Anniversary

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I exhale, trying to open my eyelids. They flicker violently, unable to stay in one place. I pry them open with my shaky fingers. Everywhere hurts. My nose runs with blood and snot, and the air is strangely warm. The heat sticks to my body like glue. I roll over and push my chin down into my chest, trying to pull myself up. I can’t feel my legs. I thump and hit them mercilessly, but it feels like they’re not even there.

I’m on a road somewhere. I don’t know where, and I don’t know why or how. I can sense danger. The road is narrow, covered in little pieces of gravel that press into the bloodied skin on my arms. The ground beneath me feels somewhat living; it has an unnatural warmth to it that makes me squirm. There is no wind or breeze to soothe my slowly roasting body, the air oven-like in its temperature. I am already caked in sweat.

If I squint, I can make out steep, rounded hills lurking miles away, blanketed by fog. Other than that, the landscape is flat and grassy, stretching on for as far as I can see. No animals, no people. Just silence and the taste of copper. My lips are dry and swollen, but my tongue feels like a slug in my mouth. I try screaming for help, but all that comes out is a quiet, garbled whimper.

Around an hour passes. My vision fades in and out, and the blood slides down my throat, only to come gargling back up again. Its taste is putrid and sour, like acid. Rather than my energy slowly returning to me as I hoped it would, instead I feel as if I am burning out. One singular memory suddenly clears in my mind. It is my 65th anniversary today. I have no idea what the occasion may be.

My hopes surge as I hear the wheeze of a car engine coming down the road. A few seconds later, it rolls out of the fog. A navy-blue Packard Clipper, its headlights beaming down at me like the light of God Himself. It comes to an abrupt stop a few feet away, and I can see the driver, a middle-aged man, peering down at me, checking if he’s hallucinating. I beg for help with my eyes, and he steps out of the car, rushing over to my broken body.

The man kneels at my shattered hip. Panic flashes in his eyes, and his face is red and conflicted. His clothes are like mine, albeit a lot less bloody. Suspenders and a buttoned shirt, like an L.A. detective. He pauses and glances around at nothing in particular, then back at the driver’s seat, and even in my condition, I can tell what he’s thinking.

The man mumbles something unintelligible, places his hands under my armpits, and hoists me upwards, dragging me to the car door. I push out a garbled 'thank you'. The car is packed full of boxes, piling up to the ceiling in some places, with only the middle seat unoccupied and no leg room to speak of. The man crams me into the empty space and jumps into the driver’s seat, almost slamming the car door on his foot in haste.

The car’s engine coughs itself back into life, and the tires scrape down against the gravel as we set off. I shrink down in my seat, trying to hide from the blinding pain. The man darts his eyes to me as he U-turns back down the road, fishing out a map and a bottle of alcohol from the glove box. He rapidly unfolds the map and begins to trace a pathway with his finger. The bottle of alcohol is placed in my lap, and although I imagine the man wants me to pour it on my wounds, I crack open the top and take a powerful swig, struggling to stay conscious. It tastes warm and bitter. I reach over to a box and pull out a handful of dirty tissues. Now bloody, dirty tissues. They sink a little into my wounds, quickly becoming moist.

Neither of us have said anything to each other until the man finally decides to speak up:

“P-put pressure on the wound,” he mumbles. I almost don’t hear him. He speaks with a heavy accent, though I can’t place where from. Germany, or Russia, perhaps.

More minutes pass. I keep a hand planted firmly on my left hip, fingers pushing deep into the opening of my wound. The window-roller handle jiggles gently in my grasp; I am unable to find the strength to pull it around. The man seems lost; he worryingly gazes at the map every few seconds, squinting and cursing under his breath. I see the symbol of a hospital at the end of his finger. The road stretches on perfectly straight for what seems like miles. It doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere at all. Fog is still smeared all along the hills far away, in thick clumps.

Half-dried blood is stained on my teeth. My head bobs back and forth. I try to spit into my tissues but miss and dribble the saliva down my chin. Trying to stay awake, I periodically pinch my side, making my eyes twitch and flutter once more.

“What were you doing out here?” I groggily ask the man.

“Hmm?” he replies.

“You seem lost, but this road is just one straight line. Which way did you come from? How did you even get here in the first place?”

The man pauses, an anxious stare caught in his eye. I begin to wish I’d never asked as his face fills with worry. He shakes off my question and turns back to the map.

Even more time passes, and something undeniably feels very wrong. I catch occasional glimpses of movements in the fog. At first, just small glimmers of light that fade within an instant. But the further we ‘travel’ the worse they get. I can tell the man sees them too, he is just pretending he doesn’t. His face is still bright red, and his bloodshot eyes stay bolted to the windshield.

The map slips from the man’s lap. I glance upon it, and it confirms my suspicions. It makes no geological sense. There are no roads that straight, that long where we are supposed to be.

“Have you tried the radio?” I blurt out.

“No,” the man replies. “No, I have not.”

With a shaky hand, he presses a large button on the dashboard. There is a small crackle, and for a moment, it seems to flick into life. The spark of joy in our hearts is crushed, however, as a blanketing buzz of static drowns out anything being that could possibly be heard. Frowning, the man turns the radio off, replacing the buzz with depressing silence.

My body feels warm and heavy, yet I cannot sleep. It feels like I should have bled out by now, but still, blood trickles from my wound like a steady river. The pain is just as strong as it was when I woke up, maybe worse. My hair droops to my shoulders, dusting my arms with dandruff.

The fog's movements are increasing in frequency. They’re impossible to ignore now. Worse, the fog seems to be closing in on us. It’s approaching from all angles, little by little, making the car feel even more claustrophobic. The man utters a continuous string of profanities in his native language, getting more and more tense as the minutes pass by, and the fog gets closer, just a few more feet from where it was minutes ago.

The man’s fingers begin to twitch.

Within the hour, the fog is mere inches away from the road. Breathing heavily, the man eases slowly off the accelerator, letting the car roll to a stop. He gently moves his hands away from the wheel. I raise an eyebrow while the man’s face freezes in sheer terror.

“Why have we-”

“Shh-shh-shh!” he interrupts, placing a finger to his lips.

“Why have we stopped?” I continue, in a much quieter tone.

“You don’t see it?” he whispers. “Right in that… fucking fog over there.” The man jabs a stiff finger at a spot of fog just ahead of the car on our left. I lean in for a closer look, still not being able to make anything out.

“I… I just saw it. Some sort of massive fucking… thing. Three times the height of the car, easily.”

For what feels like days, we stare at the fog, waiting, anticipating for anything to show up. Neither of us dare to even blink.

"We're going to die out here," he speaks, his hand sliding down the side of his face.

"I won't get into Heaven. Believe me, I'm not a good person. I did some bad things back in the war. Things that would make you sick at the sight of me. Things that make me sick at the sight of me. We tortured prisoners. We took them away from their families and friends."

Silent tears roll slowly down the man's face.

"What about you? Got anything you'd like to confess?"

He turns and stares deep into my eyes, like he is examining my soul. I stutter, struggling to form an answer.

"I... I ran over a young girl in the countryside once. Never told anyone. I was drunk, I think. I was speeding. I just... left her there. She... oh, God, she might not have..."

I shiver, and the man turns back to face the wheel.

"Maybe we'll see each other again, in Hell."

My heartbeat pounds in my ears. The tension is unbearable. It feels like something is going to jump out at us at any moment.

“Back it up,” I finally speak.

“What?”

“Back it up. If there’s something there, we’ll go the other way. Better than just sitting here, waiting to get eaten.”

The man nods and places a sweaty palm on the gear shift. For a moment, time seems to hang still. Nothing moves, not even the fog.

An unholy screech ripples through my eardrums just as the car begins to reverse. I clamp my hands to my head and scream, only managing to peek a glimpse of the horrible apparition as it steps out of the fog on its bony, jagged feet and claws its twisted body towards the car. The man spins the wheel hard, pressing his foot down. It stomps after us, making the ground tremble. My ears won’t stop ringing, even when the screaming stops and the figure disappears back into the fog behind us.

The creature appears before us on the road again, taking up too much space for us to avoid. The car almost swerves straight into the fog, instead flipping sideways as we hit the monster's foot-like appendage resting on the road. We tumble down the gravel road, our bodies bouncing off the car's interior. At some point, we loses momentum and come to a stop upside-down. The man is half-conscious, streaks of blood cast across his forehead.

The being lets out a victorious yell, violating my ears once again. I moan and crawl out of the wreckage on my hands and knees, finally getting a half-decent look at what it really is. A pale humanoid figure, two to three stories tall with bones poking out from its tightly wrapped skin, barely hanging on to its flesh. Its head is a smooth, white ball with a single dark hole pushed deep through the thing's skull.

I press myself firmly into the gravel, taking shallow breaths. The monstrous being reaches down with a long finger and scrapes the ruined Clipper into its palm. The man’s helpless screams can still be heard inside the vehicle as the monster carries him away with the car, disappearing once again into the fog.

Broken, I lay down and wait for death, but it doesn’t come. The creature does not return for me, and I wail hopelessly at the sky, begging to be put out of my misery. I still can't move my legs an inch, and an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu prods at my mind, like I've lived through this experience countless times. Another memory fades into my mind. Today’s date. 17th of September, 2019.

Finally, it all clicks.

I died 65 years ago today.

Once more, I hear the wheeze of a car engine coming down the road. A few seconds later, it rolls out of the fog. A navy-blue Packard Clipper, its headlights beaming down at me like the light of God Himself.

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Written by Cornconic
Content is available under CC BY-SA