The End

A lone car traveled down the dark curving highway road that was slick with the rain that had long since let up, the road stretched far past the headlights looking never-ending in the moonless night. The car hummed with the drum of the engine, as something peculiar became illuminated by the light at the edge of the nearby forest as it stalked precariously along the side of the road. Only the faintest slivers of the bright headlights of passing cars making it shudder and freeze occasionally.

The night is peaceful and still, all things considered, not a drop of rain in the air and sky as cloudless as could be with the many stars twinkling above and the new moon hidden completely out of sight. It was a dark night, with only the lights of ’s car illuminating the backroads that he was driving on, there was nothing around, nothing for miles and miles until the next town or city. At least that’s where he was heading, he had been driving for miles, with his stuff piled in the back of the car when it happened. When the blur of something just outside his car, right off to the side caught his attention mere seconds before it happened so quickly that he wasn’t even sure as to what had happened.

In one quick second, the front lights of his car shattered, a rough thump and thud hitting his car as he stomped on the break making his car come to a screeching halt.

“Did I.. did I hit something?” Vin wondered aloud as the sinking sensation of horror gripped the bottom of his stomach tight as he hastily spun the wheel as he pumped the brake, steering his car to what he hoped was the side of the road as he got out. Blindly grabbing for his flashlight in the backseat he nervously clambered out of the car. “Damn it, I hope I didn’t hit something…” He muttered again, there wasn’t any cell reception out there, not with the cell towers being far from anywhere out in the countryside. And there was no way to call a tow truck if a tow truck, that was if a tow truck would even come out this far in the dead of night. Would he be stuck here until morning time? Would he have to stuff his clothes into his backpack as a makeshift pillow and sleep in the backseat? Would he just have to start walking until he eventually got to a town, or a driver happened to see him?

The mere thought of those horror movies and the idea of some murderer truck driver picking him up that his roommate had once made him watch made a tendril of fear lick the up and down his spine.

Grumbling sourly under his breath Vin walked all around his car, looking for any sign of what he could have hit. It took him a moment to get to the front of his car but when he did the only thing, he felt was complete and utter confusion. The only thing that he saw, the only thing that he could even see what was wrong with his car was the two busted headlights. They were completely shattered, the bulb inside reduced to nothing more than just a few shattered fragments of glass and nothing else. The exposed wires hissed and sizzled with a visible red hot glow, still retaining the electricity from the battery that was being pumped to them.

He hadn’t run over anything, and he hadn’t hit anything. So just what had-

“Momma? Daddy? Momma?! Daddy?!”

Vin’s head snapped up in an instant from where he had been investigating the broken lights of his car, without a moment of hesitation he turned his flashlight towards the vast expansive forest that he had stopped beside. His lungs caught every breath that tried to escape them, with the force of a steel wire trap that suffocated poor woodland animals. A kid… there was a kid out there. Who on earth leaves children in the middle of woods, at night of times and places?! What kind of parent would do that? Shaking away those thoughts, he squinted into the darkness of the forest.

The kid had at least sounded close by, the very least he could do was find them and help them until sunrise and drive them to the closest town.

“Hello?” Cupping one of his hands around his mouth Vin called out again as he took his first steps towards the wilderness, his footsteps let alone his voice shook at the prospect of taking even a single step forward into the intimidating darkness that laid out before him. Flashlight be damned, the forest really wasn’t the kind of place that he should be wandering around in the dead of the night. But he couldn’t help but to feel the slightest tingling of worry coursing through his veins at the thought of a young kid being lost out there. He was at least an adult. “Can you hear me, kid? I’m right here, just follow the light of my flashlight and my voice! Can you hear me?!” He tried and tried again as he walked more and more into the forest until he was finally toeing the tree line, his flashlight passed over the dark silhouette of the trees and branches hoping to find a glimpse or perhaps even a hint of where the child had once been.

His breath puffed out before him as the chill of the night air sank into his bones, it hadn’t been that cold a few moments ago. In fact, he had been pretty sure that the temperature tonight was at least supposed to be up in the seventies given that he lived in the warmest state imaginable. But his breath said otherwise, as it lingered there for a moment before vanishing from sight. The plain t-shirt and jeans that he was wearing seemed to be no help whatsoever to the cold that gripped him tighter and tighter, the longer he stayed in one position. Vin forced himself to swallow down the whimper that attempted to crawl up from his throat, he was here to find the kid and then get the hell out of here and never come back.

Maybe he should have moved further south, then at least he wouldn’t have to deal with sudden cold spells in the middle of a fucking forest at night.

He moved the light again over a log, “Hello? Kid? Call out if you can hear me! I’m right h-”

The light beam from his flashlight froze.

It wasn’t a log.

It wasn’t a fucking log that his light had just passed over, and it wasn’t a log that his light was staying on either. At first inspection, it looked like a deer, except deers didn’t have four eyes or the fur that looked as if it was made out of tree bark the second that his light passed over it.

His mouth jerkily opened to utter a scream that just wouldn’t happen, and the thing’s disgustingly disturbing mouth did the same. Detaching down as if it were no more than an eccentric puppet held together by no more than just a few invisible lines of fishing string, its mouth opened up to its entire chest to show rows and rows of ravenous sharp teeth the gleamed like starlight in the yellow beam of his flashlight. It moved, it moved in quick jerky sporadic movements towards Vin’s flashlight that had remained frozen and fixed in place from the very second he had seen the creature. It moved like the shadows darting out of the corner of his eyes, it was by far quicker than anything Vin had ever seen in his entire life.

And it was coming towards him.

Rows and rows of sharp deadly teeth all glinting and moving in ways that teeth shouldn’t be glinting and moving.

Within an instant, his flashlight fell limply from his hand, as the scream finally released from the back of his throat, bloodcurdling and full of every bit of terror that a human could feel… cut short in the silence of the woods in which no one would ever hear it. Never again at least.

And finally...

The crunch of bones, and a final gurgling wheezing breath.

Silence.

“Mommy? Daddy?"

The End.