I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts. Weird choice for a queer brown person built like a five-foot three car dealership tube man? Maybe. But it’s just what I do. Murders, kidnappings, even animal attacks… do those count as true crime? You’d think not––but hey, if medieval English dudes could put rats on trial for eating babies, who’s to say?
The story I’m about to tell happened two years ago, actually, on a different road trip than Circe’s Diner. I had been driving down Route 29, going nowhere in particular. I’d taken some time off work, and thought I would do my favourite thing: drifting to a new part of the country in my car, alone with my dreams, the rain, and the steady pulse of the highway.
It was night. I’d had a podcast on Ed Kemper playing, and was half-listening to it while sipping on a cold oat coffee, when I experienced that worst and most primal of urges.
I had to pee.
Now, on the surface, this does not sound like a big deal. There are rest areas everywhere, after all. In fact, I could see a sign for one just up ahead. But when it comes to bathrooms, I face just one tiny, tiny problem––and it’s located right in between the sturdy denim legs of my overalls.
Yeah. I’m transgender. And no matter which gendered bathroom I use, people don’t take too kindly to my presence in a lot of places, especially in desolate corners of the deep South which haven’t considered themselves part of the Union since December of 1860. Using the toilet in broad daylight in the mall is a nerve-wracking experience, but past 10pm outside of Yemassee?
(You might get the impression that I hate the South. It’s a beautiful land, thick with verdancy and brimming with stories. I actually like it quite a lot. I’m just not too sure it likes me back.)
I could have peed behind a tree, I guess. But I like to preserve my dignity. And wash my hands.
So I stopped. It was a neat place, small, with red-brick pillars and about eighty Pepsi machines planted outside like a boxy blue carbonated army. I’m not much of a soda drinker, but I had a long drive ahead of me, so I figured I’d pick one up after I braved the toilets.
There was nobody else present. The wind whistled gently through the darkened lot. I sent up a quick thanks and scuttled into the nearest toilet.
I came out two minutes later, my hands smelling of bubblegum soap, and strode toward the Pepsi machine. I was halfway through collecting coins from my voluminous hoodie pocket when I heard a soft whirr of breath behind me, turned, and realised I was the only human in the parking lot… but that didn’t mean I was alone.
My companion, who stood about fifteen feet away where the black night shadows lapped at the dim circle cast by the flickering lights above, was about four and a half feet tall, which made me like it a little bit more, because it’s rare I’m the tallest person in the vicinity. That warm feeling, however, was balanced out by… well… the rest of it. Bone-white skin, a bulbous head on a quivering stalk of a neck, arms longer than mine, slit of a mouth, a stubby coil of gelatinous flesh where its legs should have been. Its torso was covered by, of all things, a Clemson football T-shirt, but I assumed that under the cloth was more of the same. When I met its round, glistening green eyes, an electric shock rippled through my chest and stomach, but I kept perfectly still and silent, some part of me hoping that if I didn’t react, neither would it.
“Mmmm,” it said, reaching one spindly arm forward.
Mmm? Was it sizing me up to eat me? Should I run, or would that trigger some predatory instinct? Would my best bet be to just… stand there and look as unappetising as possible?
Slowly, it stuck out its tongue in a little blep, like a hognose snake, and flicked it out, sensing the air. It was almost cute for a second, until I realised the tongue wasn’t stopping. It oozed out of its mouth in dark wet coils, stretching forward until it had bridged the gap between us. As I watched, paralysed in horror, the tongue gently slithered onto my hand and gave it an experimental lick.
Bubblegum soap. Shit. If I died from blood loss after an eldritch being with a sweet tooth gnawed off my hands, could I sue whoever decided to stock the bathroom with bubblegum soap?
But as soon as it had made contact with my skin, the creature’s tongue shot back into its mouth. Its eyes shrank––not crinkled, not closed, but shrank into two green pins on its face, morphing its appearance from hellspawn maggot to Toad from Mario. It gave a little hiss of what I could only describe as disgust.
“That’s right, I taste awful,” I said, beginning to breathe again, my organs rearranging themselves back into their natural positions. “Go on, shoo. Get away.”
“Get,” it repeated in a soft throaty voice, pointing at me. No, past me––at the Pepsi machine.
I blinked. “You… you want Pepsi?”
“I prefer Coke, but I suppose Pepsi will do,” it said brightly. Its voice had cleared up. It sounded, incongruously, like my coworker Daisy. She’s a middle-aged mom of three who loves bringing baked goods into the office and treats me a little bit like a lost high schooler, not that I really mind. I’ve got a baby face, and anyway, clucking motherliness is a lot nicer than the alternatives.
“Oh,” I said faintly. I only had enough money on me for one Pepsi, but truly, I didn’t mind sacrificing mine. At least that would be a lot better than sacrificing my hands.
I got it regular, because nobody likes Diet Pepsi, probably not even viscid slug aliens, and set it gently down before backing toward my car. As I moved, it did too, gently creeping toward the can before picking it up delicately as if it were made of diamonds. As its hand closed around the Pepsi, I made it into my car, shutting the door quietly.
On an impulse, I rolled the window down. Probably a bit stupid, but it hadn’t really done anything to me beyond give my wrist a bit of a saliva bath and wheedle away my pocket money. Besides, it hadn’t asked me whether I was a woman or a man, which is more than I can say for most people.
(Do I talk about being trans too much? Good.)
“Bye, buddy,” I said as I started up my car.
It looked at me and its lipless mouth spread into a small smile which widened into an open grin, displaying sharp teeth like a raccoon’s but on a much larger scale. “Thanks, hun,” it said, and it no longer sounded like Daisy: its voice had shifted and deepened, its cadence slowing into the molasses drawl of a Southern college guy. “Y’all, check it out, a free Pepsi!”
I shuddered and rolled the window back up, rolling out of the lot and onto the asphalt river of Route 29 as I hit play on my podcast. Even Ed Kemper was preferable company to the thing I’d left behind.
Two weeks later, when I was back home, I finally summoned up the courage to Google what I’d seen. I got a lot of hits on Internet horror stories, but none quite seemed to match the little beastie.
I did, however, find out that Route 29, much like Canada’s Highway 16, is famous for disappearances, mostly of young girls and women. That unfortunately did not surprise me. Long, isolated stretches of road are perfect haunts for unsavoury characters.
I also found a series of articles, buried deep in a local Yemassee paper’s archives, about a series of bodies found by the side of the road, near rest stops. They belonged to people of all ages and genders, some unidentified and of indeterminate characteristics due to how much they had been consumed (by scavengers, the papers said, probably foxes and raccoons because bears aren’t local to the area). Each of the ones which were intact enough to examine had been strangled by something long and thin, like a slender rope, or nylon hose, or…
Or a long, wet, probing tongue, emerging from a grinning mouth full of raccoon teeth.
Each of the bodies had been found with a soda can near them, or clutched in their hand.I leaned back in my desk chair, queasy, remembering the thing’s bright smile as I had driven away. Check it out, a free Pepsi!
And I thought about how I had left––it had let me leave––and I remembered something else, a blurry little fact in the back of my mind, a snippet from the podcast I’d been playing to drown out the jitters in my head.
Ed Kemper, back when he was a taxi driver, he had let some of his passengers go––lulled them into feeling safe and comfortable.
He called it hunting practice.