PIT STOP - Short Story

NOTE: And another short story from the 'retired' folder! As always--short stories are not my forte. I need to be able to make them novels or I will get bored and make them too short. But this one I don't think turned out too bad? Feat. my usual 'this has a heavy driving' influence that definitely has nothing to do with most of my ideas coming to me while I'm driving. Interested in more short stories/essays/other writings? This page is what you're looking for. 

            The fields stretched on forever. Over hills, into valleys; even the occasional farm house, surrounded by a wind-break of trees to protect it from outside influences, didn’t break up the monotony. She let her legs dangle over the back of the passenger seat, sandwiching herself between the glovebox and the front of the faux-leather seat as her brother drove. The sun was still up, but going down, and the faded snatches of sunlight falling onto her legs supplied her with a pleasant warmth.

            “I’m low on gas,” he said, and she pulled the roadmap they’d snatched from the previous rest area out from between the bags of snack-mix that were nearly crushed under her curved back. She pulled it open, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she traced what she thought was (hopefully) their route to the next town.

            “Can you make it another thirty miles?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “If we turn off the air conditioning.”

            She responded by rolling down her window and told him the name of the town, and settled back into her position.

            She smiled a little to herself at that and then let herself zone out completely. She watched the fields pass, alternating between corn and soybeans, the occasional patch of wheat or sunflowers, variety is the spice of life, and listened to the music and waited for Fairview to come.

            But before they reached Fairview, there was another town.

            She didn’t realize that they were in a town until he slowed considerably. He’d gone forty on gravel and seventy on pavement consistently since they’d left home, and the drop in speed was so sudden that she nearly fell. She twisted her neck and shoulders, propping one elbow up on the dash, and frowned when she saw the spread of a small town before her.

            “Did you miss a town?” he asked.

            “No,” she said. “Must be too small for the map.”

            She sat up and peered out the window, squinting. It was a tiny town—looking to the left, where the town ended and where fields began, and looking to the right, the same. They were on a stretch of pavement so cracked and potholed that every few seconds there was another jolt, even with him going as slowly as he was. They rolled past a post office—no cars out front, the last three numbers on the zip code missing. After that, a bed-and-breakfast—no cars out front, but the paint was fresh and there were lights on in an upstairs window.

            He stopped in front of a gas station.

            “Well,” he said. “I guess we can have air conditioning. Run in and grab me a pop, would you?”

            She rolled her eyes, but grabbed a few crumpled dollar bills from the drink holder and opened the door. She turned back to look at what they’d passed and realized with some dismay that she couldn’t see the post office.

            She glanced at her brother. He didn’t seem worried. He was standing, staring at the gas pump with some concentration on his face, busy trying to figure out the archaic machine. Maybe they’d gone farther than she’d thought. Maybe—

            But she should run in and grab them something to drink. It was hot. Blazing hot.

            She walked around the gas station, stepping off of pavement onto sidewalk and then off of sidewalk onto gravel, trying to find a door, but it was harder than it should have been. She walked a little bit farther, sweeping ‘round back onto a patch of grass that tickled her sandaled feet, but there wasn’t a door in the back, either. On the third side, she saw what looked like a cellar door, embedded in the ground with a large, heavy chain looped around the two handles. She circled around front again, peering in the window.

            Lights on. An old man sitting behind the counter, reading the paper, a stick of licorice in his other hand and a bottle beside the register. It looked yellow and aged inside, like one of those old photographs.

            But as she looked, the man moved. Ate his licorice. A young man in a white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up came to the counter, and she craned her neck to try and see more of the building, but all she could see was rows of magazines and candy, beer and pop, cigarettes. She backed away from the window then.

            “I think we should keep going,” she said. Her brother looked up, annoyed.

            “I almost have this working,” he said. “Did you get my pop?”

            “No, there’s not a door—but come look in this window, it’s—stop looking at that gas pump and pay attention to what I’m saying!”

            He turned away from the pump, still clutching the hose in his hand, and opened his mouth to respond but instead dropped the hose with a yell.

            “That’s hot,” he said. “I mean—hotter than it should be. Like I stuck my hand in a fire. Should it be that hot?”

            “No, it shouldn’t,” she said. “Let’s go.”

            “Okay,” her brother said. He sounded shaken. He kept looking at his hand, which didn’t even look red. He headed back to the car, stepping off of the sidewalk and onto the pavement, and she watched as his foot sunk deep into the blackness. He didn’t notice. He didn’t notice as his boots went, first to the ankle, and then his second foot to the top. He noticed on his third step, when it got to his calf, just below his basketball shorts—then he screamed.

            She took a step back, vowing to stay on the sidewalk, on the grass, on gravel, on anything but whatever was doing whatever it was doing to her brother. He reached out for her and reached for the car, his fingernails scraping off of the hood, and she took another step back. Her heart was pounding hard, and she knew in the back of her mind that she should try and help him, try and pull him out or something, but she couldn’t make her legs move forward. She moved backward until her back hit the gas station, jarring the window.

            The pavement continued to suck her brother out of existence. It didn’t swallow him, which it had looked like it was trying to do at the beginning. It pulled parts of him down; his skin, his clothes, everything that it could catch hold of came down until there was nothing left. She could see the tires of the car start to melt and wondered if it wasn’t the pavement but the heat –

            She shivered violently then, and turned and pounded on the glass for all that she had. She pounded on the window, beating it so hard that she feared that the soft edge of her fist would go through, and screamed.

            Bang. Bang. Bang.

            Scream.

            Eventually, the man behind the counter stood and her heart jumped into her throat. He moved to the window, and she stared in, searched his eyes for some sort of pity, mercy, recognition—but he stared through her and drew the curtains.

            The shiver came again, pricking around her ankles—she ran. She went back to the sidewalk, her feet slapping against rough cement, searching for any sign of life. There were multitudes of houses, most of them overgrown and dusty, and the post office—that was ages away. That was unreachable.

            She turned at the end of the block, and at the end of that one, there was gravel. She sprinted across that and ended up in a backyard, something with a clothesline, a few shirts and pairs of jeans sending dancing shadows across the lawn. That pricking sensation at her feet started again and she started to run. She thought that was maybe her senses, maybe her body telling her to keep moving. That she’d find something that could help her if she kept moving.

            The next street was dark. It was overgrown, and the trees sent strangely humanoid shadows across the sidewalk. The road was gravel, but it looked more like dirt. She kept running. At least until it popped up in front of her.

            It hissed, raising claw-like fingers, and she took a step back—

            Another hiss, this one from the back—

            A step to the side, and there it was again—

            Back to the center—

            She jumped into the road, and a honk scared her back onto the sidewalk. This time, nothing hissed, and she looked wildly around. Nothing on the road, nothing on the sidewalk – just shadows. Just shadows from the trees.

            She walked now. Looked around. The houses were off. They were all two-story, and they were painted different colors, but they tilted. The one to her right, a red one, creaked so dangerously to the right she feared it would fall over. And to her left, another red one, this one tilted forward, looming over the street and casting no shadow.

            She kept walking, glancing to the sides every so often. A red one to the right, tilted to the right. A red one to the left, tilted over the road.

            And again.

            And again.

            And again.

            And so many times that she thought that she must be imagining it. For the first time, the thought that it was perhaps just a dream, brought on by miles of fields and sun, and that she would wake up in the car and it would all be alright.

            And then she took a step forward and another one of the things popped up. This time it grabbed at her, tearing her shirt and skin, and she took a step backward with a cry. Instead of disappearing once she’d taken a step back, it sniffed at the blood on its finger and she had time to examine it.

            It looked like a dried-out housewife. It stood in sneakers and yoga pants, its hair piled atop its head in a bun, its claw-like fingers accentuated with red nails. Its skin was mummy-brown, sunken in wrinkles and folds and crevices. It licked the blood off of its finger and smiled, showing a mouth of sharp, broken teeth.

            She ran again.

            Her heart was pounding hard, but she ran. When one of them popped out in front of her, she pushed them into the road and ran – giving them time for a shriek before the sound of a car slamming into a body reverberated through the empty street.

            And a few moments later, she was back in the sun.

            She stopped short and shivered for a solid thirty seconds, bending over with her arms crossed tightly over her chest and her hands squeezing the flesh above her elbows so hard it would bruise. She let out a sob and felt her stomach where that thing had cut her. Her fingers came away clean.

            Another sob came, but after that she cut them off. She started walking again. There waas a church up ahead, a faded white building with the cross at the top broken off. No cars in the parking lot. She could have crossed to it, could have entered to see if there was anyone inside who could help her despite the lack of vehicles, but she would have to cross the pavement.

            She kept to the sidewalk. Every so often a shadow would pass beside her, and she always avoided them. She didn’t know what they were, but she knew that there was nothing that could be making that shadow that she could see – so she left them alone.

            There was a park up ahead. She picked up her pace, because she could see someone swinging. She stepped off of the sidewalk and walked across the grass.

            It tickled her feet.

            She looked down, and the grass looked back.