A woman tries to escape heartbreak with her first-ever highway drive — but must survive some truly monstrous road rage to do so.
It was a long and lonesome stretch of highway.
It shouldn’t have been.
It was supposed to be full of snacks and songs and laughter. A fall drive out through the wine country to celebrate Frankie’s thirty-fifth birthday with Alex, her longtime boyfriend. The man she thought she would marry. The man who, one week ago, she discovered was cheating on her with a woman he had insisted many times he was not.
She left the man, but kept the reservations. She could drive herself to the vineyard B&B. She could have fun without Alex. She would.
But Alex had always been the driver.
Frankie hadn’t driven a car herself since she was a teenager. She had never driven on a real highway — ever.
She’d remembered enough to get a new license, to rent a new car, and to drive the neighborhood roads up to the highway on-ramp. But, Frankie thought, as she gripped the steering wheel with the strength of twenty men — she had done it all in a rage.
And the rage had run out.
All she had now were her own white knuckles and an empty on-ramp staring her down. The sky bloomed pink and blue, the last bit of brightness before twilight. The street rumbled underneath her. Cars were coming. Semis, probably. Fleets and fleets of them would be upon her soon, whizzing by, quick as death, and she and her sensible Subaru were not going to be able to face them and live to tell the tale.
Just as soon as she had almost turned onto her first highway, she turned off of it.
“I can take backroads,” Frankie said, in a cheery voice masquerading as a confident one. “It’ll just take a little longer, that’s all.” She scrolled and pinched around her phone’s GPS, then added, “It’s not lying to yourself if you do it out loud in a car.”
It felt so stupid and shameful to feel this scared. To have the whole world waiting on an open road — and to know she wasn’t strong enough to drive it alone.
Forty minutes later, she was hopelessly lost in the endless backroads between her home and her hotel. She’d stress-eaten half the snack-packs in a little snack bag she’d brought with her, and rolled the window down to ditch the crumbs.
An hour and twenty minutes later, her phone battery was halfway dead. WiFi and cellular service was gone, and so was any light in the sky. Every lonely so-often, a streetlamp glowed yellow over otherwise pitch-black fields. She hoped to find a one-streetlight town, but when she did, the only light on in it was the streetlight itself, painting the broken-down clapboard town red.
Frankie’s hands twitched in pain from her too-tight grip on the wheel. She turned on the car radio for company, but it only fuzzed. The radio snow’s only competition for sound was her helicopter heartbeat and the howling wind.
Her heart almost shot out of her chest when she realized there was something else in the sound — the roar of an animal. Or, her thoughts corrected, an engine. Lights glimmered at the edge of her vision, then flashed in her rearview mirror, dazzling her.
Frankie was no longer on the road alone.
“You runnin’ to, or runnin’ from?”
A long, lean man in a pale denim shirt bent over the idling car. Frankie didn’t remember parking it. She stared at her hand on the gearshift handle. How did it get there?
“Ma’am?”
Frankie looked up too quickly. Her neck sparkled with pain. She ignored it, and focused on the man’s handsome face. He looked a little like a movie star cowboy. She was dazzled again. He leaned in closer to the window.
“You alright?”
“You a cop?”
Her sharp tone surprised them both. He put his hands up in a show of surrender, then flashed a badge. “U.S. Marshals Service. Just passing through. Only stopping you on account of the speeding.”
“Was I speeding?”
“One could say so.” The handsome marshal laughed. It was a pleasant, rich sound. “I’d ask the little critter family we passed some miles back, but I think they might’ve asphyxiated on the jet stream you left behind.”
His face seemed too young for the silver in his hair. He was so close she could smell the peppermint on his breath. The sandalwood on his neck. And something else she couldn’t name, deep and sweet and strange. “I’m just hoping you have a good reason for the lead foot.”
He smiled down at her through the open window. Just like a movie star on a screen. She exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. “Why’s that?”
“Well…” the long man’s pretty eyes twinkled. “Let’s just say I would much rather take you out than bring you in.”
Frankie’s head swam. She had thought she was in the start of horror movie. But maybe she was in the start of a porno? Or at the very least, a rom com?
“Good reasons do not include knocking over banks, killing families as they sleep, or drug runnin’,” he said, ticking off reasons on elegant fingers that were as long and strong as the rest of him. “Just so we’re clear. I really want to set you up for success.”
He smirked pleasantly. So did she.
“Would you believe me if I told you I got lost going to my own birthday party?”
“That I’d have to see to believe. License and registration?”
She handed it over, trying to be composed. But this man was having an effect.
“Frankie. That’s a fun name.” His eyes glittered as he scanned the rest of the card. He arched an eyebrow. “No way this birthday’s right, though. I don’t put you a day over twenty-five.”
“Then I put you in league with the devil sir, the way you lie.”
“Gilding the lily a bit, am I?”
“Yeah. Be careful, pardner. It’s yours to lose.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. He smiled, as pleased as she was with the flirtation. But not half as surprised. Had Frankie forgotten she was funny? Had Frankie forgotten she was hot? Things with Alex had been so different. She had been so different. So muted. Alex had lied to her so much, and stayed with her so long — she had stopped knowing what gut feelings to trust.
She knew she had overlooked a lot with Alex in the name of love, but what had spending so much time with him really cost her? Had she forgotten what she wanted? Forgotten she liked this kind of connection, this back-and-forth? That she liked to charm and be charmed?
Had she forgotten who she was like she’d forgotten how to drive?
“First time driving in a while?”
Frankie startled back into herself.
“How did you –”
“Could tell you I’m a mind reader,” he raised his (handsome) eyebrows. “But this license is hot off the press. New drivers get jumpy, let their nerves take the wheel. Just relax. Ease up. Give yourself to the road, and it will give itself to you.”
He handed the license back to her. His fingertips grazed hers. She bit her tongue to keep from gasping. They let their hands linger, frozen in place, burning up against each other.
“You’re not far from home. I can point you back in that direction–”
“I’m not going home.”
“Oh.” He kept his voice even and smooth. “Where you headed, then?” She gave the name of the vineyard B&B. “It’s not far, either.”
“Guess I’m not as lost as I thought.” Frankie moved her fingers to the inside of the long man’s palm.
“Oh, I think you’re still plenty lost.” He leaned his head closer to hers, through the window, close enough that the smell of him overwhelmed her senses. “Would you like me to help you find the way?”
Frankie nodded. The man smiled, and gently twined his fingers with hers. The roar of an animal, an engine, flooded the car — Frankie’s heart, she thought. The sound subsided when the man spoke.
“Take a left at the fork. Head dead ahead forty miles – bout forty minutes if you do the limit.” He laughed. “Then it’s a right at the first streetlight you see. I have to pay a call first, but I’ll meet you there.”
She nodded. Like all this was natural. Destined. Like it happened every day —
“Don’t stop for anybody.” He said, almost an afterthought. But his eyes fixed on hers, intense. “Don’t listen to any sob stories. Don’t help anybody. Lot of folks are con artists out here. Just waiting to take advantage of a young girl out on her own at night.”
“Not that I’m all that young,” she smiled.
“Young enough,” he smiled back. He slowly withdrew her hand from hers — and for a moment, she thought she saw something at his wrist shimmer. Not a watch, not jewelry. But at the edge of the pale denim sleeves, rolled down all the way, something the color of a bruise was pulsing and sparkling inside him.
Under the skin.
But maybe, she thought, as she watched his pale shirt dim into darkness and listened to their engines start — that was just her heart-eyes playing tricks.
The road she followed now was even darker than the roads before, but Frankie was no longer afraid. Her phone was near-dead, service still gone, but she was close to something now. Something so much better than what she thought she’d find.
The long man had turned right when she turned left. She’d watched his headlights run parallel to hers, miles away, for a while. Then he had made another turn. What was he doing? What was his name?
Would he really meet her at the vineyard B&B? Should he? All of this felt like life tilting towards fantasy. A handsome man on a lonesome highway, out looking for her. Not someone else. Mystery men never happened in real life — or at least, they never happened to Frankie.
Maybe, she thought, trying to clear her chest of Alex’s rejection and the new driver fears, all tangled up with the hope of the evening — maybe this mystery man hadn’t happened to Frankie at all. Maybe all of this just some elaborate, desperate dream?
No. She knew it wasn’t, because of his smell. That strange smell was too real to dream. But the memory of it was so recent, so powerful, that it seemed to fill the car. She was so distracted by thinking of him, so close to her — that she didn’t see the old woman in the road until it was almost too late.
She slammed the brakes. The woman was paler than the man’s shirt had been. So pale, she was almost see-through. She didn’t startle at Frankie’s scream, or the screeching brakes. Instead, the old woman slowly walked back to an ancient, rusty pickup truck on the side of the road and leaned against an open door.
Frankie’s body felt like jelly. She threw the car into park, and caught her breath. She watched the old woman tilt her head back, eyes closed, breathing heavy. It looked like the truck was breathing with her.
Frankie blinked her eyes — and the truck came into focus. It was rusted. Something from the ‘40s. It looked like that was the last time it had ever run. There was no way the woman could have driven at all, let alone driven that truck.
Frankie looked around — there were no buildings she could make out. Just fallow fields. How did this woman get here?
As if in answer, the woman raised a paper-thin hand. She beckoned to Frankie.
“Don’t stop for anybody,” the long man’s words rang in Frankie’s ears.
Well, Frankie thought, whoever this lady she is, she’s sure not just “anybody.”
“Ma’am?” Frankie called out. “Are you alright?”
The old woman slipped down to the ground.
“Ma’am! Ma’am!”
Frankie raced to her. The old woman moaned. Her dress was simple and plain, printed with a tiny cornflower pattern. As old and as dirty as the pickup. Almost like both were from an old photograph come to life. The woman had a familiar smell that Frankie couldn’t exactly place, something odd but familiar. Too sweet. Rotten and forgotten, like an onion in a drawer.
Frankie dropped to her knees, and looked for the sign of the old woman’s car keys or a phone. Her heart stuck in her throat. How lost was this poor woman? Was anyone out looking for her?
“Someone’s drainin’ my power,” the woman spoke. Her voice was thinner than she was. “Someone’s takin’ it for themselves.”
“Ma’am, where do you live? Are you –”
“I ain’t lost. My power’s lost,” the old woman was even quieter this time.
Frankie wanted to help the woman, but the smell was so strong, she was choking on it. The rot of it. “Is there someone I can call –”
The old woman vice-gripped Frankie’s arm. Frankie, heart racing, struggled to rip her arm away. The old woman tightened her grip, and ignored Frankie’s squirming. She spoke through the whipping winds and the dry grass, the night bird’s scream, and the rush of Frankie’s own blood.
“I NEED TO EAT.”
She flung Frankie back towards the Subaru, then slumped into the gravel road.
Frankie scrambled up into the car, jelly hands flopping to find the gearshift — but finding the bag of snack-packs instead.
She looked at the old woman’s small crumpled form. If someone drove past her, whoever or whatever she was, they would mistake her for trash on the side of the road. Tears sprang to Frankie’s eyes. A lump stabbed at her throat. She grabbed the snack bag.
Frankie, on jelly legs to match her jelly hands, crunched through gravel and dirt to the old woman’s side. Very gently, she sat the old woman up and leaned her against the rusted-out truck for support.
The old woman sucked in a deep sniff as Frankie, with shaking fingers, started pulling open the snack-packs. “I have peanut butter cookies, fudge stripes, some cheese curls.” The old woman’s fingers fluttered like butterfly wings against Frankie’s arms, following the length of them until she reached the bags in Frankie’s hands. “I don’t know what you like best, or want first, but –”
The old woman gently gathered the six or so little snack-pack bags up in her hands.
Then she unhinged her jaw, and swallowed them whole – bags and all.
Frankie froze. The old woman reset her jaw, then opened her eyes, revealing shocking, ghost-blue cataracts. She blinked a few times, then patted Frankie’s arm, and twisted her terrifying face into a smile. “I just gets hungry, is all. And when I gets hungry, I gets confused.”
And with that, the old woman got up, dusted herself off, yanked the rusty pickup door open, got in — and fell right asleep.
Frankie shut it softly — then sprinted to her car, spraying gravel with her escape.
Frankie didn’t know if her eyes or the fear was playing tricks on her, but for a moment, she thought she saw the same bruise-colored shimmer she saw on the handsome man’s wrist under her own skin — right where the old woman had grabbed her.
But almost as soon as she glanced at it, it was gone — if it ever was there in the first place.
Frankie floored it the rest of the way to make her final turn. It was a night for strange happenings, and she far preferred strange happenings with handsome strangers.
She saw the lone streetlight, and every cell in her body braced to relax at the sight of the vineyard B&B.
Instead, she found more backroad to drive. Out in the distance stood an abandoned farmhouse, watched over by a headless scarecrow and a rusted-out backhoe from yesteryear.
The streetlight swayed in the wind, endlessly blinking yellow, washing the road in a sickly, slow-motion strobe.
“Maybe,” Frankie said out loud to herself, “The B&B is right past that farmhouse.”
Frankie drove slowly towards the building. A loose shutter cracked against the siding with every shift in the wind. For the first time since she’d gotten her new license, Frankie wished she weren’t the only car on the road.
As if the road had heard her wish, a set of headlights appeared in the distance. Frankie was relieved — until she saw that the road she was on was just a dirt track. A backroad’s backroad — and one far too narrow for two-way traffic.
She looked up to see the headlights had eaten half the distance between them. The other driver flashed their brights, just off-beat from the yellow streetlight.
She flashed her own brights. Honked her horn. But the car sped towards her. Somehow not seeing her — or determined not to?
She rolled down her window and screamed. “Stop! Stop! Reverse!”
But the other car’s engine roared in a way she was sickened to recognize. The other car cut their lights. And for a brief, terrible moment, Frankie saw who was at the wheel — the long man in the pale denim shirt.
Smiling at her.
He whistled out his open window.
“Hiya, sweetheart. Miss me?”
His hands pulsed and glowed. The electric, cosmic bruise sparkled up his wrists, up his neck. Something spreading in him. Growing stronger. He laughed, for the sheer joy of it.
For a moment, she tried to make some stupid sense of it. This was still part of a game, this was still part of a promising change in luck —
And then he stepped on the gas.
She tried to share the road, but her right wheels dipped too low, and she swerved back onto the main road. So. If she veered off the road, she’d flip her car.
But if she stayed on the main road….
The long man was gaining on her, fast.
She had to think faster. She grabbed the gearshift, and threw the car in reverse. To her shock and the long man’s delight, she kept the vehicle in a straight line for sixty whole seconds. Just long enough to put spitting distance between her car and the farmhouse.
Until she crashed into the scarecrow at full force.
The airbags hit her like a punch to the gut. To the face. But pain was an abstract concept to her now – just another sensation to ignore on the quest to fulfill her goal: to run like hell.
“You a runner, Frankie?” the long man called out, cool and calm as ever, into the black and yellow sky. “Cause I am.”
Of course he was.
Frankie tripped, hard, and swallowed her scream. She couldn’t let him know where she was. She had to get to the farmhouse.
She had seen enough horror movies to know that she had an equal chance of being killed by some terrible horror inside the farmhouse, or finding an ax in there so she could become a terrible horror herself.
Right then, the man was prowling around her car, looking for her hiding spot. But Frankie was nowhere near it. She was almost to the rusty backhoe — the halfway point between her crashed car and the farmhouse.
Spindly, broken wheat and tall grass slapped her in the face as she ran. She could only run when the streetlight was off – the little blinks of darkness and thin patches of dead crops were her only cover. That, and the whipping winds that seemed to get louder the more Frankie ran.
The backhoe was so close now, she could smell the metal tang of rust. The air was thick, ozoney, sweet and sour and confusing. The scent of gasoline almost overwhelmed her. Frankie used the scent of metal as a lifeline.
The backhoe was cover unto itself — so big, she’d have plenty of options to hide if the man got close. She sprinted straight for it — then let out a scream even louder than the wind.
Frankie had run straight into an old fallen fence. One topped with old, rusty barbed wire.
Frankie screamed again as she fell forward, hands out to catch herself — on even more old, rusty barbed wire.
The pain was impossible. So big, it felt like it belonged to someone else. Like she did — she was hardly herself anymore, just a thing meant to die by a thousand ragged cuts.
She had also seen enough horror movies to know that writhing in barbed wire was a sure sign she was doomed — but no movie ever did justice to the searing pain. The helplessness of being caught in a trap you couldn’t see coming. One you fell into because you thought you were saving yourself.
“Frankie, Frankie, Frankie.”
The wind tamed at the sound of the long man’s wicked whiskey voice.
She tried to stay still, but even breathing hurt her.
The long man cut what light there was with his handsome figure. He blinked, black and yellow, yellow and black. He smiled, and crunched up close to her carefully.
“Just look at you.”
She was eye-level with his white cowboy boots. They didn’t have a speck of dirt on them. But they were embroidered with a flaming wagon wheel and the words “king of the road.”
“Serving yourself up to me on a plate. Twice in one night.”
Very slowly, he crouched down so they were face to face. His was still beautiful. Hers was slashed and bloody. He reached out and traced a rivulet down her cheek with one elegant, bruise-light shimmering hand, catching enough blood to drop a salty drop onto her lower lip.
Frankie winced. But the long man just smiled, and licked her blood off his finger.
“Now, that’s what I call finger lick–” but the man cut himself off with his own scream.
Because while he was mocking her, Frankie had wrapped her hands around barbed wire — and chosen just the right moment to yank it up and across the handsome man’s face.
Little purple and green droplets of sparkling blood dripped down on Frankie. The man staggered backwards and screamed again, a withering scream.
He rustled for something in the brush.
Frankie stood, only to fall back on the wire again. He was hurt, but she was still more hurt than him. He found whatever he was looking for, grunting in triumph.
He lunged back to her, looming over her, an ax gripped in his hands.
That was supposed to be her ax. Just like this was supposed to be the dawning of her new age. Her new license.
This was not how she was supposed to end.
But, as Frankie writhed to free herself from the wire — it looked like it was going to be.
She had to stop moving. But she had to keep going. She had to —
“Quit your wigglin’, girl,” a paper-thin voice tickled her ear. Frankie flicked her eyes up, to the right. There, curled in the backhoe’s little wheel well, was the old woman from before!
Her ghost-blue cataracts glowed brighter. Her terrible face smiled.
“You,” Frankie whispered.
“You.” The long man spit, at the sight of the old woman.
“YOU,” the old woman spoke through the whipping winds and the dry grass, the night bird’s scream and the rush of Frankie’s own blood – and the long man’s too. The wind quieted, and the old woman’s voice was thin as paper again. “This’n helped me home. Now let me help you get back to the hole you crawled out of, hm?”
The handsome man swung the ax higher on his shoulder and smiled. “Oh, old woman. I’d like to see you try.”
“Mmhm,” the old woman nodded. “Okie.”
Almost at the end of the word, a hundred glimmering, shimmering bruise-colored tentacles burst from all over the dead earth. From the fields, from under fallen fences, from the belly of the backhoe and the depths of the outbuildings, even from the farmhouse itself — thick, fleshy, bruise-bright appendages shot forth to capture the long man in their fearsome grasp.
They tore him limb from limb.
The tentacles grew tendrils, and those pushed through his tenderest bits. His pretty eyes, his beautiful mouth, his perfect nose — all invaded and infested.
His well-turned arms — torn.
His comely legs — shredded.
His beautiful body, squeezed and popped and pulled until every bit of him, every morsel, was in the tentacles’ grip.
Then, in awful concert, they took all of what was once the long man, and sucked the bits down into the earth to plant them deep.
The sound was terrible.
The smell was wonderful.
And when the tentacles had done their job, the old woman — eyes blue and clear now, skin old but full — smiled warmly at Frankie.
“Don’t you worry, girl. Nothin’ ever grows on this farm but me.”
Then the old woman rose up in the sky, as big and bright as a sunrise.
“Go on now,” the old woman thing spoke through a soft rushing wind. She petted Frankie’s face with one tentacle, and lifted her car back onto the road with another, turning it to face the way she came. “Don’t you got some place to be?”
Frankie nodded.
Then took off running for her car.
The whipping winds pushed at her back so fiercely, it felt like she was flying.
In the driver’s seat, Frankie brought a hand to her face, shimmering and healing under the old woman’s powers. The woman was shrinking back to size now. Surveying her farm. Clucking at the damage. Making little plans, quietly, out loud to herself.
“Thank you!” Frankie called out from the car. The old woman nodded, and raised her hand. Waved her off.
“Shoo, girl. Shoo.”
Frankie smiled. Shook her head. And started the car. Just as she moved the gearshift into drive, a tentacle shot through the open window, and stopped her.
“Girl?” the old woman’s face appeared at the window, smiling like a corn husk doll. “You got any more of them snacky packs?”
Frankie handed her the snack bag. The old woman smiled. Then unhinged her jaw.
Frankie drove for what seemed like hours.
Then took the first highway on-ramp she saw.