A Short Story by Jack Mint
The lights of the side-by-side bumped up and down on the desert road. A little of my ninth beer spilled on my shirt on a jagged section of road connecting my house to Rick’s bachelor pad way out in the boonies. Interstate Forty trucks rumbled by and passed under the gleam of the Love’s Truckstop. It was well past one in the morning when the wife called and wanted cigarettes before she ran out. I told Rick it was a “wife wants” excuse to bow out of the abysmal dart game I was losing. I hopped in the UTV and drove into the cold dark. Love’s wasn’t far, so I picked up the cigarettes and headed home.
Something passed through my headlights. I nearly hit whatever dashed in front of me and I slammed on the brakes. The skid still threw me against the steering wheel, and I held a crushed beer can in my hand. I threw the can into the dark, enraged by the loss. Yet, something didn’t seem right as the side-by-side idled a weak putter in the vastness of the desert.
Had to be a coyote, it ran like one, I thought. But that didn’t fit what I saw, even though I didn’t really know what I saw.
It was bigger than a coyote. Way bigger.
Again, it dashed through the headlight at the corner of my eye. A pale flash that set my teeth on edge. I mashed my foot on the accelerator. The wind whipped my face for my foolishness, and I slowed down the off-road vehicle. There were no wolves in this area and mountain lions didn’t come this far down into the valley. At least I don’t think so.
My phone had a flashlight, and after fumbling out of my gloves, I turned it on. Pointing to where the thing went, the light scanned back and forth. Nothing, until the eyes reflected out of the dark.
They shined like dead stars from a sinister, round head. The creature’s outline was jagged and feral just out of reach of the light. It moved. Stood up taller than a man. Moved towards me. I smelled blood. The horrid thing was taking shape when the phone battery died.
I floored the UTV like a madman and took it down that road as fast as it could go. It wasn’t a fancy Razor, but I was still moving with speed down that old frontage road.
The creature dashed in front of the UTV again, running straight across the bow in lightning quick strides. I was driving fifty miles an hour through the desert at night and the creature dived across my headlights again and again, always just ahead of me. How fast was this thing? It never had to run beside my machine, it dashed back and forth at the edge of the headlights. Toying with me.
It left me alone once I got under city streetlights. That didn’t mean I slowed down the side-by-side. I kept the needle in the red all the way into the driveway. I leapt out and went inside screaming her name. No answer in the dark house. I turned on the bedroom light, but she wasn’t there. The back-porch light was on.
I was shaking walking up to that sliding door. I slowly opened it and stepped out. Next to my wife’s overturned chair laid a half-smoked cigarette, still smoldering.
