Ellis Road

Green reflective metal screwed to a wooden post, a county marker like the ones on every back road. It reads ELLIS RD NEXT EXIT.

The exit

Highway 40, mile marker 237. A stretch you can pull up on your phone.

The exit is there "every time I wanted it," at the corner of the eye. A driver can pass it for weeks.

In the mirror afterward the marker flickers between the number and the sign.

The road

Dirt packed hard enough to ring "like driving on bone." Pines that aren't pines, bark like television static. They get closer every hour.

A telephone pole with a square of tin nailed to it. On the tin, a zero with a line through it, silver, still wet.

The fuel gauge climbs past full. Keeps climbing.

Radio on, dial at off. GZS Radio comes through anyway: "all roads lead here now."

The road narrows. The way out is "Straight through, baby."

Dash clock going in, 3:17 in the morning. Phone on the shoulder, 6:52. The odometer keeps its own count: "Two hundred thirty-seven miles on a road that doesn't exist."

The sigil

The zero with the line through it is a linking sigil.

A chaos magic crew made it, and it went hand to hand through message boards and truck stop bathrooms, and by the account on file it "was already twenty years old" by the time it went up on an overpass. It grew a will.

Who keeps it

Ellis is an ally, with a good side and a bad side.

The Red Queen is her crone face: caution tape red, too many teeth set in a grid. She offers a menu. Some visitors get a fourth choice.

Standing

"Every road connects to Ellis Road, because Ellis is a spider web."

Open. The next exit is on the right.

Source of record: Cleared. Revised 2026-10-18.