A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Toll Booth CONCLUSION

Elias could feel it.  With every mile he conquered in his car his pulse quickened as if he were a bloodhound which caught the scent of a fox.  He was close, very close now.  Finally all his dreams would come true.  No more living vicariously through others or Pinterest.  Now was his time.  Yet still a nagging sensation at his conversations with the Hitchhiker and the Caveman started to gnaw at the corners of his mind.  Their words came back to him in fragments — half warnings, half riddles.

“Roads don’t always end where you think…” the Hitchhiker had said, his smile too wide.

And the Caveman, standing among impossible wheels and stone tools, had grunted something about “trade always costs more than coin.”

Elias gripped the wheel tighter. What did they mean? What could possibly matter more than finally seeing the Toll Booth for himself?

The desert began to open up around him. Rain clouds broke, and the stars spilled across the sky like shattered glass. The road stretched on in perfect black symmetry, arrow-straight into nothing.

Then, faintly, he saw it. A glow on the horizon, small but steady, like a lantern left burning in the middle of nowhere.

His heart pounded.

The Toll Booth.

“It’s real!” he exasperatedly exclaimed.  He almost didn’t want to believe it himself.  All the stories, the evidence and here it was, not pixels on a screen but wood and nails.  

Elias pressed down on the gas, but only slightly. His sedan rolled forward in a slow, cautious creep, headlights carving a pale tunnel through the desert night. The glow on the horizon steadied, sharpening as if it were waiting for him to close the distance.

He felt the pull deep in his chest now — that same electric thrum a greyhound must feel when the hare bolts across the track. His whole body leaned forward, urging the car on, straining toward the finish line.

The Booth grew clearer with each mile, details surfacing from the dark: the outline of the slanted roof, the faded paint on the toll arm, the solitary lamp buzzing above the window. It looked fragile, absurdly ordinary, like something ripped out of an old highway rest stop.

Yet Elias’ pulse hammered. He was the hunter, the Booth his quarry. And yet—something in his gut twisted the analogy. The closer he came, the more he realized the reverse might be true. He was the rabbit, hurtling toward a trap laid plain in the open.

He slowed unconsciously, the tires crunching over grit. The night seemed to still around him, even the desert insects gone silent.

The lamp above the Booth flickered once, then steadied, casting a pale cone of light across the empty road.

Elias swallowed hard, his breath fogging the windshield. Every instinct screamed to keep moving. Every warning whispered that he was already caught.

Elias eased the car onto the shoulder, gravel crunching beneath the tires until the glow of the Booth hovered no more than a quarter mile ahead. Close enough to see its outline clearly, not close enough to feel safe.

He cut the engine. Silence collapsed around him like a blanket, so heavy it made his ears ring. The desert air was sharp and damp, still carrying the memory of rain.

Slowly, he opened the door. The heat of the asphalt pressed up through his shoes as he stepped out, pulse hammering like the thrum of a race dog waiting for the gate to snap open. His eyes darted over the empty landscape — dunes like frozen waves, the road stretching back into infinity. No sound. No wind. Nothing.

The Booth itself sat under its lamp as if in a spotlight, every angle of its wooden frame too crisp, too deliberate. He took a few hesitant steps forward, hands tightening and loosening at his sides, trying to ignore the way his throat tightened.

“Finally made it.”

The voice came from behind him.

Elias spun. The Hitchhiker stood not ten feet away, hands tucked in the pockets of his coat, smile as thin and unsettling as ever. His eyes gleamed like someone who had been waiting for this very moment.

“Thought you might’ve turned back,” the Hitchhiker said softly. “But here you are… sniffing at the finish line.”

Elias’ breath caught, that gnawing unease in his gut suddenly sharper. For the first time, the Booth didn’t feel like the prey. It felt like the snare.

“I can’t turn back now.  I’ve come too far to just give up.  Everything I’ve ever wanted lies on the other side of that booth” Elias pointed, as if there were multiple to get confused with.

The Hitchhiker sighed and extended his arm, as if granting permission. “If you really think that’s where adventure waits… then go.  I cannot stop anyone from passing the Booth.”

“Thank you” there was a certain finality when Elias said it, as if making up his mind.  He began to stalk cautiously to the Toll Booth.

Elias’ shoes scraped against the asphalt as he advanced, each step sounding too loud in the silence. The glow from the lamp above the Booth pooled outward, washing over him in weak, yellow light.

Closer now, the structure looked older, weather-beaten, the wood warped in places as though it had been standing there for decades longer than the highway itself. The toll arm was down, its paint cracked and curling, one hinge groaning like it resented being disturbed.

A lone tumbleweed even rolled on by, but there wasn’t any wind.  Elias wasn’t sure to make of that.  He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

The glow of the lamp painted the Booth in tired yellow as Elias stepped closer. His breath misted in the cool night, chest heaving, pulse in his ears.

Behind the cracked glass, a man sat waiting. Not a wizard. Not a gatekeeper. Just… a man. Thin, pale, shirt washed to the color of old paper. His glasses caught the light as he looked up, eyes magnified, expression unreadable.

The chair creaked as he shifted forward. Then, with the same tone one might use to ask for spare change, he spoke into the grill:

“Arm.”

Elias froze. The word hit him like a commandment. He looked to the side — the Hitchhiker stood back by the road, hands shoved deep in his coat, shaking his head slowly.

The Toll Taker didn’t notice, or didn’t care. His attention was only on Elias, on the ritual.

Elias’ mouth went dry. “That’s it? Just… my arm?”

The man behind the glass didn’t answer. He simply slid open the panel, a gesture practiced into muscle memory. On the counter sat the Diviner, its little red light blinking patiently, waiting.

The Taker sighed the sigh of someone who’s been saying the same thing thousands of times before, “Stick out your arm so I can draw a drop of blood.  The machine will divine where you want to go and when, plus the toll for passage.  Arm” he reiterated irritatingly. 

Elias’ heart thundered. One step forward and he could hold out his arm. One drop, and the machine would hum. And the Toll Booth would decide the rest.  He held out his arm and the machine took its blood.  The machine whirred and buzzed to life.

The machine whirred and buzzed to life. Elias leaned closer, pulse roaring in his ears, as the first screen flickered on. Letters etched themselves across the green glow:

“Destination: Queen Anne’s Revenge. June 10th, 1718. Off the coast of North Carolina.”

Elias’ breath caught. His eyes widened. He knew that date — had pinned it years ago, an illustration of Blackbeard’s ship just days before its final battle. One of his favorite boards. One of his favorite dreams.

His lips curled into a trembling smile. It worked. It actually worked.

Then the second screen lit up:

“Payment Due: Your sense of wonder.”

The words hit harder than a blade. Elias’ chest tightened, his breath snagging. His sense of wonder — the restless spark that had carried him through years of searching, that made him hungry for mystery, that made him alive. Gone.

Behind him, the Hitchhiker’s voice dropped low, almost pleading. “Don’t you see? That’s the trap. You’ll stand on the deck of Blackbeard’s ship, Elias… but you’ll feel nothing. Adventure without wonder isn’t adventure. It’s just scenery.”

The Toll Taker didn’t react. His face remained slack, professional. One hand rested on the lever. His voice came through the grill, flat and procedural:

“Payment?”

“My…my sense of wonder?  I can’t give that up.  What would be the point?  To get what you’ve been longing for only to realize that what?  I can’t appreciate it?” he stammered.  The Taker just stared at him.

Elias thought of the sights he had the last few days on the road.  The strange water bottles from mythic sources, the funeral cortege in the desert that ominously called to him, and yes even the Gates Motel.  

“Wait…” realization started to dawn on him, “wait a minute.  Was that it all along?  It’s not about being somewhere, it’s about appreciating and finding that awe and wonder in where I am now?”

Elias’ mouth went dry, words tumbling out of him unbidden.

“I thought it had to be here. That all the stories, the threads, the boards — they pointed to some holy place in the desert that would finally give me a taste of life. I thought adventure was hidden, fenced off, rationed out to whoever was bold or desperate enough to find you.”

His voice grew steadier, chest rising and falling as he leaned closer to the glass.

“But it wasn’t the Booth that gave me anything. It was the road. The storm that soaked me, the cortege of mourners drifting across sand like a dream, the Caveman’s wheel that made no sense and yet made all the sense in the world. Even the motel, with its rusted neon and impossible parking lot — all of it was alive, all of it was mine, and I didn’t need anyone’s permission to claim it.

“I thought adventure was an address I could drive to. I thought wonder was a commodity I could pin to a board and keep on a shelf. But wonder isn’t given. It isn’t sold. It’s found. It’s lived. Adventure belongs to those who take it and those who notice it, wherever they are.”

His chest swelled, pride washing through him as if he had just solved the oldest riddle in the world. For the first time in years, he felt light, unchained, awake.

On the other side of the glass, the Toll Taker blinked once, unimpressed. Then, with the same bored cadence he had used for countless travelers before, he muttered, “Whatever.”

He reached up and, with a weary shove, slid the window panel shut with a final clack.

The glow of the Diviner dimmed, its red light pulsing unseen in the dark.

Elias heard chuckling as the Hitchhiker came up behind him, laying an understanding hand on his shoulder.

“I love that guy,” he mused. “And I’m starting to come around on you. You finally listened.”

“I guess in a way the Booth gave me exactly what I wanted — adventure,” Elias said.

“The Booth’s a powerful tool. It gives travelers precisely what they need, not what they want. You needed to stop living in those chatrooms and get on the open road. Roads can take you anywhere you want to go, you know…” The Hitchhiker flashed that trademark grin. Elias found it was starting to grow on him.

They walked back to the car, away from the Booth.

“Where to now?” asked the Hitchhiker.

“I think I’ll see what lies just a little further up the road.” Elias smiled. “Will I ever see you again?”

“I suspect anything is possible out here. See you on the road, friend.”