A Fresh Start - By Joshua Witsaman

“Finally!  I’m on my way!  Finally I’m getting out of here!”  Greg thought to himself, stepping on the gas pedal as he merged the car onto the highway.

“This has been a long time coming!” He thought to himself.  “I’ve been looking forward to this longer than I realized!”

Greg Stoddard was starting over.

He was leaving this town and everyone he knew and he didn’t feel much regret about any of it.

Greg had sold off most of his possessions.  Appliances, books, furniture, even a lot of his clothes. 

He’d even sold his truck.

The car he was traveling in was a rental and probably the nicest car he’d ever driven, which wasn’t saying much.  Surprisingly Greg had been able to scrape together more than enough for the move, so he decided to splurge on his transportation for the trip. 

The car was a brand new Chrysler 300 with all the bells and whistles.  He wasn’t bringing much with him and didn’t need much in the way of cargo space.  All of his suitcases, bags, and current worldly possessions conveniently fit in the car’s back seat. 

He hadn’t even needed to open the trunk.

The growl of the V-8 was the only sound to accompany his swirling thoughts.  Thoughts about where he was headed and what he was getting away from.

It was nearly midnight and the sky was especially dark with a thick layer of clouds blanketing the stars.

The preparations to leave had taken longer than he had anticipated, but Greg had been determined to make sure he didn’t forget any detail or leave anything unfinished, because he had no intentions of coming back.

Greg was fed up.  Fed up with being unappreciated and underpaid.  He was tired of his talents going unnoticed and tired of his emotions being disregarded.  He was no longer going to be the big fish in a little pond.

Greg Stoddard believed that he had a lot to get away from and this was the only way to do it.

Along with these thoughts came a flood of memories which buoyed his storm of emotions. 

Reaching across to the console Greg turned on the radio to help push back everything that was bubbling to the surface of his mind.

The sound system of the rental car was impressive. 

He cranked the volume up.  The music seemed to completely fill the void of the previously silent interior.

Drumming his fingers across the steering wheel, listening to the song, Greg settled in to the driver’s seat to cruise through the inky night.

Suddenly a tremendous thump erupted from the car, the whole interior of the car vibrated, and Greg shot forward in his seat clutching the steering wheel with both hands.

His heart pounded in his chest.  With panicked wide eyes he scanned the horizon of his limited visibility. 

Greg had never blown out a tire while on the highway but didn’t want to risk damaging the car, or worse, losing control and getting into a wreck. 

Easing on the brake Greg pulled the car over and turned off the radio.

Slamming a fist across the wheel, he clenched his jaw, swearing under his breath.

“Damn it!  I can’t even get out of this town without something going wrong!”  He shouted as he exited the car.  Quickly he circled around the front to inspect the damage to the tire.

But there was no damage to the tire, any of the tires.

He went around the entire car, bending low to look at the body and the wheel wells.  But everything seemed fine. 

There was absolutely no evidence that he might have hit anything with the car.  There hadn’t been anyone or anything else on the highway and the exterior of the car was completely undamaged.

Then he heard it again.  The same thump he’d heard while driving.

The noise was so much louder now from outside of the car.  Standing where he was, he could see the entire car sway slightly as the thump came again. 

Without the blaring radio to muffle the sound Greg could clearly discern that whatever it was, the sound was coming from the trunk.

His heart leapt in his ribcage.  The noise was so unfamiliar and the way it shook the car made it seem as though there might actually be something in the trunk.

Slowly, he approached the rear of the car.

With the keys in his hand he waited a moment, listening.  He nearly fell over when the thump shook the car again, echoing across the empty highway.

Instantly he devised a plan. 

While standing close to the rear passenger door he would pop the trunk with the keychain remote. That way if something was in there he’d be able to see what it was and leap inside if it turned out to be dangerous.

Although there were no other noises coming from the trunk Greg’s mind seemed to conjure the most absurd possibilities.  Maybe somehow a wild tiger had been trapped in there.  Or it was a masked serial killer lying in wait.  Or perhaps some sort of mafia frame job orchestrated to incriminate the cars previous renter.

Putting all those scenarios aside Greg braced himself and pressed the trunk release.

The lid of the trunk slowly lifted.  Nothing immediately leaped out or struggled to escape.  There was no explosion, no voices, nothing. 

Greg paused a few moments longer. Another idea suddenly occurred to him.  Reaching down he opened the rear door before quickly slamming it shut again in an attempt to startle whatever was back there, urging it to move again.

But there was only more silence.

Cautiously Greg stepped away from the door and moved his way around behind the car.

The light on the trunk lid was illuminated, shining down weakly into the opening.

Sidling up to the trunk Greg peered down.  It was empty.

A sense of relief washed over him, along with a feeling of silliness at his overabundance of caution.

But that relief didn’t last.

As he searched the trunk he realized that the trunk wasn’t merely empty but there wasn’t anything there at all.

The tiny lightbulb above revealed nothing but total blackness within.  There was no carpeted floor.  No contours of the interior.  No labels with instructions for changing the tire, absolutely nothing.

The trunk was an opening into nothing, a metal frame looking onto a deep and frightening void.

Greg couldn’t completely comprehend what he was looking at. 

He bent down to look under the car to make sure the bottom of the trunk hadn’t somehow fallen away while driving, but it was still there.  His mind simply couldn’t fathom the shapeless magnitude which opened up in front of him.

But before he was able to ponder the anomaly at any great length he caught sight of something moving deep within the trunk, the movement seemed far off, as if miles away.  It logically didn’t make sense however there was no denying it, something was down there coming into view against that background of expansive ebony.

Mesmerized by the entire situation and the strange movements Greg stood at the side of the highway staring down into the enchanted trunk.  As the moving speck grew closer Greg could see more details.  He could discern what appeared to be a pair of hands, slender human hands attached to thin willowy arms that seemed to reach outward from infinity. 

No matter how much closer the hands approached it was never revealed what exactly those arms were attached to.  And the hands were indeed getting closer, swiftly making their way for the open trunk.

Greg couldn’t help but watch as the hands wormed their way towards him, palms outward, thin fingers splayed and stiff.  They swayed from side to side as they approached with a mesmerizing pattern.

He thought about running but was too fascinated to move.

The delicate pale hands stretched within just a few feet from Greg, reaching upward from within the deep interior.  As the hands emerged into the faint light of the trunk and streetlamps, the fingers began to twitch sporadically.  The flesh of the limbs began to blanch and wrinkle as if rapidly aging before his eyes.

The skin became bruised and sunken before rotting away in large patches.  The flesh started peeling away in ugly dried husks revealing what was beneath.

Instead of muscle or bones the peeling flesh exposed what appeared to be rough iron hooks.  What had moments before been fingers were now curved spikes of pitted metal ending in gruesome barbs. 

This new horror of the protruding hooks caused Greg to reflexively stumble backwards, snapping him out of his mystified musings.  Any remaining curiosity he possessed about the situation seemed to instantly evaporate.

Turning away he tried to escape.

As he ran Greg’s foot stumbled across several large chunks of broken asphalt which had collected along the berm of the highway.  The sudden impediment sent him careening downward onto his hands and knees.

Greg could hear the snapping and creaking of those hellish hooks approaching behind him and the aged flesh which still fell away from those grotesque hands.  Turning back as he scrabbled to escape, Greg gasped to see the hooks directly behind him.  As he watched, the dull metal slowly writhed forward.

His pulse quickened to a frantic beat.  The crude iron hooks froze in place for an instant before shooting forward in a blur.  Each hooked hand grasped either side of Greg’s head, barbed digits sinking into each of his throbbing temples.

Greg screamed as the hooks held him in place, but the scream was brief.

With a swift powerful whip of the willowy arms Greg was hauled up into the air.  With a single lightning motion the hooks reeled in their prize dragging him back toward the trunk. 

Greg was towed in with such sudden force that his knees and ankles banged violently against the bumper and the edge of the trunk before he disappeared into that fathomless nothing within.

As Greg vanished into the trunk, the lid lightly shut behind him with a satisfying click.