Don't Talk to Strangers

''Listen to me, Billy. Don’t you ever talk to strangers. It isn’t safe'', Mom always said, but I never believed her. For instance, this dude seemed alright to me. He didn’t mess around with my radio, or complain about how slow I was, or really do much of anything at all. When I picked him up, he just whispered that he was heading to Salisbury and that was the end of it. Mom told me to get back home as soon as possible, but it was gonna be long drive back to Maryland, and I thought it would be nice to have some company. I hate the quiet.

“You hungry?” I asked this dude.

“Nah.” He looked down to wipe his glasses. “I’d rather—”

The roar boomed out of his stomach. I laughed a little and he grabbed his gut as if it would make a difference.

“Come on, dude. I’m starving too. How about I getcha a burger or something at the exit? My treat.”

“Um, okay.” He slipped his glasses back on. Now he could properly examine the finer details of my mat, his favorite activity for the past twenty miles. Poor dude, I thought. Maybe his mom told him not to talk to strangers too. Really, what kind of advice is that to teach a kid? The world is full of strangers, almost nothing but strangers, and I’ve needed those strangers my entire life. Strangers tow your car out of the lake, strangers give you medicine when you’re sick, and strangers feed you when you’re hungry. Strangers keep each other alive, and moms just hold you back. Why? I don’t know. I can’t imagine whatever paranoid delusions go through their heads.

So there we were, two strangers who needed each other but didn’t want to admit it, so we’d rather stare at nothing, him at my mat, and me at the long, dark, endless road, endless night. Screw that! “How do you feel about McDonald’s?”

“That’s cool, I guess.” His volume dropped low, even low by this dude’s standards.

“You want anything else?”

“Well. . .” The dude finally picked his head off my floor. “I’m more of a Burger King guy to be honest.”

“Really? My mom can’t stand paying for Burger King.”

I broke through. The dude actually said something that was slightly audible: “Well, yeah, you pay more, but I actually like eating burgers that taste like beef and not greasy mush. You also get more for that money, I think.”

“You know what? You’re totally right! Last time I went to Mcdonald’s, I ordered a ‘Quarter Pounder.’ Let me tell you, that shit sliver wasn’t a quarter pound of beef!”

“Maybe they meant a quarter pound of bun?”

I laughed with my dude until my stomach roared and turn inside out. Best to change the subject, so I looked out to the road. Nothing passed by my lights but pavement and grass, at least as far as I could see, and that wasn't much.

“Have you ever seen anything strange out here before? You know, like on the road?”

My dude chuckled. “Yeah, a few times. You?”

I peered closer into my windshield, but I don’t know why. Maybe talking about it would make it all happen again. “Dude, one time I was driving away from my mom’s place, and I swore I saw a jackalope, a real fucking jackalope with horns and everything, scurrying across the road!”

This smirk came across my dude’s face.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Nah, I do. I believe that completely.” He slipped his glasses off and pocketed them. “In fact, I think the only reason you don’t see more jackalopes is because something hunts them, like a natural predator or something.”

“Maybe, like something out in the woods? Hey! My old neighbor once tried to convince me a family of inbred cannibals lived in the woods outside of town. You think they hunted all the jackalopes and then moved on to people?”

“Sure,” he said. I guessed it was getting a little stuffy in the car, and that’s why my dude unzipped his jacket. “Maybe that’s why nobody can find Bigfoot either.”

“For sure.” Only five more miles until the exit, and as hungry as I was, I didn’t want our fun to end so soon. “I’m telling ya, I’ve seen some strange things in these woods.”

“I bet I can top them all,” he said, rolling the jacket off his shoulders, “I bet I got something weirder than anything you’ve ever seen before.”

“I gotta hear it.”

“It’s not really something that I can tell you.”

“Dude, why are you taking your shirt off?”

My heart, my guts, everything inside me fell straight into my foot, slammed the breaks when I saw them. The jaws chattered, smiling across his belly. His skin flapped open, roared. “Well, what do you think?”

Barely heard him. Too busy watching the dude’s second mouth burp. This yellow cloud leaked from the teeth. A rotting smell. “My God. . .”

“Better than a jackalope?”

I looked at him straight in the eyes. “Hell to the fucking yeah that’s better than a jackalope.” I nearly pulled my hair out looking at this thing. “So, like, whenever you’re hungry, I guess you’re eating for two, huh?”

The jaws chattered away as he chuckled. “You know what? I guess you could say that, couldn’t you?” The chuckles went deeper and the jaws hung open. Belly laughs. “Man, you are the first person I—”

He couldn’t finish, just kept on laughing.

It was pretty damn infectious. Me and my dude just sat there and laughed and laughed. His belly was roaring and mine was too, so I chewed his nose off. Needed a snack. Needed a stranger.