I need help. I have lost my family, my friends, and people I don’t even know who I have been near. I have no idea why and I cannot escape from my situation. I am writing this from a storage unit I rented in the middle of godforsaken nowhere in the hopes that whatever is going on will not happen to those of you who read it. I have tried to isolate myself from as many people as possible, but even that doesn’t seem to be enough.
This all started happening at the end of October. I was walking with a friend of mine back to the parking lot of our school library about a month ago. We had been pulling a long, coffee-fueled study session for one of our midterms. It was around 2 AM by the time we were leaving the library. Being October, it was already pretty chilly and at that time of night the streets were quite deserted for the large urban center of the city our school is located.
My friend and I exited the library in silence. Ten straight hours of studying had left our brains feeling like pudding and we were content to shuffle back to our cars in relative silence. The air was cold and the wind was unusually harsh that night. Leaves had long since changed their colors, and the few trees that lined the sidewalk were bare skeletons that cast long, unfriendly shadows on the pavement in front of us.
I am a senior studying microbiology. Our test was in the notoriously difficult immunology class that I shared with Kate, my friend who had been my studying companion. We are on an urban campus, which is dangerous for an attractive girl like Kate to be walking around at night. I was tired and my car was parked on the first floor of the parking deck, but despite my fatigue, I was more than happy to spend a few extra minutes walking her up to the third level.
The parking garage was silent as we exited the grimy stairwell. Kate’s small Honda was across from the door, close to the ramp that descended to the lower levels. We walked across the garage and as we neared her car, I stooped next to the barrier that separated the descending ramp from the parking spot adjacent to it to tie my shoe. Kate continued forward a step or two and paused to turn around and wait for me. As she faced me, I glanced up and bright headlights illuminated her body. Her silhouette was cast over me and the lights got brighter, but I could hear no sound of a car engine, or perhaps I could, but it happened so quickly.
Suddenly, the car caught up to its headlights and the last time I saw Kate, she turned her head to meet the light that came toward her. A large truck flew up the ramp and pinned Kate to her own car. The truck’s tinted windows concealed the driver, but loud music came from its cab like a sick, whimsical growl. The car’s driver did not seem to panic, they swiftly reversed down the ramp they came from and sped away leaving Kate in a contorted pile of metal and glass at the rear of the now crushed Honda.
I ran over to Kate, but it was no use saving her. The coroner that arrived on the scene said that she was dead before hitting the pavement and who could argue? The truck had some kind of lift and upon striking her had nearly separated her body from the legs she once stood on. I remembered the truck in crystal clear detail. Security cameras had caught the gruesome act in gory detail, but police had been unable to locate the truck or see its driver on the tapes.
You may be thinking that this was some freak accident or simply some drunk driver that caused the slip. But when I stood up and watched the truck speed backward down the ramp, I am positive that I saw myself driving with a delirious smile plastered on my face. The police had looked at me with incredulity when I gave my account of the event. I had given them a physical description of the driver matching my own, and when the sketch artist handed them a drawing of my own face contorted into that horrid grin, the police had assumed I was insane. The security cameras had clearly shown that I was outside of the truck and had held Kate as the truck escaped.
At the funeral, friends and family showed up to mourn the loss of their Kate. I was dumbstruck by the loss. She was so special to me and I had hoped we could maybe be more than friends some day. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the memorial. I couldn’t get my own deranged smile out of my head. I decided to go home to see my family and take some time off of school.
.
.
I arrived home on the day of the funeral to my childhood home. My mom and brother greeted me with pity. As we went inside, my mother nervously prepared dinner and my brother tried to make some small talk with me. Word had apparently gotten back to them about my account of the event and their worry about my mental stability showed. We ate our meal in silence and decided to watch some television as night fell.
My brother is a car nut. Or at least was an aspiring one. He was in his last year of high school and spent most of his free time working on his old 4Runner that my parents had passed on to him. He enjoyed making small modifications to his car and sometimes his friends would even bring their cars to get worked on.
The next morning, my brother was hard at work in our small garage. Today, one of his friends brought him a car belonging to someone he had met outside the local auto shop. The friend had dropped his acquaintance’s car off a couple days before I arrived to see if my brother could help figure out why it was running rough. The friend had convinced the guy that my brother could fix it, but he was going out of town for the weekend and asked him to drop it off at our house. My brother’s friend offered to bring it over and the man accepted. I thought it was odd to trust a total stranger with a car, but my brother said his friend thought the guy was nice.
My brother had his typical set up. Work lights were positioned on the floor near the belly of the car to improve his view of the engine’s underside. He worked on an old refrigerator box that easily slid on the smooth concrete floor of the garage and prevented oil from staining it. The radio always played the country station from the cluttered workbench that had rusty tools and spare auto parts scavenged from salvage yards and garage sales. Today, the car was up on cinder blocks gathered from a construction site near his school.
On this particular car, the oil pan seemed to have cracked and my brother’s trusty cardboard box had been saturated by the black, tarry sludge that leaked from it. I had come out to the garage to visit with him as he worked. I don’t know much about engines, so I resigned myself to the workbench to mindlessly fiddle with the miscellany that covered its surface.
Eventually, my mother came out to join us and bring some iced tea for a break. She walked around to the opposite side of the car to help my brother from under it. As she walked by, time seemed to stand still. It was like I was a spectator of a horrible play. I saw the puddle of oil that she slipped on. I saw the work light get soaked in tea from the pitcher that fell out of her hand. And I saw the spark that jumped from the shorted wire of the light to the cardboard box where my brother laid working.
The oil puddle erupted into a smoky plume. My mother had fallen on the floor and kicked wildly to escape the flames that grew rapidly from beneath the car. My brother’s screams were deafening until the cinder blocks cracked from the heat and the vehicle fell. I was stirred to action and dove toward my mother to save her, but the heat and smoke that filled the garage were suffocating. I ran into the kitchen to grab the fire extinguisher under the sink. With the fire extinguisher in tow, I flung open the door to the garage to meet a heat so intense it left blisters on my forearms. I ejected the contents of the fire extinguisher to no avail. The flames creep into the house and I was forced outside.
My neighbors had seen the smoke and phoned the fire department. It was far too late by the time they arrived. What was left of the house was smouldering in the small lot of our sul-de-sac. The police and coroner arrived to begin their investigation. The EMTs were giving me oxygen and wrapping my arms in bandages when they arrived. I told them the details I could. I felt as if I could barely speak. I was dumbfounded. Losing my family was overwhelming and I couldn’t handle it.
The police had summoned my brother’s friend when I told them about the origins of the car. He stood on the curb giving the police details about the owner of the car so that he could be informed. The police asked for a description and my brother’s friend saw me out of the corner of his eye and pointed directly at me. He looked shocked to see me sitting there.
‘That guy! He’s the owner! What on earth are you doing here?!’
‘I am John’s brother,’ I said. ‘ I have no idea what you are talking about and I have never met you in my life. John was only just telling me about you this morning.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ he replied. ‘I have your phone number and everything right here.’
He held up his phone and scrolled through his contacts. He hit ‘Call.’ The last thing I remember before passing out is my phone beginning to ring from my pocket.
.
.
I woke up the next day in my hospital bed. My arms stung from the burns and I was so hoarse. My throat felt like sandpaper. I looked around the room. It was a bleak sight. The gentleman next to me was sleeping with a tube sticking out of his mouth and what appeared to be his wife sleeping huddled in a chair next to his bed. The TV was muted and playing some terrible daytime soap opera in grainy picture. I noticed a cup of water sitting on the stand next to my bed and quickly chugged the glass.
I sat up and thought about the events of the past week. My best friend had died; my family was burned to death in front of me. Who the hell was this person that looked so much like me? How did they get my phone number? What was happening?
Anxiety rose in me. I could hardly breath. I jumped up to the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I dry heaved into the sink for a couple minutes and then slid to the floor sobbing. Outside the bathroom, I heard the lady stir and say something to her husband, but it came muffled through to the bathroom. He didn’t reply, but I heard the door to our room open and shut.
‘Hello doctor, has there been any update on my husband? Doctor… Doctor??’
Suddenly the woman shrieked. I sprang up and threw open the door. The doctor had his back to me and was standing over the husband throwing his arms against him. Blood splattered against the ceiling and on the wife who was screaming on the opposite side of the bed. I realized that the blood was coming from the ballpoint pen firmly clutched in the doctor’s gloved hand.
The wife saw me standing in the bathroom doorway and turned white. She fell to the floor, and the doctor left his bedridden victim bleeding into the dark puddle forming on the covers. He walked around the bed, and I saw that his face was covered in a surgical mask. He threw his pen aside and mercilessly picked up the metal-framed chair that the wife once slept in and threw it where she had fallen to the ground. The chair made a sickening thud and a jet of blood spurted onto the wall and all over the doctor’s white coat. He looked back at me and removed his mask to reveal the horrific grin that I had seen in the truck and that had haunted me.
I saw my own face staring back at me. The smile was unwavering, and his eyes unblinking. I wish I could say that I confronted him and ended it right then, but I was terrified. I raced out of the hospital room away from whatever the fuck that thing was. It couldn’t be human. How could it be? I ran as fast and as far as I could. I don’t know how long I ran, but at nightfall, I had made it somewhere near the highway running near my town. There are woods there and I crashed in exhaustion against a tree in the bitter cold.
I woke up the next morning, freezing cold, still in the hospital gown. Dawn was just barely breaking and I could see a small house through the trees. I walked toward it, thinking that I could at least call for help or get some pants there. I approached the house and no one appeared to be home, but I tried the front door anyway. It eased open with a creak to a dark living room. I walked in to find a phone, but I didn’t see one. I called out without a reply. I walked down the hallway leading from the den and found myself in a bedroom. I am no thief, but I was so cold. I looked on the floor and found pants a little too big for me and a shirt that was a little baggy. I didn’t care. I tightened them on my waist with a belt hanging from the door. I absently put my hand in one of the pockets and felt a wallet. I slipped it back into the pocket and decided to place it in a more prominent spot in the kitchen or den.
I walked back down the hallway and noticed a fluorescent light coming from the kitchen. I hadn’t eaten in two days and was starving. I walked in to find a grisly sight. A man lay face down on the floor with what looked like a gun blast exiting half of his face. What I assumed was his wife’s body hung out of the oven and the smell of gas hung in the air.
I couldn’t take any more of this I fled the house and ran again. The house was at the end of a long, empty road. I took a look back and could have sworn that sick bastard was staring out the window, smiling his disgusting smile. I didn’t look back to make sure.
I finally approached a gas station on the desolate road. I found three hundred dollars in the wallet from the pants. I called a storage business about 20 miles more outside the city from the payphone outside the gas station. I bought three months of storage over the phone and spent the rest on gas station food and bottled water. I practically ran in and out of the store, not even looking at the attendant.
I walked toward the storage unit by some houses that were a ways off the road. I stole a bicycle from the front yard of a house I passed to speed up my journey a little. When I was at the gas station, I had arranged with the storage manager to leave me the key in a dropbox. I decided to set up a ‘living space’ here.
I have managed to stay isolated from everyone since my stay here. Luckily, the manager’s office has an internet connection and the manager leaves his computer on at night. I was fortunate enough to discover that the door to the office was unlocked last night, so I have written my story. I pray to God that someone is out there who can hear me and can help. I could have sworn that last night I saw myself walking by outside on the security feed and I don’t know what else I can do.
Edit: formatting
Submitted November 29, 2015 at 01:36AM by evilpetting-zoo http://ift.tt/1LFyfRe nosleep
No comments:
Post a Comment