kellythewriter714

[kellythewriter714]

[kellythewriter714]

THE TRAVELLER

pitch: someone should have told Sarah not to pick up hitchhikers  count: 560  genre: horror rating: fr15

Sarah pushed the cassette into the stereo; fingers tapping against the steering wheel as a soft country melody played out. She was tempted to roll down the windows, let the music wash out over the highway. There wasn’t a car for miles, hadn’t been for at least an hour. Sarah was alone on the road. Just how she liked it. After the craziness of campus, she was glad for a little peace.

  After switching to side b, Sarah noticed the gas dial running towards empty. She found a sign for a gas station a half mile away and soon pulled in front in her brother’s beat up corvette. She started pumping gas, marvelling at the quiet. Not a car for miles. Not a person for miles. As she put the nozzle back, Sarah reached for her purse. But she found someone instead.  

“Sorry there, Sweetpea.” A wannabe cowboy, right down to the hat and toothpick. “Didn’t mean to scare you. This your car?”

  She nodded.

  The cowboy pulled up his lips, baring his teeth, as he smiled. “My car died couple of miles back, and the old boy here doesn’t have a working telephone. Mind if I bum a ride to the nearest town?”

  He held her gaze, his baby blues bright and a toothpick dangling from his bottom lip. All he carried was an old duffel bag. Not even a gun. Sarah didn’t need the company. But after what had happened before she’d left campus, she could sure use the karma. “Sure. Okay. Just let me pay for the gas first.”

  The cowboy dug into his front pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Let me, Sweetpea. Least I can do.”

  The car felt heavier with someone inside it. Like all the air had been sucked out. Sarah kept her hands on the wheel, foot on the gas pedal. Occasionally her eyes flickered to the man sitting beside her. He chewed on his toothpick, jaw slack. When he caught her staring, he stared straight back.

  “You know, Sweetpea, not a lot of girls would have given me a ride. Too many nasty stories about pretty little things picking up the wrong kind of trouble.” He leant over, teeth glinting. “So, where you headin’?

  She swallowed. “Home. For the summer. Family’s got a place out here.” Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the familiar turning. “Their place is just up ahead. I’m leaving you a little short. You hungry? I could make you a meal.”

  “Sounds great, Sweetpea.”

  Smiling for the first time since the cowboy got into the car, Sarah made the turning. The dust and dirt faded into thick, knotted trees. Her childhood home loomed, impressive, in the dim sunlight. The Cowboy looked out through the windscreen, marvelling at the size of the place. For Sarah, she was just glad to be home. She was getting tired and, quite frankly, a little hungry.

  “Nice place. You guys farmers?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Folks run an abattoir.”

  Out front, the screen door opened. Her big brother stepped out, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of her. Sarah was glad to see him too. There was no place like home. No one understood you quite like family.

  “Hey, Teddy!” She waved up at him. “I’m back! And I brought dinner!”

[kellythewriter714]

DIRT

pitch: a woman wakes, lost in the undergrowth count: 735  genre: drama rating: fr15

A recent unsuccessful entry, I hope others enjoy it. 

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Pain. So much pain. Her head throbbed with it, pulsed with it. The pain was unyielding, unending. She needed something to take it away. Paracetamol in the bathroom cabinet; ibuprofen if that didn’t work. Gin to help her sleep. She rubbed her fingertips across the bridge of her eyes; a soothing gesture that did little to alleviate the agony. She continued to rub her forehead, groaning in the dark of her bedroom; only pausing when she felt something sticky against her temple.  

Fighting the pain, she wrenched open her eyes.

“Oh…oh god…oh god…”

The pitch black made it difficult to see. But her right hand sunk through mud; thick and foul. A branch dug into her lower back. Something brushed the side of her face, kept moving, kept crawling right beside her eye. She batted it away; pain scoring her forehead. It was a futile effort. Six legs, eight legs, ten legs, more…she felt them along the nape of her neck, the inside of her wrist. She felt them everywhere. Her hands grasped wildly at her surroundings. She found something small, cylindrical, manmade. Her torch. She found the button at the base.

She wasn’t in her bedroom. Wasn’t in her rented cottage. The pain made it difficult to think; everything blurry at the edges. But she recalled a decision to go walking in the dark, with nothing more than a torch; hoping to find a solution to all her problems. Writers block: find the answer in a ditch. Busted marriage: answer’s in the hedge. She had found no answers.

Just rain. Just mud. Just pain.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she swallowed. “It’s just a few bumps and bruises.”

She made to stand. White pain, blinding pain, exploded behind her eyes. Mud matted her dark hair as she collapsed to the ground. She tried to scream but her voice was barely a rasp. Tears fell, hot and fat, against her cheeks. She sobbed until her chest heaved and her breathing grew heavy. When she was ready, she swung the torch over her lower form. Her jeans, muddy and bloodstained, were torn just below the knee. The light illuminated the length of bone jutting from her shin. She gagged; bile burning the back of her throat.

There would be no walking home.

“Someone help me. Someone help me please.”

But no one came. There were no footsteps; no rustle of a dog’s snout. No light from nearby windows; no sound of tires on tarmac. No one was coming for her. No one would even know she was missing. She had left unseen for the cottage to finish her book; left few friends and even fewer family behind. No phone, no iPod. She had wanted to be cut off. Now she was.

She drifted in and out. Sometimes the pain was too much. Sometimes sleep overwhelmed her. In those moments, she did everything she could to keep herself awake. Her right hand, blood caked underneath the fingernails, connected with the side of her face. She played games when her cheek burned scarlet. How many hours had it been? Was that a car or a figment of her imagination? What was the thing crawling across her face? It burrowed into her ear. She clawed it out; fingers scraping against her eardrum. Tiny legs joined the blood under her nails.

Sometime, hours or minutes after, she decided she wanted to die. Pain was her sole companion. She was afraid to move, afraid to breathe lest he rear his ugly head. Her mouth was dry; her body craving water. Every minute, second, was excruciating. She wanted to die. The torch was her way out. She could undo it; toss the batteries, use the cap. It was sharp enough; she could run it across her wrists. Maybe jab it into her neck. Bloody, certainly. But an end.

She unscrewed the cap and placed it against the inside of her wrist. But she did not move.

Consciousness grew thin. She became less aware of the dirt, the insects, the undergrowth. Even the pain became a distant memory. The part of her brain still functioning registered the dim light through the leaves above her. There were colours, now. Green and orange and red. There was the blue of her jeans, the white of the bone. The pink of the dog’s tongue.

“Oh my god, lady, are you okay?”

Then, black.