I was driving down an unlit section of highway, where the dark, twisting road stretched out before me like a never-ending black ribbon. I was in the middle of a road trip to visit a friend who lived about six hours away, and I’d been driving for hours without seeing another soul on the road. It was an eerie feeling, as if I was the only person left on the planet.
I adjusted the radio station, trying to find something to keep me company on the quiet drive. As I was scrolling through the stations searching for any sign of life, I saw a figure out of the corner of my eye. It was a man standing on the side of the road, holding out a hand and looking for a ride.
Normally, I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought. But something about this guy made my skin crawl. Maybe it was the fact that he was standing in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, or maybe it was the way he was staring at me with unrelenting intensity. Whatever it was, I knew that I didn’t want to slow down.
But as I passed by him, I saw something in his eyes that made me hesitate. They were dark and empty, as if he was completely devoid of any humanity. There was a coldness about him that seemed to seep into my bones. I almost drove past him entirely, but something inside me made me hit the brakes and pull over onto the side of the road.
In retrospect, it was probably one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made. As soon as the hitchhiker got into the car, I noticed how his unpleasant stench filled the air. He immediately started talking, but his voice was deep and unsettling, almost like he was growling at me. I asked him where he was headed, but he couldn’t give me a straight answer.
Tension started to build inside of me, and I considered telling him I had changed my mind about giving him a ride. But I didn’t want to seem impolite or judgmental, so I decided to keep driving. We moved further and further into the darkness, with every mile that passed taking us further from civilization.
There were no streetlights, no other cars, no sign of human life. It felt like the two of us were the only souls existing in the world and the silence inside the car became torturous. The only sound was the man’s breathing that became heavier with every mile that passed. I must have drifted off briefly because when I opened my eyes again, something had shifted in the atmosphere inside the car.
I noticed that the hitchhiker was no longer sitting in the passenger seat, before the sound of me being gasping for air had even reached my throat, I felt a cold, aggressive hand on my throat, choking me. With a violent struggle and a scream, I managed to pull the locks in one of the doors up and kick it open. I bolted out of the car and sprinted down the side of the road, my breaths heavy and ragged. There was the sound of crushing gravel behind me, telling me the hitchhiker was in pursuit.
Just when I thought it was all over, the hitchhiker let out a guttural shout of anger. I glanced back to see he was now surrounded by a group of people - five or six of them, all on the edge of madness. They looked nothing like humans. It seemed that they were trying to reach me with anger in their eyes. I could see that they’re common characteristic was they each had that same coldness in their expressions that I had noticed in the hitchhiker’s eyes.
In that moment, I realized that these weren’t normal humans; they belonged to some feral group of men living out in the wild. I had driven right into their domain and I was about to become their next victim. Running on pure adrenaline I sprinted down the road.
My legs ached and the pain in my chest was practically unbearable. Until, miraculously, there was the faint outline of an approaching vehicle ahead with a familiar symbol – police.
As the speeding car got closer to me, I screamed for help loud enough for the driver to hear. The police pulled over right next to me, and the feral men collectively retreated back into the darkness. The true terror of that night had come and gone, and I realized how fortunate I was to make it out alive.