There’s a billboard I pass every day on my way to work at a job I don’t want to go to in the first place. But I do, and I’m driving, and then I see it, rising from the morning fog, standing guard over the highway like a troll we must pay a toll of awe and attention to each morning. In the seven months I’ve been making this commute to the office, or I like to call it, “the freezer,” where I type on a keyboard with fingernails turning blue, where I hold my coffee cup to my cheek just to remember what it feels like to be warm, it has never changed.

The colors have been revived from their sun bleaching once or twice, I can’t say for
certain; I’ve lost count. Which leads me to deduce (listen to me, I sound like I should be dashing across the moors in search of a baying hound) that it is being regularly replaced. Which then makes me wonder: who is paying for such a monstrosity?

I looked it up the other day, how much a billboard costs, while I was sitting in a meeting, the man on my screen droning on about sales quotas, and fiscal quarters, and how the golfing was last weekend. They never call on me in those meetings, but insist that I attend. I couldn’t find my billboard location specifically. (Does that mean it’s been rented out in perpetuity?) I did, however, find similar rental spaces along highways driven by commuters like me, who honestly would rather work from the comfort of my own home, wrapped in a blanket fresh from the dryer (because if I worked from home I’d actually have time to do laundry during the day and not at midnight when my apartment’s two machines are finally free).

The answer was an ungodly amount of money.
Like, more than anyone should spend on such a thing, in my opinion.

Though, I suppose, if it bothers the cars filled with suit-clad men and T-shirt-wearing college commuters half as much as it does me, then it may just be worth it. (Do you think anyone ever asks, “Grandma, have you been tested lately?” Yuck!)

It has appeared in my dreams more than once now, looming over my resting hours as
often as my wakeful ones, reminding me that it is just mere minutes left until I must, once again, exchange the precious seconds I have to be breathing on this planet (maybe the only one with living, breathing life forms like us) for my ice cold fingers to type letters and numbers into tiny boxes so that men in a city halfway across the country can know if they can afford to buy their mistress a house in cash without their wife finding out.

Sometimes, I think about quitting, just so I can sleep without the terror of this billboard in my dreams. I wonder if it would make a difference now, or is it lodged into my consciousness forever. Will I be dreaming about missing the SATs and suddenly find myself face to face with the smiling, wrinkled faces of the billboard just before the alarm goes off reminding me I have to go to work, only to remember I retired four years ago and maybe I should be the one getting tested now? Is that the future that waits for me?

Arson. Arson might be the answer. I could attempt to burn it down. But wait, maybe its
scaffolding is metal. Damn, it’s almost certainly metal. I wonder how hot a fire would have to be to melt the metal legs it perches on. I probably shouldn’t google that on my work laptop. Tempting, but I have more self-preservation left in me than that. Barely. Just barely enough.

Would incognito mode do the trick?

I better not.

At least they haven’t gotten wise and installed one for the other side of the highway.

If I ever have to see it going there and coming back, I’ll quit.

Yeah, that’s when I’ll quit.

Contributor Bio:

Sydney M. Crago is writer, editor, and book lover based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her first collection, entitled “Musings: Poems and Tiny Tales” was published in 2024. Her work is often inspired by art, mythology, fairy tales, and a need to explain the un-explainable. When she is not reading or writing, she is playing with her dog, Luna, and trying new dishes at her favorite restaurants. 

Find Sydney M. Crago on Instagram @SydneyMarieBooks and at SydneyMCrago.com.