walk the road with your eyes closed. No blinking or peeking, no matter what. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Not such a short and straightforward route, how hard could it be to do this blind? His voice broke and he closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. It seems so easy until you reach the middle of the road and the sounds come. A startling scream as if some terrifying beast has appeared in front of you. Beautiful, angelic music beckoning you to look at its creator. The voice of a loved one who just passed away, no matter what you hear, keep your eyes closed. Or else what? Or else, well, it said that. He stared down at the ground while one of his hands rubbed his injured foot. The wound had opened up again and fresh blood was seeping over his soul. According to the legend, you will be trapped on this road forever. Oh sure, you'll reach the end, but then you take a turn and you take another and suddenly you notice that you've stepped onto the road again. It looks different, but you can tell somehow. So you turn around and try to retrace your steps, but the path you just came from has suddenly changed. You stumble across it confused, and then you look down and notice that you're on the road again. His breathing grew louder and more rapid, his hands wildly motioned in the air in front of him. So then you start running and running faster and faster until your legs hurt and still you keep running. The landscape flies by, rapidly changing, but no matter how much it changes, there is one thing that always stays the same. You're on the road again, and again, and again, and you sink down exhausted. And when you wake up, you're back and you walk for days and months and years, hungry and cold and tired until you finally decide to end it all. So you do and you feel yourself fade away and you think you finally escaped and then your eyes close and your breathing stops and you grow cold and then and then your eyes fly open and you're back on the road. His voice had become more and more intense the longer he'd spoken. He was shaking. His eyes were staring into the distance again. I noticed that I had grown equally tense. I rubbed my upper arm in an attempt to fight off that shivering feeling that had crept beneath my skin. Then I forced out a polite little chuckle. Well, that's quite the story. I said, just one little hole. How could we ever find out what happens to those who open their eyes? If the story is true, they're trapped on that road forever, right? They'll hardly be able to tell anyone what happened, right? Rationalizing the story in this way helped me get a grip of myself. He had told it quite convincingly, but in the end it was just some silly little legend. He nodded, then pulled his legs towards his body. Yeah, you're right. I guess you're right. His head dipped forward and squeezed itself against his knees. It was a car horn, you know. What? I said, unable to really grasp his sudden non-sequitur. No demonic voices or angelic messages or siren songs. Just a damn car horn. And I was sure I'd made it to the other end and that I'd accidentally stumbled into the road. So I just... I just... He fell silent. I stared at him, my mouth opening and closing as I struggled to find an appropriate answer to the strange outburst. Before I found the right words, he suddenly pulled his upper body away from his knees, shook his head, and let out a laugh. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. I'm just tired. It's getting late. He stretched his legs and began standing up. Well? He said, trying to get a sense of levity back into his voice. What would you ask for if you ever stumbled on the road? Uh, I don't know. Money? Eternal youth? I guess I'm not really creative when it comes to this stuff. I gave him a smile. What about you? It's your deepest desire. He stared at the horizon, which was slowly turning orange from the setting sun. Getting home. He said with a grave voice. Then he took a deep breath and began to walk away. I sat there, the weight of those last few words pulling me down. When he'd vanished behind that last corner, I came to a sudden decision. I jumped up and began jogging after him. It felt wrong to just send him away like that. I was sure I still had a pair of sturdy shoes at home, shoes I never wore anyway. Might be the right size for him, better than his current pair in any case. We'd passed the house anyway on the way down. I rounded the corner and stopped dead in my tracks. There should have been only one way to go. One single serpentine road taking a sharp turn to the right, clinging to the mountain side. Now, however, there was a second road branching off. It led straight forward through a calm patch of forest where there should have been nothing but empty air. I stepped closer. The vagrant story was still fresh on my mind. Picture this, you're walking home one evening. A fresh mirror of blood vaguely shaped like a footprint was visible on the gravel of this new road. Clearly, this had been the way the stranger had taken. I stared ahead, now standing right at the start of the road. It seemed completely harmless. I could see the end just a few hundred steps in front of me. My deepest desire and all it would take was to walk this short distance. I closed my eyes and raised my left foot. The world seemed to freeze. I was still standing there, ready to take a step forward, just one little step. And then I just have to keep walking for a minute or so with my eyes closed. How hard could it be? And still my foot refused to move, refused to take this first step. The picture of that bloody footprint kept coming back to my mind. Being trapped on that road, walking and walking through freezing nights and burning days through hunger and thirst, always walking until the legs go out and you crumble to the asphalt and you die, only to wake up from death and start walking again. My deepest desire just 60 seconds away, I couldn't do it. I opened my eyes and the road was gone. My foot was raised over the abyss. The world had changed back to how it should be. I was standing right at the edge of a cliff, my foot raised into empty air, just one step and I'd end up as a shattered heap of bones down there. A sudden gust of wind shoved against my back as if urging me to take this step. A few stones crumbled beneath my weight. I flung my arms around in panic, searching for something to hold onto. My foothold slipped. My knee buckled. I fell backward. My elbows painfully slammed against the ground. With panicked motions, I began crawling away from the edge, staring at the cliffside at the place that for a short minute had been a road. And then it reappeared, literally in the blink of an eye, one second it was gone in my eyelids fluttered shut and when I opened them again, there it was along with a surrounding forest as if it had never gone. I managed to scramble back to my feet. My heartbeat refused to calm down. I kept standing there, staring at the road while the sun slowly vanished beneath the horizon. My deepest desire. Just a quick little walk. My eyes drifted down to the bloody footprint on the gravel and I ripped myself away. I turned and began walking down the usual path, the path that I'd walked down thousands of times before. My deepest desire didn't come true that night, but I did get home.