In the Road

I know not how it happened or what I did indeed witness. All I know is what I experienced this night while on my way to buy supplements to what promised to be a delicious meal.

It was while I was crossing a bridge into a dark and heavily wooded section of road that I saw the thing. Now, I don't claim to know anything beyond an ordinary man's knowledge of the sciences, nor did I imbibe, especially not to excess, before I placed myself behind my vehicle's wheel. The moment and my sense's memory of that moment were pure and, in the most complete of honesty, true.

My headlights swept the road from left to right in the turn and there above a small puddle, illuminated by the weakening beam of my struggling machine was what could have been described as a man had it not the face of something so completely horrific that the recollection sends tremors through my being to cause my very soul to shiver. It had eyes, more than the standard two one would expect of a creature that transported itself in bipedal fashion. Below what I can only refer to as a cluster of seeing, peering orbs was a long and dangling series of finger-like tentacles that seemed to slither all the more at the shining of light.

Before I could stop or escape the confines of my seat belt and then my door the thing bolted off with tremendous haste and massive gate into the brush. I stood there for some time staring at its point of exit wondering if it might venture back out. It was a short while after that an officer of the law stopped to question my halted automobile. Saying nothing for fear of alarming the policeman and proving a danger to myself I explained that I was afraid I had almost hit a deer. At that he nodded and was gone.

I drove straight home neglecting the portion of a then long-forgotten meal and pondered my queer discovery all the way back. I sit here now listening to the night beyond my window with a ghost of the vision of that hideous yet intriguing thing. Do the crickets in their chirping compliment its passage through the warm and seemingly placid Summer night? I wonder.