Stars and Sabers Publishing
Stacey M. Kells and her two brothers, Spencer and Shelton, along with their best friend Faye, set out on a road trip west in a renovated camper van. What begins as an attempt to escape their ordinary lives becomes something far stranger when, after stopping at a gas station called Legend Roadstop, they slip out of reality entirely. The world becomes empty—no people, no working phones, just endless highway stretching through the desert.
As days pass, the four travelers realize they’re trapped in a “nothing-world” where normal rules don’t apply. Time behaves oddly—the moon phases don’t match what they should be. Gas mileage makes no sense. Stores are fully stocked and powered, but completely abandoned. They keep driving west, hoping to reach a city, but the landscape just repeats endlessly.
The group’s dynamics are tested as Shelton obsessively documents everything, searching for patterns, while Spencer tries to maintain control and protect everyone. Faye grows increasingly frustrated with their situation. When they discover a message on a highway sign requesting emergency assistance at Exit 151, they investigate and find Ramone, another person trapped in this strange reality. Ramone joins their group, and a romance develops between them and Spencer.
Strange occurrences accumulate: they keep returning to the same locations despite driving in one direction. Stacey finds her five-dollar bill in a cash register she’d left it in before. They see their own graffiti on a picnic table they hadn’t visited yet. Most disturbingly, they recover Spencer’s lost phone—one they’d sent away on a drone that disappeared.
The truth becomes undeniable when Stacey follows a calico cat (which keeps appearing throughout their journey) and discovers they exist in multiple places simultaneously. She sees Ramone arriving at the tower for the “first” time while they’re also with the group. She finds their camper van parked at a motel while they’re camped elsewhere. The group is caught in some kind of temporal loop.
In a climactic realization, Stacey discovers she can move between moments by entering an arcade hidden behind the motel. Using a quarter from the original gas station vending machine, she plays a song on a jukebox—and hears her past self react to it outside.
Finally, Stacey finds herself back at the Legend Roadstop on that original night, but with crucial differences. Her brothers and Faye are more relaxed, more connected. When Ramone approaches asking to use their phone, Spencer recognizes them immediately. This time, when Stacey kicks the vending machine, she retrieves the quarter and gives it to Ramone.
The story suggests that the characters have been living and reliving these moments, perhaps learning and growing through each iteration. The “liminal” space they inhabit exists between past and future, grief and healing. Ultimately, it’s about a family processing trauma from their mother’s death, finding connection with each other and new people, and choosing to exist fully—even in uncertainty.
Ren Hutchings is a speculative fiction writer, writing mentor, editor, and lifelong SFF fan currently living in London, UK. Ren is the author of time travel space opera UNDER FORTUNATE STARS (Solaris, 2022) as well as the upcoming AN UNBREAKABLE WORLD (Solaris, 2025) and THE LEGEND LIMINAL (Stars and Sabers, 2025).
Ren loves weird mysteries, pop science, elaborate book playlists, and pondering about alternate universes. Most of what she writes involves space, time, history, and/or uncanny liminal places.