Do you know what my worst fear was as a trucker? I’m sure you can guess. Well, big whoop, it was running someone over with my truck. I’m sure several share the same fear. When you have the responsibility of driving a heavy piece of machinery at high speeds, hitting something is a very real danger. But I shuddered to think about hitting a person. Whether it’s a lost toddler on the road, an old woman, or some poor soul who simply couldn’t take it anymore. Because being hit by a truck isn’t quite like being hit by a car. When you get hit, you might go flying. Trucks are typically huge, and their force could, in all seriousness, tear your limbs off. Some people survive being hit by trucks - but a lot more don’t.
The point I’m trying to make here is that I was deathly afraid of hitting someone with my truck.
Anyway, my fears were reinforced some weeks ago. I was doing a large shipment across state lines. I’d been going for 8 hours, and the cerulean sky had sunken into an apricot orange, before curdling into a thick ebony black. There was hardly a star to be seen. The bleak road was a speedy haze, surging beneath the glare of my fluorescent headlights. I could hardly see anything outside of my headlights’ sickly luminescence, effectively placing me in a void. A mundane, unflattering void, for hours on end. I only had the radio to keep me company.
The coffee I’d taken wasn’t doing me any favours. I was trying a new brand recommended by a friend, which was meant to work wonders. But, to my annoyance, it’d hardly done anything. My body yearned for cheaper shit, like some good ol’ Starbucks for the road. I tried to ignore the longing for cheap coffee, setting my mind on completing the journey. I’d never fallen asleep on the job, obviously, and I certainly wasn’t going to now. The highway was empty - it had been for a while - and it was just me. Trundling through the darkness. Very tired, and in all frankness, quite grumpy.
Then it happened. The radio gave a brief burst of static. It came out of nowhere, and the sharp noise made me jolt. Jesus. Maybe I was more tired than I thought. Irritated by the interruption, I placed my fingers on the knob, ready to change the channel. Then, I heard the voice.
It started with breathing. Four rattling breaths, irregular in their rhythm, played through my speakers. Each time the voice would suck inwards, in what sounded like an extraordinarily painful process, before exhaling with a desperate, shuddering wheeze. After the four ‘breaths,’ a strange, guttural sound followed. It sounded almost like a person trying to groan - but all the air was compressed, only partly releasable. It sounded broken and shrill; the noise so strained you might’ve thought they were whistling. At last, the voice coughed. Roughly and painfully. Like their throat was lined with sandpaper. And I could’ve sworn, as I listened closely, that faintly in the background, you could hear something almost… dripping?
What?
I looked up, perplexed, and there he was. It was a rookie mistake. I’d looked away from the road for some seconds, my eyes on the radio, but that was all it took. There was now a man standing in the headlights. He seemed old, maybe in his seventies or eighties, wearing what look like red, striped pyjamas. His eyes were wide open, his mouth set in a silent scream. I hardly even registered he was there before I was upon him. The truck’s grill ensnared him, his arms pinwheeling in the final milliseconds, and with a disgusting thunk, he was gone.
I panicked.
Slamming desperately on the brakes, I swerved far too late. The world slowed down as the frantic squeal of tyres filled the air. I felt myself drifting slightly, and I desperately realigned myself before the wheels hit the opposite lane’s guardrail. I jerked awkwardly forwards, ramming my sternum against the steering wheel. Then, there was just silence after a mechanical hiss from the engine. I sat half-perched over the wheel, my eyes as wide as saucers. Everything was frozen in stunned silence, as I tried to process what just happened.
For several seconds, I sat there. Turning it over in my head. Partly in denial. Partly in amazement. Partly in horror. I wanted to vomit, scream, and laugh all at once. It was a fascinating mixture of feelings, each one overpowering the others simultaneously.
I popped open the truck door, in total shock, and dropped down to the rough asphalt. The night was frigid, the wind gripping me with its icy aura. My legs carried my limp body slowly towards its target, like a zombie.
I stopped beside the end of my truck, looking beyond me into the darkness. I slowly reached into my pocket, my fingers shuddering and trying to steady concurrently. I wrapped my fingers around my phone, and brought it up in front of me, illuminating the blackness. I didn’t feel any apprehension. I didn’t feel anything. I simply shone my light onto the road behind the truck, expecting to see a bloody smear…
…and paused. I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Shone the light further.
But there was no one on the road.
It was empty. Not a soul to be seen. No blood. No mess that was once a person. No scarlet smear on the asphalt, with some roadkill at the end that was unrecognisable until you were right upon it. It was desolate as a desert. I shook my head, unable to make sense of it, and did the next logical thing. I called the police.
Soon, the empty, dry road was bathed in the hue of police lights. I explained the incident best as I could to a burly officer who had alert eyes and probably a better coffee than mine. I’d completely forgotten about the sounds on the radio - it seemed trivial in comparison to the man on the road. As I spoke, the situation began to strike me, and my voice quivered. The officer gave me some professional reassurances and asked some straightforward questions. I answered them the best I could. Meanwhile, his partner swept the area, peering over the guardrail, inspecting my lorry and especially the grill. But soon the reality became clear:
There was, quite simply, no one on or nearby the road.
After I voiced my fears of hitting someone with my truck, they charted it up to sleep deprivation inducing a state of paranoia. It’d happened before. They said they’d check the security footage from my truck, which was some comfort, but I doubted they’d find anything. Perhaps they were right? I’ve never really hallucinated before, but maybe I just got so anxious that my mind played a hearty trick on me. If so, it was well done. I damn near crashed the truck.
I reported it to my dispatcher, regardless, and completed my delivery. I unloaded the cargo, and on a whim, gave the industrial vehicle a very close inspection. But there was nothing. No blood. No damage. It truly seemed as if I’d imagined it.
That night, as I was kicking back in my sleeper cab, I kept replaying it in my mind. If I did imagine it, where did the guy come from? I observed his face clear as day. And I’m no genius, but I know that you cannot imagine a brand-new face. It was a man’s face. It was not someone that I knew. So, in that case, who was it?
I tossed onto my side, wrapping the thin sheets tighter around me when I heard it. A cough. A pained, scratchy cough. I tore my head from the pillows, blinking abruptly. I knew that sound. I looked around the tiny compartment, scanning the darkness. Every shape jumped out at me, adopting the persona of a lurking figure. After calming myself down, and recognising that no one was in the cab, I instinctively looked towards the window.
But there was nothing there. Except for the condensation on the outside of the glass, highlighted by a streetlight, that was rapidly shrinking before my eyes. I sat up, bewildered, and started for the window. It was just disappearing as I got there, but I saw it clearly enough. It was the remnants of a breath. Someone had been breathing against the outside of the window.
Had they been watching me sleep?
I looked further beyond, into vast stretching fields. I could see for a good few miles, the land stretching far and wide. But there was nothing there. It was just me, all alone, in the cab of my truck.
I rubbed my hands over my face, groaning. God, why was I being so stupid? It was probably just my breath or something like that. I needed to cut this out. This stupid overthinking. I needed to stop my brain from jacking itself up over nothingness. At this rate, I was gonna piss myself because of my imagination.
I took out my phone, opening the camera app. Just how sleep-deprived was I? If I was scaring myself over condensation on a window, what about anything else I thought I was witnessing? I probably didn’t even hear a cough. Auditory hallucinations are things too, I reminded myself, as I turned on the cab’s light to see myself better. I flipped the camera’s perspective towards me, expecting heavy bags engraved beneath my tired eyes, but something else caught my attention. Out the window. Only metres away.
The man was back.
I whipped around. But the outside was empty. It was just the streetlight, lighting the land for several metres, before inky, near-starless gloom. There was, without doubt, no man outside. This was certain.
But when I investigated the camera, there he was. He was still dressed in his pyjamas and was barefoot. He just calmly stood there, a blank stare masking his intentions. He stared dead into the camera, and disturbingly, right at me. We both just looked at each other. I could see my eyes in the camera, wild and confused, while his eyes were simply… empty.
Then, slowly, he started to move. His face twitched, and his fingers began to contort. Slowly, but with growing certainty, he was convulsing. He hunched over, then swayed backwards, and then his clothes were darkening. Darkening in certain spots, as pools of wetness blossomed all over his body. The dark pools continued to spread as he convulsed faster and faster, his body now snapping all about in no way a person should move. The darkening spots deliberately sunk through his pyjamas, and now I realised how crimson they were becoming. Blood. Blood was pooling all over his body like he’d been riddled with bullets, but his clothes had gone untouched.
I watched, a knot growing in my stomach, as the convulsions reached a climactic height - and he paused. Only for half a second. Then, to my horror, he shot backwards. I mean, the man flew, as if some invisible force slammed into him at a hundred miles per hour. He whirled through the air, a hurtling mess of limbs and blood, and crashed into the ground. His body, disgustingly, bounced up and down, heaving back and forth. Like he was being run over by a heavy vehicle.
Then, after some impossible thrashing and heaving, he lay still. I couldn’t see him from my angle, what with him lying down and all, but I didn’t need to worry about seeing the disgusting aftermath. He showed it to me. With his remaining arm, the heaving slab of roadkill, with the greatest of ease, rocked into a sitting position. I was horrified - but I couldn’t even speak. I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
He was soaked in blood, and both his legs and his right arm were gone. The stumps were now torn remnants of flesh, leaking loose drops of leaden blood that splashed heavily against the ground. His face was almost completely gone, leaving a red pulp that caved inwards like a hunk of meat. The remaining eye, the whites filling with a pitch-red, glared madly at me.
The phone dropped from my hand, slammed into my big toe, and rolled safely across the floor. My fingers were shaking, every hair on my arms standing erect. I suddenly sucked in, taking a gracious intake of air. I’d been holding my breath, and I didn’t even realise it. I spun on my heel, staring wildly out the window. But it was empty. No man. No blood. Nothing. It was exactly as it was.
I scrambled for the phone, holding it up again. But even on the phone, there was nothing anymore. I was quite properly alone. There was no one there. Positively no one.
After that, I didn’t see the man for some time. But then the noises came back. At my apartment, I would be lying there, shivering like a nervous dog, trying to convince myself to fall asleep. But then I’d hear a sound - probably nothing - but a sound, nonetheless. What was almost like a slight, very subtle, dripping.
And I’d hear the breaths. There would be that rattling intake of oxygen and the subsequent pained expulsion. The slight sounds would hover at my door, so quiet you had to strain your ears to hear them. And there was the shrill groan. It would come from anywhere in my apartment. Outside my door, from the kitchen, down the hall, outside my window. It was impossible to guess where the sound would come from next. It filled me with anxiety, always expecting the next groan to be right beside my bed.
But the coughing was the worst. Because every single time, the noise would be in my ear. A sharp, raucous hack, with a voice filled with gravel, would be projected straight down my ear canal. I’d jump damn near out of my skin, looking frenziedly over my shoulder. But I was always alone. I always expected his face, that mess of bloody flesh, to be staring back at me.
But it never was.
The sounds plagued me for weeks. They’d emit throughout my house, making me grip my shoulders with white-knuckled fists. I’d sometimes hug myself with such overpowering anxiety that my fingernails would draw blood. I felt like I was going crazy. I tried to block the noises out, tried to convince myself that none of it was real, but the voices would continue anyway.
I became more tired. My world slowly steeped into a grey slog, my motivation distant and dwindling. The sounds kept me up all night, every night. I even visited a friend’s place to see if the sounds would follow me - and of course, they did. They were relentless, haunting every hour I tried to sleep. The dripping. The breathing. The groaning. The coughing. Over and over.
I saw my therapist about it, of course. But God bless him, the man was useless. He, like everyone else, just assumed I was overly paranoid. After all, what was it meant to be if not my mind? A ghost? The ghost of a man who, presumably, didn’t even exist? No matter what I did, no matter who I turned to, it felt like the wrong decision. Sucking it up was a bad idea - but trying to get people to listen to me felt even worse.
My sleeping schedule fell to pieces. I’d find myself passing out in the middle of the day. Never while driving my truck, thank God, but certainly not in comfortable places. I’d sit down on a park bench at noon, needing to take a momentary rest break - and boom! It was 7 in the evening, with my fingers and toes freezing off from the imminent night air. But whenever night-time rolled around, the internationally recognised time for sleep; I was wide awake. The sounds, plaguing every moment I lay there trying to sleep, gnawed at my sanity.
Holy shit, I was so tired. Not even Starbucks could do me any favours anymore.
Then, there came the request for a shipment. I was to be the driver. It was going to be a long journey, and I needed to be well-rested before I started off. The night before the trip, I lay there, doing everything in my power to drift off. I’d taken some prescribed sleeping pills, but I was still wide awake. The sounds, showing up as they inevitably did, did not begin to emit around the house. This time, they were all in my bedroom.
The rattling breathing shook, wheezing with every inhale and exhale, from the corner of my room.
The shrill groan wavered through the air, high and constricted, from beneath my bed.
The grating cough hacked discordantly, not down my ear, but directly in front of my face.
This all went on for an excruciatingly long time. The sounds bounced around the room, shifting their positions every time, as I just lay there in terror. Trying so, so hard to pretend it wasn’t real. I clasped my pillow frantically around my ears, tucking my knees against my gut, and just laid there, whimpering. The minutes went by. The noises, cruel and endless, became louder and louder, swirling around me. It all transformed into a rising frenzy, a tornado of sounds that cut at me like daggers.
“Stop,” I hissed, clutching my pillow harder against my ears. “Please, please, just stop!”
And it did. I blinked, with my pillow wrapped around my head. Everything was… quiet. Freeing the cushion from my ears, I listened intently. But there was nothing. The room was silent. For once, after weeks of torment, there was nothing. Nothing at all.
I breathed a sigh of relief, turning onto my side. A warm, satisfying feeling filled my stomach. It was finally quiet. As the minutes ticked by, the sleeping pill began to take effect. My eyelids gradually worked their way shut and all my muscles started to relax. After all this time, all this torment, it was gone. The noises were gone.
But I shouldn’t have considered it so easy. All at once, the heavy blaring of a truck’s horn exploded through the room. With it came the frantic squeals of tyres. The deafening sound flew straight towards me, as a glaring pair of headlights lit the wall in front of me, bearing down on me like a hungry lion. I whipped around, putting my arms out in the defensive position, letting out a scream–
And, of course, there was nothing there. The room was empty and quiet. No light. No truck. I slept facing the door for the rest of the night. My muscles did not lose any tension, even after the sleeping pills finally sent me off successfully. I had an uneasy rest, full of horrible breathing and dripping blood. Truck tyres, gore across the asphalt, the sickening thud of metal hitting flesh. It tormented my dreams throughout the night.
The next day, I felt horrible. I’d gotten a very decent amount of sleep, very decent indeed, but I might as well have slept for less than an hour. I drank a ludicrous amount of coffee to get myself going, and before I knew it, I was on the road. I didn’t want to be. Not after all the sounds and the nightmares. But I had to pay the bills, and that was the way I did it.
I was extremely careful on the road. I drove at heedful, safe speeds, taking my time with extreme caution. My heart skipped a beat every time I saw someone crossing the road ahead of me, or every time a car slowed down. Supposing I hit them? It was a tense and uneasy ride. I turned on the radio to try and steady my nerves, but every time a sudden noise played, I’d jump. The radio was a no-go. So, it was just me. Me and my thoughts. My terrible, paranoid thoughts.
Daytime steeped into nighttime. Less and less vehicles drove on the road until finally, it was just me. I’d taken a few stops, to try and keep myself going mentally, but uneasiness was filling up my mind like water fleeing a broken dam. I just couldn’t focus on anything. I had to keep checking where my stop was. More than once I took the wrong turn and had to double back. God, I wasn’t set out for this. I needed more coffee. I needed more sleep. I needed those horrible sounds to leave me alone. But they wouldn’t.
Goddammit, I was tired. I kept expecting to hear the noises. The horrible breathing, the disgusting groaning, and the wretched coughing, all accompanied by that constant, vague dripping… I kept listening for it. I kept expecting a cough to bark into my ear, causing me to panic and slam the vehicle into the guardrail. But there was no cough. It was just me, sweating bullets into my seat, staring at the road. The long, stretching highway, transformed into a monotonous slog of rolling road. A road that went on and on, endlessly stretching into nothingness, with nothingness behind me, and nothingness ahead. Just a void. A void of nothingness that never ended, a black canvas built so that I could fill it with my thoughts and my fears… a black… endless plane… enveloping my mind… my worries… pulling me in… plunging me downwards…
My eyes shot open. There was a man on the road.
I sat bolt upright, my hands re-tightening on the wheel. Oh shit. I’d fallen asleep. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. I slammed my palm down on the horn, my truck bellowing warningly. The man looked up, blinking dazedly. The truck was bearing down ferociously on him, as I put every ounce of leg strength I had on the brakes. The frantic squeal of tyres filled the compartment as I tried to swerve out of the way. The man opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged - maybe I couldn’t hear him over the howling of my horn and the screeching of my tyres? In any case, despite my best efforts, it was a lost cause.
The grill swallowed him up. With his wide-eyed face aghast with terror, the man was sucked under the truck, his arms pinwheeling. There was a wet thud - a thud that echoed through the entire compartment. Then, far, far too late, the truck rolled to a stop. Instinctively shutting off the engine, I sat there, breathing frantically. My fingers dug so deeply into the wheel that my nails sliced the leather open. What was happening? I couldn’t believe this. I’d been here before - but before, it wasn’t even real. Maybe it wasn’t real this time? Maybe it was more paranoia? More hallucinations?
God, please let me just be crazy. Please, please, don’t let it be real.
After several seconds of staring out the windshield, helplessly dumbfounded, I reached toward the window switch, letting the window gradually sink with a mechanical drone that punctured the silence. I sat there, praying silently. Please, God, don’t let it be real. Just don’t let it be real. My eyes, with the greatest of reluctance, cautiously wandered over to the wing mirror. I stared for a long time, my throat drying up like water in a wasteland. I looked away, then looked back, at least three times. I rubbed my eyes. I tried to unsee what I was seeing. But there it was.
The man was lying behind the truck. A heap of blood and flesh.
I squinted my eyes, concentrating on the details. He was bathed in the red of my taillights, and… and his limbs were gone. Three of them. Both his legs and his right arm were gone. I could see that clearly. Blood, fleeing his torn stumps, hit the asphalt. It was a slight, subtle dripping. I looked closer, swallowing. I could remember what he was wearing, but I didn’t want to believe it. They were pyjamas with red stripes. I pictured his terrified face - a face that I recognised. It was his face. The face of the man I’d seen all those weeks ago. The face of the man who once wasn’t there, but now, actually was.
And then he started breathing. Four, rattling breaths escaped his throat. Each time, he sucked in with a great effort - then shudderingly exhaled. He then let out a shrill, compressed groan, so penetrating that you’d have thought he was whistling. At last, a scratchy, grating hack fled his lips - and all at once, the pathetic rise and fall of his chest ceased. He stopped moving entirely. He was dead.
I switched my eyes back forwards, breathing shakily. I knew those sounds. I’d heard them so many times these past weeks - and now they’d emitted right before me. Jesus Christ, what was happening? I couldn’t bear to get out. I couldn’t bear to look at it. The remains of that man. I just couldn’t. Instead, I pulled out my phone.
“Hello? Hi. I’ve just killed someone. Yes, they’re dead. I hit them with my truck. No, they’re not moving.”
The police came. I explained everything I knew they would believe - that I’d hit a man with my truck due to insomnia, and he was dead. I stated my name, the company I worked for, my number, everything. I begged for them to take me away. To just put me in a cold, dark cell, so that I could hide away from the world. This cruel, no longer sensical world.
It’s been a few days since all that. I can’t even remember his name. He was just some poor, old dude losing his sense of reality. He had a history of sleep-walking - that’s their best guess for what happened. I’d killed a helpless, ageing man who was sleepwalking. It tears me apart. Knowing what I did to him. Knowing what I did to his family. Please know how sorry I am. I never meant for this. I never asked for this.
I’ve been seeing him everywhere. In every reflection. Never as ‘himself.’ Always as what I made him. This bloody, splintered mess. He’s always missing those three limbs, always missing most of his face. That eye, that blazing, deranged eye, stares wildly at me. Whenever I look in a mirror, or glance at a glass surface, he’s there. Unless I’m in a small room, in which I can feel his presence further back, in the next room over. And every single time I see him, he’s getting closer. He started some distance away - like the length of my truck - but he’s getting closer. Slowly but surely. He’s only feet away, last I checked.
Call it cowardice. Call it regret. Call it mental illness. Call it whatever you like. But I know that this is the only way out for me. He’s only getting closer, so close that I can see his face in disgusting detail. And I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the guilt. I can’t, and I won’t.
I’ll be gone by the time you find this note. I’ll have to use my bedsheets. I’ll tie them around the bars. I’ve been writing this for days, but I only decided to take the easy way out about twenty minutes ago. I just can’t keep facing it. The guilt. The fear. The terror, and all the confusion. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I am in hell - and this is the only way to be free.
Please forgive me.