“Don’t Look…”

Home is missed…

Family is missed…

The memories of home can be found comfortably indulged on these long drives, 

long drives to reminisce after a long awaited visit, 

one where years are the distance. 

It’s a vivid recollection of memories, 

and he snaps out of it like a lucid dream, 

a trance of highway hypnosis. 

His gaze fixates on the road once more. 

He eagerly sips his coffee, hoping his drowsiness would be overturned by his excitement.

“Damn, I need to pee…” he says lowly but with an intensity to himself. 

He knows he needs to stop soon.

2:31 AM is read on the dash

He blackens it out with a press of a button

then switches his attention onto the rearview mirror, 

then back again to his sights ahead

“That’s odd” he thought, 

as he doesn’t spot a single car.

Nor was there was a glimmer of headlights or flashes of red

As a matter of fact, he doesn’t spot a single light post or light illuminating from inside of a house or building.

It all set in so mysterious and picked at his thoughts. 

That, and the pain that pressed against his bladder as each minute added, it was an ache that stung more & more with an urge to pee. 

He couldn’t hold it any longer… 

He rushes to pull off to the side of road, and puts the car in park

Peering through each of his windows then checking the back seats…

The pain persisted and twisted with an ache with each second.

There was nothing around… nothing around but the dark eeriness that wrestled with his thoughts.

It was a bad setting like that in a nightmare, and his imagination only made it worse. It concluded the, “what if’s…” and things that linger in the dark. The scary stories that were once told to him as a child. It takes only a “what if” and he could be the next story heard on why you shouldn’t drive late at night, let alone stop in the middle of nowhere. 

He rushes himself as he steps outside his vehicle. 

Glancing in every direction, 

double taking each look as his mind imagines what could come out of the shadows. 

The lyrics, “This is the end..” plays on, adding a creepiness to it all.

He checks around once more before making his peripherals parallel with the road. 

His stance light-footed but planted as he pees with as much haste as humanly possible, he does this whilst scanning each direction.

The moonlight illuminates what it can: the floor, asphalt, and so on…

and just then, the moon light began to dim in & out, as an overcast moved in. 

Then finally, all together, the moon light disappears with what stars flickered.

One more, and again as it was engulfed by a heavy set of clouds. 

At this moment, something can be heard scurrying from behind him; scurrying past bushes as twigs snapped

and with it, 

his nerves sound off like an alarm of tingles that rush down his spine. 

Tempted to look as he fastens his zipper & belt. Rushing and ignoring what he may see. In this commotion, he does hear what almost stops him, labored breathing on the other side of his vehicle. 

but with a haste, he rushes and tends to his zipper & belt, ignoring what he may see

but he does hear what sounds like labored breathing… it almost stops him but he instead only rushes to get back inside his vehicle. 

The driver seat cold from the time of him being absent out of it. He flips the lock switch and each door sounds off in unison.

He looks over to both of his windows from where the sound was coming from, examining what he could see, even in darkness…

The windows and car shielding him inside.

He nervously clicks in his seatbelt and is quick to get back onto the highway. 

Through his side & rearview mirrors, he sees a midst of dust spun up from the tires, 

his gas foot responsible

but even as he distanced himself from that spot, 

that feeling of eerie-ness continued, 

with parts of his body reacting with chills & goosebumps that he disliked.

Thuds from the music shake and pound on the doors, 

he didn’t like that either, 

and as he turned down the volume, there it was again…

It’s breathing… but now it was heard inside the car. Inside the car and behind him

It was a sound so deafening, that each breath and gasp adding a dark heavy weight to his body. 

It was intimidating to even move…

Still he glanced to the back through his rearview mirror; frozen… as he suddenly spots a figure in his back seat.

It felt like a nightmare with it was just sitting there….Sitting there and transgressing through my waves of fear. 

Terrified to even move, 

his words & voice lost due to what he was seeing, and he saw its face… 

It lingered in the dark, and the rest of it…. dressed in shadows.

It was a painted silhouette of a person 

but painted in darkness. 

His eyes widen and fixate on it, not wanting to lose sight of it so it doesn’t move closer. 

It’s breathing loudens & echoes through his ears. 

It suddenly stops…

Then…. a cold touch is felt.

It was felt grasping on his right shoulder…. 

                        to be continued….