"Sleep"

SLEEP

     

A

t 11 o’clock on a Saturday night a blue Chevy Impala rolled down a lonely stretch of County Road 19. A light drizzle was falling in this part of southern California, but it wasn’t enough to have the wipers bouncing back and forth in front of his face; that would just distract him from the angry and depressing thoughts that were running through his mind. He reached down and turned on the radio, only to hear another sad country song about a guy whose girlfriend had left him for another guy.

He immediately turned it off, cursing the singer under his breath while saluting it with his middle finger.

The road was deserted for the most part, which was rather ironic, since that was exactly the way Darren felt. It was his 7th wedding anniversary to the woman he thought he’d be spending the rest of his life with, but after what happened tonight he knew that wasn’t going to happen. How could it happen, now that she was just a bloody corpse stuffed in a Hefty bag in the trunk of his car?

But that was par for the course when you considered all of his other failed relationships. The depressing part was that this one had lasted almost twice as long as any of the others, and he truly believed that he and Tammy would grow old together.

The anger came from the fact that she was the one who caused her own death. As far as he was concerned, she may as well have held that knife in her hand and slit her own throat! He sure as hell wasn’t going to take the blame for her early demise. Well, maybe he was responsible for a few of those 46 stab wounds that came afterward, but she was already long dead by then.

Darren was just letting his thoughts return to the task at hand, which was of course, getting rid of the body, when he thought he saw movement in the rear view mirror. He did a quick double take, going so far as to even look over his shoulder, but the back seat was empty.

“That was strange,” he said to himself, rubbing his eyes.

“Not as strange as you might think,” said a voice from the rear.

Darren was so startled he almost ran the Chevy into a huge pine tree on the side of the road.

“What the fuck?” he yelled, scrambling to get out of the car. “Who—where—”

“All good questions, my dear friend, incomplete as they might be. And I might even answer some of them soon. But for now I think it would be best if you just went to sleep.”

“What?”

“Sleep, Darren,” said the voice. “Sleep.”

~          ~          ~

     

T

he first things Darren noticed when he opened his eyes was the cobweb design staring him in the face, followed by something slowly dripping down the side of his nose. A quick swipe with his fingers revealed it was blood from his forehead. The cobweb design was the result of where his head smashed into the windshield when the Impala smashed head on into the pine tree, which was still partially illuminated by one remaining headlight.

Confusion quickly swept through his muddled mind.

Man. Back seat. Scared the hell out of me.

Then the memory of something else came rushing back. The word the man had said: sleep.

He started to turn his head to check the back seat, but a painful crick in his neck prevented that. He had to adjust his body to get a decent view, and when he did he saw that there was nobody there.

More confusion. More memories.

This ain’t right. I know I saw him. I know I didn’t hit that tree, because the car stopped and I got out and looked straight at him.

And yet here he was, sitting in front of a damaged steering wheel (courtesy of his collarbone slamming into it), with blood dripping down his face and a 75 foot pine tree replacing a good portion of the front of his car.

Tammy!

Darren grabbed the keys and jumped out, ignoring the sudden pain in his collarbone, and quickly went to the trunk. He hesitated for a moment, but he had to quench his insatiable curiosity. The way his mind was working, anything could be possible.

He put the key in the lock and opened it, still unsure what he was going to see.

Tammy wasn’t there.

But the Hefty bag he put her body in was.

He stared at the empty trunk for a few seconds in disbelief and wonder. But only for a few seconds as the disbelief and wonder was quickly overcome by the horror of something dropping over his head and quickly tightening around his neck. Instinctively his hands went to his throat trying to loosen whatever it was, but his efforts were hopeless. And the more he struggled, the tighter the rope got. He reached behind him, punching and clawing at whoever or whatever was doing this to him, but his fists only found thin air.

Darren’s eyes bulged out of their sockets and his legs began to buckle.

As he felt his life slowly slipping away, a gravelly voice whispered in his ear.

“We won’t be growing old together, sweetheart, but I promise you, we will be together. All of us. Forever.”

~          ~          ~

     

A

few minutes after 11 o’clock on a Saturday night a blue Chevy Impala was crashed into a huge pine tree on a lonely stretch of County Road 19. Nobody saw the cloven-hoofed figure pick up the rope and then gracefully fade away into the night.

And nobody heard the malevolent female laughter that echoed through the hills in this part of southern California.





(908 Words)