I used to work with an independent towing company out near St Cloud, MN. We mostly operated near Willmar, Sauk Centre, Tomskog, and Glenwood. I usually did roadside assistance and recovery. Out in these parts you get a surprisingly large share of vehicles that are just abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I know it’s a common sight to see rusted-out wrecks by the side of the road, but if it wasn’t for guys like me, you’d see three times as many.
So I got this call about a rustbucket that’d smashed into a stop sign and been left by the roadside. I was called in for the pickup. It’s not fun heading out in the dark as the rain clouds roll in, but that’s even more reason to get it done; accidents happen in the dark. Someone could get hurt.
It took me a while to get out there. Not a lot of cars on the road. I turned on my warning lights and stepped out, keeping my earbuds in while I listened to my work playlist. I was sort of conditionally training myself to only listen to country on the job and rock on my spare time, thinking I could Pavlov my way into some kind of work-life recognition thing.
Once I got out of my truck, I could immediately tell something was off.
I’d gone down that road before, and I’d never seen a stop sign anywhere near it. It was a straight road, why would there be a stop sign?
The car in question was this old beetle. The paint had peeled off years ago, and half the interior was either rotten or torn out. There was algae halfway up the wheels, with tufts of grass sticking out of the suspension. This thing wouldn’t run in a hundred years. Hell, you could barely get it to roll at all.
I was perplexed. There was no way someone was driving this or crashing into anything. Someone had dragged it up there, for one reason or another.
Turning my attention back to my truck, I almost choked on my spit.
I counted no less than five people by the roadside, staring up at the flashing warning lights. Five people, all different ages. They had this strange look of absolute adoration on their faces. Slack-jawed and unblinking, they didn’t seem to mind my presence; they were just there for the lights.
I looked at them for a moment. These were the people that’d dragged the car up, no question about it. Hell, some of them had muddy hands and boots still.
I thought about saying something, but figured I’d just get my phone out in case someone wanted to cause trouble. I locked my truck, not taking my eyes off these people, and tried to get on with my job. They didn’t seem to mind. They just stood there, their eyes wide and black, staring at the flashing warning lights.
It was so eerie. I walked around that car, constantly checking over my shoulder. I was waiting for one of them to burst into a sprint or scream, but nothing happened. They just stood there. Not a sound, or a word. Heavy breathing – in unison.
I thought about filming it, but honestly, I had to get out of there.
I scooched the fallen sign off the road and prepped the wreck. Through all of it, I got this worried chill creeping up my spine whenever there was a sharp noise. A rattling chain might set them off, or a creak of metal. I didn’t know what these people’s deal was, so I didn’t know how unpredictable they were.
As I finished up and got ready to move out, I threw a final glance back at them.
My heart skipped a beat when one of their eyes – yes, a singular eye – turned to me.
She was probably in her forties, with the kind of face that just screamed ‘exhaustion’. As her second eye slowly settled on me, there was this bubbling unease in my stomach. Something about her was just… inhumane. It didn’t feel like meeting the eyes of a fellow Minnesotan, or even a Homo Sapiens. This woman was something else. Something other.
I was about to get back into my truck when she opened her mouth and spoke.
“Look at me,” she said.
I did. I couldn’t not do it. It felt like staring down a predator, keeping it at bay. I had to look at her.
Of course, there was a plan to it.
I didn’t notice the two men sneaking up on me from the other side of the road.
I have a hard time retelling this part. It’s burned into my thoughts, but it’s not like… a good burn. It’s like a scab, and I just hate poking at it. The only word I can use for it is that it ‘frightens’ me. Not just because of the violent implications, but because I now know, firsthand, just how frail I am as a person and living being.
Hands grabbed me, and I was pushed up against the side of my truck. Some guy in his fifties and what looked like a girl in her late teens – both insanely strong, with the kind of grip you might expect in a wild animal. They were clinging to me like their life depended on it, and yet, none of them said anything. No noise, no words, just huffs and unblinking eyes. Even then, as my hands were pushed up against the cold metal, they weren’t even looking at me. They were still looking up at the warning lights.
The one who had spoken came around. She faced me and held something up. It looked like one of those old box-cameras, with a crank on the side.
She turned it on with a metallic clunk, blinding me with a powerful and warm light. She slowly turned the crank on the side, like a nightmarish jack-in-a-box.
With every click, something would block the light for a split-second; effectively making it flash.
She turned it faster and faster. Blinking turned into a strobe light.
I can’t explain what I felt. It was like something filled my stomach. Like my body was contracting into itself, trying to make me shrink. I became so hyper-focused on this one blinking light, coming from that awful clicking black box.
I didn’t even notice that they let go of my hands, or how they all gathered around me. How they watched as I had this mental seizure. I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t look away. My mind was just filled with this clicking noise; resetting every impulse that came across my mind.
I should run. CLICK.
Who are these people? CLICK.
I am in danger. CLICK
I couldn’t finish a single train of thought. I just stood there, as transfixed to that box as they’d been to my warning lights.
I don’t know when I passed out. Could’ve been seconds, could’ve been minutes. All I know is that I woke up by the roadside hours later as a passer-by tapped me on the shoulder.
“You alright there?” they asked. “You hurt?”
I shook my head, trying to adjust my eyes. They still burned from the light.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I… I honestly don’t know.”
I called my boss, telling them what’d happened. Explaining why I hadn’t answered any calls. I also gave a statement to the police, explaining what little I could to a very understanding man. It didn’t make sense to them, or me, for that matter. Nothing was stolen. Nothing vandalized. Just… people attacking people for seemingly no reason. The officers seemed sorry to hear it, as if already apologizing for what they wouldn’t be able to do.
I didn’t see them again until much later – under very different circumstances.
I was put on sick leave for a couple of days to get back on my feet, but at that point I didn’t even know what I was feeling anymore. Coming home, I couldn’t concentrate. Everything just felt off. I could barely keep myself focused on the most minute task. I forgot my cooked rice on the stove. I put down my phone in the middle of a phone call. I left the tap running. I kept getting sidetracked, like there was something vital missing in the back of my mind.
This continued on and off for a couple of days. I vividly remember how I tried to stream some stupid reality show, but I kept forgetting what I was watching. I didn’t dare to use my car to go shopping; I walked, and even then I had to look down at my shopping list every few minutes.
I remember this one time when I tried to take a shower. I left the water running. Forgetting to turn it off, just like with everything else. As I finished up and stepped out, I flipped the light switch. But that switch is this really sensitive thing, and I accidentally clicked it twice, making the lights flash.
That sent a wave of warmth through my body. The kind of relieving warmth you get from stepping out of a blizzard and into a living home. It was familiar and welcome, as if this was what I was supposed to feel like. In a simple way, it fixed me. For a moment, I felt like myself again.
I ended up standing there for about 20 minutes, just flipping the light switch on and off, on and off. I pressed it until the click of the switch started to sound like the click of the black box. Until time started to slow, making every click seem further away - no matter how fast I went.
And when I looked up at myself in the mirror, I could see that my eyes were completely black – as alien as those I’d seen that night.
I could picture myself as her. Exhausted, unblinking, and lost to the world.
It scared the shit out of me.
I shut my eyes and tried to keep them closed – but every moment away from the flashes, the clicking, it just… it drained me. Like being stuck in the middle of nowhere as a blizzard slowly picks up. I could feel myself growing distant, colder, slower. I twisted and turned in my bed, trying to focus on something. Anything.
“Mississippi” I mumbled. “Spell Mississippi.”
I got all the way through it the first time. By the second time, I made it about halfway through. By the third, I could start, but didn’t really know what I was doing anymore.
By the fourth, I was upset – and I didn’t even know why.
At some point in the night, I heard sirens. Not too distant, either. Something in me tickled. It wanted me to get up. The thought crossed my mind that maybe, on some level, I just wanted to see the flashing lights.
I walked up to my bedroom window and put my hand on the blinders. I knew I shouldn’t engage with it. I kept trying to fight myself. The only thoughts that met no interruption were those aimed at the sole purpose of seeing those lights. I kept trying to convince myself to step away, but it wasn’t that easy.
“Just a peek,” I thought. “To see if it works.”
There were three police cars and a fire truck. All with their lights on.
I was mesmerized.
I saw it in such great detail. It was as if time took a step back just to allow me to bask in the excitement. I could see every color shift, the intensity of moving back and forth between lights. It was like an exploding mini-cosmos, filling my head with warmth and excitement. I stared blankly at it from my bedroom window. It was absolutely glorious.
They were only there for a moment, but that was all I needed. I was left breathless – my face burning hot, and my eyes watery. It felt like I’d run a marathon. Hell, even my knees were weak.
I had a short moment of clarity as the clouds in my mind parted. I had to keep the momentum up. I had to stay sane. Running into the kitchen, I got my flashlight and all the spare batteries I could find; spilling an entire drawer of miscellaneous bits and bobs onto the floor. I had to stop a few times to flick the light switch. A boost.
By the end of the night, I found myself standing in the middle of a dark kitchen with my flashlight firmly planted under my face. Clicking it on, and off, and on, and off.
I had to.
I stopped sleeping after that. Sleep gave me nothing, but that constant flash kept me going. It allowed me to keep my head clear enough to make some sort of plan. To fight it. Not that I really wanted to, but because I knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn’t normal. They’d done something terrible to me, but for the moment I had to find a way to live with it.
I dug out my Christmas lights and set them to blink intermittently. I taped it up all along the walls in my bedroom, right next to my computer. Staying reasonably lucid, I managed to search the web for whatever this could be, but I couldn’t find a thing. That was when I found this place, actually. I thought about posting this all the way back then, but I didn’t know where to start.
I kept trying to spell “Mississippi” in my head, to sort of test whether I was thinking straight or not. More often than not, I could make it through. But even a short lapse of flashes would make me drop a few letters.
But yeah, I didn’t get very far in my searches. I’ve never heard of something like this happening to anyone, and neither did anyone else, seemingly. Soon, I was just alt + tabbing between my dark desktop and a full-screened white page. On, and off, and on, and off…
I could tell I was getting weaker. The lack of sleep betrayed me. My hands were shaking from a lack of food. After a while, I realized I couldn’t just have lights around me – I needed to indulge. To stare. Drown in them.
I was getting desperate. I wandered the streets, hoping to see or hear something that would give me that rush back. I even thought about starting a fire just to get a firetruck to come by.
That’s when it hit me. That’s probably what those people had been doing all along. They set that rusted car up and lured me there – maybe solely for the flashing lights.
It’s hard to admit my low point. I was standing with my phone in hand, about to call 911, to claim I was being attacked. Anything to get flashing lights and sirens. There was that screaming voice inside of me demanding that I do it, and a whisper telling me I was destroying myself. I had a choice; go down this path and find myself a slave to impulses, or to surrender to the cloud in my head.
I chose the latter. I tossed my phone and wandered off – slowly forgetting where I was going, or what I was doing. I only vaguely remember the sky turning dark, and rain. There was a car honking as they raced past me, and a worried driver asking me how I was doing. Without direction, or purpose, or solution, I just kept going. Somewhere.
It is a strange feeling, finding yourself lost in your own darkness. It feels like viewing your life through a keyhole; catching only bits and pieces, with a barrier in-between. And in the end, my efforts were useless.
There were others there, on my side of the keyhole. Other people just as lost, wandering around. Some I remembered from that awful night. Others weren’t even human. It’s not like I saw them; more that I sensed them.
Then it all came back to me.
I was standing in a clearing, in a forest, somewhere off in the middle of nowhere. There were others there, but I didn’t care to look at them. All I could focus on was the middle-aged woman standing in front of me; with a blinking black box, and a crank that clicked.
Out of all the lights I’d seen, this was the most beautiful. It was like getting sucked into a deeper understanding. The clicks grew further apart, and every moment was stretched. In that bliss, every blink of the light was like days passing by in a heaven of my own making. There was a benevolence there, someone caring for me. Like a balm on my soul.
Then it stopped. Back in the darkness. The woman held out a phone as the box stopped clicking.
“Ambulance.”
And that was all she needed to say.
We made it to a parking lot out by the old mall (the old “Dead-Eye” for those of you who live around here). There were six of us, but none of us said a word. There was this young woman who’d gotten a hold of the phone, and she didn’t seem to know what to do. She looked up, as if coming out of a daze.
“Are we doing this?” she asked. “Are… are we really doing this?”
There was a solemn moment where none of us knew what to do. Finally, there was an older man who stepped forward. He looked the young woman up and down, and turned to the rest of us. No one said anything. What was there to say?
He considered it, then leaned back. Putting all his weight behind it, he proceeded to strike her across the eye.
She dropped to the ground. The phone rolled out of her hands. The others proceeded to beat her within an inch of her life.
It was absolutely relentless. It’s like she stopped being human to them.
I called the emergency services. Hell, I told them exactly what I was seeing; a group of people brutally beating someone. Meanwhile, the others kept attacking her. None of them looked away or even frowned. I saw blood spatter hit one of their faces, and they didn’t even blink.
Maybe they wanted to be convincing, or maybe there was no space for a second-guesser. Either way, we would’ve fulfilled our duty.
She was barely breathing when they stepped away. The man who initiated the beating held out a hand towards me; demanding the phone back. I handed it to him. I was too new to be entrusted with something of that value.
I wanted to speak, but I didn’t. Looking down at the broken body, gasping for air… it did something to me. It put a suggestion in my head; that maybe this wasn’t okay. It made me question myself, and made me think. I remember standing there, watching the blood pooling, when I considered;
“Can I still spell Mississippi?”
I couldn’t.
Despite following this path, and succumbing to it all, it was still taking something from me. That was more apparent than ever. It was this subtle reminder that, yes, I was going down the wrong path. I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t fixing myself this way.
There were sirens in the distance. I could see the top of the treeline changing color. They were coming. The others hid by the side of the road; their eyes going dark with anticipation. I joined them, hesitantly, trying to make up some sort of plan.
When the flashing lights came around the bend, it was like drinking a glass of ice water on a hot summer’s day. It was a soothing breeze. Nothing like what I’d experienced that that black box, but… a substitute. A damn decent one at that. The colors bathed us, and we just soaked it all in.
Except now I had this feeling that… it just wasn’t right. Like I was being used and manipulated.
Like there was something in those flashing lights looking back at me.
“Eo,” someone whispered. “Eo.”
The others joined. A choir of hushed voices. At first it was just a noise, but I could see what they were getting at. It was a fitting name. The thing that drew us in, giving us a peek at something else. Eo. The End Of. The See You.
EO.
There was an ambulance and two patrol cars. By the time they got to the beaten woman, we were all stepping out of the woods together. Someone was yelling at us to stop. There were threats. Demands. Pistols drawn.
Then a click.
Looking to my left, the woman with the black box had returned. A first flashing light in their direction was all it took to distract them. I couldn’t see it properly from my angle. The others flocked to it like moths, but I hadn’t fallen under its spell yet. Instead, I looked to the broken woman.
She was barely conscious. The paramedics didn’t have the time to take her away. One of them were hiding in the back of the ambulance while the other just stood there – staring at the woman with the black box.
We all moved forward, slowly. A few whispers; a declaration of faith. No, not faith. Just worship. It isn’t faith when you’ve seen it. When you know it’s there.
The others joined into a circle. Two police officers as well. All of them stared blindly into this captivating light; this invitation to behold. To step outside yourself and see this hidden blessing.
I tried to look away. I tried so hard. I tried holding my eyes shut, but I couldn’t. I wanted to look deeper and disappear into that light; to let it burn me hollow, inside and out. To be free. Home.
I heard it calling. I can’t describe it, but I heard it. Even with two hands covering my eyes, the clicking noise from that box bore its way into my head and forced an electrical impulse of light inside my eyelids. No matter, I thought. Maybe it would be wonderful in the end.
Looking back at it, it’s so… unreal. The thoughts are still there, but it’s like, they’re not even my own. Like trying to recap a movie you saw 20 years ago. And you know, hadn’t it been for one stupid thing, I would never have made it here.
One of the officers, the one who drew a pistol, had dropped it. I slipped on it as I was drawn in. I fell hard, torso-first, knocking the air out of my lungs.
There, lying on the side, I noticed I was lying parallel to the beaten woman. Looking at one another from across the parking lot, I was reminded that there was still time. Looking at her, I didn’t see Eo. I just saw the pain of what was to come if I didn’t tear myself away.
So I did.
In one quick swoop, I picked up the gun at my feet. I held it up, pointed forward, and looked.
I pressed the trigger.
The moment I did, my eyes fell upon the black box.
I could see it before me. Every flash of light from that box stretching into days. Weeks. I could see the bullet travel across the sky in my mind, like a celestial body travelling across the stars. I could drown my thoughts in this world of Eo; eternally seen and loved. Wanted. Needed.
I gave up completely, just like the others. I did. It scares the shit out of me to admit, but experiencing that thing for the third time was the final snap.
Luckily, that one bullet found its target.
The box shattered into pieces.
The inside of it was nothing but a powerful bulb and a little hand-cranked fan. That was all there was to it.
As the pieces spread across the asphalt, there was a moment of realization. Like something was torn out of my head. The world started to spin, as if passing by a million miles per hour. I got the worst case of vertigo I’ve ever experienced; barely able to breathe from the nausea.
Others collapsed to the ground, expunging their empty stomachs. I saw someone having a seizure. The man who’d beaten that girl half to death crawled up me, took my handgun, and fired every single round into the woman who’d held that black box.
Maybe he, too, saw his chance to be free.
It was absolute chaos.
I was sick. I was accused. More flashing lights, but all they did was worsen my nausea. I got my blood pressure checked. I had to spend a night in jail, I think. I could barely think straight. Most of my time was passed leaning over a toilet bowl, emptying my bowels over and over. Some of the stuff that came out just didn’t make any sense. When the hell did I eat a sunflower? And why the hell was it blue?
The beaten woman didn’t accuse me. If anything, she cleared me. Maybe she saw that last-ditch effort for what it was. The man who shot down our captor was charged, but I don’t know for what. After many considerations, I was eventually cleared. One of the officers on-site was actually the one I’d initially talked to when I was first assaulted, so maybe he felt bad about not listening the first time.
Maybe you’ve seen the articles. They called it a prank gone wrong. I think it reached like… page 8 of a national paper.
This was a couple of years ago. I wanted to put this to paper to remind myself that it actually happened, and that my feelings and fears are still valid. Because to this day, I get this sort of pavlovian response whenever something flashes. It’s like my body goes into shock, immediately trying to get something out of me. Hell, it made me throw up once when I was photographed for work.
I think the box was something called a Raskian. I’ve seen a few of them circling online. Some sort of replica of an art piece by some old turn-of-the-century author.
I wanted to put this out there. When I found myself looking for answers, and there was none to be found, I felt so goddamn alone.
At least now there is one of us talking about it.