"Here I am again, driving down another god-forsaken stretch of road to god-knows-where in the middle of the night. It's like that most of the time, now. Night, I mean. Or at least it's night more often. I mean that I'm active more at night now, not that night is any longer than it used to be.

"'Course, it might be. I lost my watch somewhere in the fall down the well, and this piece of shit I'm driving's got no dashboard clock. It might be two in the afternoon, for all I know. But that's impossible. No, it's improbable. I've gotten a little leery of the word 'impossible' in recent...weeks? days?

"I haven't seen the sun proper in a while. I've seen daytime, but there's always clouds or a haze or a mountain range in the way. And you know what? I'm okay with that. I've gotten used to night. It's comfortable. It's quiet. I'm almost starting to prefer it, a strange nyctophilia settling into my soul. If I still have a soul. That fellow down in Hell wasn't too clear on the price of this junker.

"So I spend my days driving at night, just the stars, the road, and...wait. Is that a hitchhiker?"