This Book Does Not Exist Read Online Free PDF Page B

started to hallucinate. The brake lights on the semi trucks in front of me transformed into devil-like monsters, as my mental and physical selves seemed to separate. I had an out of body experience, and I no longer believed I could control my car. Thankfully, it passed. I caught my second wind once dawn began to break.
    Now, I pay the toll for the turnpike at the toll booth in Daventry and drive onto the exit ramp, which manages to be long without being winding. Both sides of the road are lined with trees, and the leaves seem to be falling off prematurely. The trees themselves are more ashen than I remember, and I wonder if they’re dying. The day itself is blisteringly grey, like someone flipped a switch on the sun to change the color of its light from golden to cement. I would expect this from Daventry in the winter, not in the summertime.
    At the conclusion of the exit ramp, I should find Route 58, a four-lane state highway that runs north-south through Daventry , straight into Lake Erie. I don’t. Instead, I discover a city. An advertisement for the paint company Sherwin-Williams, which famously replaced the LeBron James “Witness” banner, hangs from a middling-sized skyscraper. A baseball stadium with the lights wastefully on despite the time of day grabs my attention. I see a sign for East 9 th Street. Somehow I got off at the wrong exit. I’m in Cleveland, on the near west side Innerbelt , heading east. I can’t figure out how I ended up here, but I suppose this is the sort of thing that happens when you haven’t slept for a day and a half.
    In front of me, the road bends sharply underneath a tall bridge, coming up on a high accident area nicknamed “Dead Man’s Curve.” The next exit is for Carnegie, so I take it, planning to use the corresponding entrance ramp to loop onto the westbound side of the highway and head back towards Daventry .
    My plan fails, however, when the entrance ramp I need to get on is closed in order for city workers to replace a mangled crosswalk sign.
    Heading east down Carnegie, away from downtown Cleveland, I try to see if my surroundings match anything from my memory of previous drives to the East Side and the campus of Case Western Reserve, where a friend went to college. I think I can remember how to get back to Daventry from there. Some things do, like the warning signs for electronic speed traps, the frequent stoplights, the new construction interspersed with broken down homes and gas stations with bars over the windows. Other things don’t. I’m unsure about many of the structures that belong to the Cleveland Clinic. Is this how they used to look? Were they even here before? I can’t say for sure whether this is the right way or not, so I decide to keep pressing onward until I can.
    Eventually, I spot the name of a street I definitely recognize – Cedar Road – and it clicks for me that this is a route I’ve taken in the past. I’m supposed to turn right onto Cedar, I remember, so I do.
    Cedar Road is filled with potholes that would look at home amongst craters on the moon. I am the only traffic. Cliché-like, small groups of men stand on the corners of adjacent streets, either to do business or to escape dilapidated homes. The number of houses that have been abandoned altogether multiplies the further I look off the main drag. It would be easy to assume these houses are victims of the foreclosure crisis, but I suspect they may just be products of moribund prosperity in the Industrial Midwest.
    I pass an ancient strip mall with only one open store, a barbershop. The rest of the spaces are up for rent. If the people living here, in what I guess are the East 80’s, weren’t already haunted by reality, the mall could be turned into a haunted house for Halloween, I think, as I check the street signs to confirm exactly where I am.
    As soon as I note the sign for East 84 th , the sense of confidence I had when I turned onto Cedar erodes. 83, 82, 81… The numbers on the