It was one of those nights that gets your mind thinking too much and makes things like axe murderers seem almost believable. I was driving home at about 11 pm on near-deserted back roads, with 300 miles and 2 state lines left before me. It was a cloudy night, and because of this the only light to be had was the amber glow of my car's headlights and rarely, the blue halogen lamps of some far-off ranch or farm. It was raining, too, a steady drizzle made to seem worse than it was but the fierce wind howling out of the north, battering my car and pushing it towards the passenger lane. The night was dark, lonely, and I was thinking too much.
But really, what else can you do when you are driving down the middle of a godforsaken road in the middle of nowhere, racing to get home as fast as you possibly can because your overactive mind has been conjuring images of people or worse things out to get you? The night was a perfect breeding ground for demons of the mind, who pushed and pulled synapses to make connections and spark thoughts that would be laughable in the light of day.
I saw the twin headlights of a farm truck coming towards me a few miles ahead on the wet pavement, and I tried not to think of all the stories I'd ever heard about the driver who meets an oncoming or passing (it varies with the telling) vehicle and is horrified to find it is either occupied by A) skeletons, B) rotting corpses, or C) nobody at all. I'm not sure which would terrify me the most, and I was relieved that when the truck passed and I couldn't see the driver on account of the sheets of rain streaming down the windshield. I plunged back into my dark solitude with a sigh of relief.
My car was filled with a faint coppery smell that reminded me of blood, and I again thought of the crazed axe murderers that had haunted my dreams ever since an ill-advised viewing of a slasher film at age 8 with my best friend when his parents were out. The idea of a homicidal, almost superhuman killer hacking up his victims with an instrument as painful and inelegant as a dull axe terrified me in ways words could not describe, and if I was ever asked to describe, in my opinion, the worst way to die I would reply without hesitation, "At the hands of an axe murderer." Despite being in my mid-20s, my dreams since that night have been regularly haunted by huge, lumbering men in bloodstained jeans and torn red flannel shirts, men who wore black ski masks to hide their faces and carried huge, red-spattered axes worn dull from years of tearing apart flesh and sinew and bone. And no matter how big they were or how spry and nimble I was, they would always catch me and I would feel a sharp pain in the side of my neck, and then would watch from the ground as the killer savagely hacked at a now-headless body with the axe, screaming and bellowing in orgiastic rage as my vision slowly faded to black. I remember when I was a child living with my parents, and I would wake up sweating and clutching the sheets, my mouth still moving to form screams of fear in the dream, despite being severed from my vocal cords. When I finally would scream, it wouldn't stop until my parents came running in to soothe and placate me, finally returning exhausted to their beds an hour later. They were genuinely concerned for me until I learned enough self-control to keep from screaming and worrying them needlessly.
I hit a pothole in the road and my belongings in back thumped against the rear seat, and I was consumed by visions of a man crouched behind there, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, when my fear and screams of terror were the greatest...
I swallowed nervously and took one hand at a time off the steering wheel to wipe my sweating palm on my worn-out jeans. Looking at the fuel gauge, my heart leapt in my throat as I saw I had less than an eighth of a tank of gasoline left. I didn't even dare to imagine being stranded out here with no gas, and I knew with a horrible certainty that either due to the darkest deeds of men or to the ever-increasing pounding of my heart that I would not survive the night. The relief I felt was intangible when I saw the familiar blue road sign proclaiming in reflective white letters "GAS 2 MI." Soon after it came the announcement "Next fuel 170 miles", and that made this announcement of fuel all the more fortunate. Already I could see the small sodium-vapor lights of a service station in the distance, and increased my speed to reach the soothing comfort of the light.
The station was deserted when I came in, and appeared to be the kind built for
cross-country truckers who can't afford to stop long. There was no mini-mart or even
attendant's booth, as the pumps appeared to be card-operated. A grey concrete-block building stood at the far end of the parking lot, with three caged vending machines out front and two doors that carried the universal sign for "Women" and "Men", respectively.
I parked next to a pump right underneath one of the lights, and after scanning the area nearby to ensure there were no other people about or places where someone could hide, I turned off the engine, locked my passenger door, and climbed out. To my surprise, the wind had stopped, and the night was as still as it could be. I was thankful for this, as the concrete pad which held the service pumps was surrounded by a ring of gravel, and the telltale crunch of loose rock would warn me of anything approaching.
I examined the pump and found that it took not only credit cards but also cash in the form of bills as well, and I deposited a green twenty-dollar bill into the payment slot. Unscrewing the gas cap on my car, I fitted the hose to the opening and struggled for a few minutes to get the unfamiliar self-service pump started. I then sat back and cautiously surveyed the 360 degrees around me for any sign that I should leave, NOW. I peered under my car after remembering the stores of the killers who hide there and slash at your Achilles tendon with a kitchen knife, leaving you crippled and unable to run while they calmly perform their grotesque rituals of bloodshed. Thankfully, no one was there.
The pump clicked as the flow of gas shut off, and I jumped and pressed myself against my car before I realized what it was. Hands shaking and blood pounding in my ears, I removed the hose, replaced my gas cap, and was just about to climb back in the car when I heard the noise.
I listened for a minute, and just as I was about to write it off as my imagination, my ears picked up the stealthy sound of crunching gravel.
I froze. I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, and the only things I could use as weapons were mixed with my belongings in the back of my car. I slowly looked around, trying not to make any fast movements that would register in the periphery of SOMETHING that possibly had not yet seen me. I soon located the source of the noise and let out a sigh of relief, which quickly turned to hysterical laughter as I saw a lone coyote padding across the gravel on the far end of the station. It froze and stared at me when it heard my maniacal laughter, and then I watched in horror as it heard another sound, inaudible to me, that was apparently far more disconcerting than the laughter of a terrified man. The coyote's head swung around to stare in the darkness behind it and all at once the animal began running away from the service station with a speed that can only be caused by pure terror. I looked in the direction of the coyote's last glance and swore I could see a huge dark shape standing just outside the reach of the lights, and that I where I lost control. I recall the squeal of my tires as I peeled out of that service station, and my whole ride home was accompanied by a thin, quivery wailing that was somehow coming from me.
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I almost didn't recognize that I was pulling into my driveway until I saw the headlights shining on my battered trailer house. I looked at the clock and was shocked to see that it said 1:30 am - I made a trip of nearly three hundred miles in less than half the time that it should take a normal, sane driver. I started to laugh at this, a genuine relieved laugh, and I kept laughing until my stomach hurt and tears streamed down my face. It was absurd, a mature young man like myself being terrified of axe murderers and an imagined form in the darkness that was most likely just a larger and more aggressive coyote, which would explain the fear exhibited by the notably scrawny one I saw.
I looked around and noticed that the clouds were gone here, and the nearly full moon cast a beautiful silvery light on everything. I smiled. I was home, I was safe in the place that I could call my own, and for some reason, as long as I was here, the thought of hulking psychopaths held no fear for me. My smile grew bigger, and I set about unpacking the things from my trip.
I unlocked the trunk of my car and noticed that the contents HAD shifted during my drive, which explained the thumping noises I heard. I laughed as I took my axe out of the back, the dark red stains looking black in the moonlight. My ski mask fell to the ground, and I picked it up and tried vainly to brush the dirt away from where it stuck to the still sticky spots of a dark liquid on the front. I'll have to put it in the laundry tomorrow, I thought as I stuffed the mask in the breast pocket of my red flannel shirt.
The tarp, thankfully, did not come unrolled in the trip, and I was thankful for this
because blood can be so hard to get out of upholstery. My years of working out and hard living in the wilderness had paid off, for while the tarp-encased bundle had to weigh about 150 pounds, I hefted it like a sack of flour and carried it to the old rickety shed behind my trailer, where I'd leave it for the night to dispose of it tomorrow. As I opened the door, a small volleyball-sized object fell and bounced off my boot. I laughed and placed the bundled tarp on my workbench, then shut the door. I picked up the object by a few clumps of hair and threw it off into the woods - the coyotes and raccoons would make short work of it and were far better at disposing of those things than I.
That night I enjoyed the best sleep since I left home the week before. Strange yet indescribably comforting was the total absence of axe men in my dreams.