by Easy Jack Portman, 18
The darkness sits before you, a looming void, a piece of the universe chiseled out of the sky and laid out on a platter before you. The flavor of stars is missing. The man next to you is living, although the automobile you sit in may not be. The lights have just suddenly cut out, leaving the grimy dirt road ahead of you to the imagination. The car keeps moving but the man next to you slows its looping wheels, careful without headlights. You consider suggesting to turn back, head toward the vibrant lights of the city behind you, but you know he will be angry if you do. And so, you just keep your eyes fixed on the dark in front of you. Looking where there is absolutely nothing to look at. Threads of paranoia slip their way into your mind, cross-stitching their way between the lumps and ridges of your brain, stabbing at the inward side of your skull. Your eyelids are nonexistent, the anxiety having shriveled them back into your head. Your eyes are open. Your eyes are looking, scanning the black road before you. You look intently for a menace, a villain, a creature in the blackness. Just as a scream causes the avalanche, you find one, looking back at you.
The deep, candy apple eyes reveal themselves slowly, rimmed in crimson. They appear as if the night itself was looking at you, the flesh concealing them disappearing slowly into the darkness around you. They are possibly stop lights down the road and you consider asking the man with you if he has noticed them but something about the shade of red locks your teeth together, your jaw is firm. The eyes are approaching, you were unsure before but you know now that they are in fact eyes; fixated on you, static as they wait for your vehicle to approach. They are feet away. They are inches away. They are a mirror that you don’t want to look into anymore. The man next to you stops the car slowly, as the red ovals tilt themselves carefully, examining the metal contraption before it. The man next to you begins to speak, some confused expletives meant to be heard and answered calmly, as you have done many times before. Just as he speaks, the machine surrounding you decides to play a sick joke. In an instant, the headlights flood on, filling the surroundings again with light.
Its flesh is a matte gray, rough and textured. But the skin is difficult to see, patches of it occasionally shimmer in the light but the mass of it is covered in fur and feathers; each a unique shade of dark ink, spilling into each other and blurring the lines of the night sky. In a second, it launches. In a second, it shrieks. In a second, it is in the air. You feel the world go quiet for just a millisecond. As it launches itself in the sky, the shriek that bursts itself from its mouth cuts short for a moment as it shoots upward. You think you’ve gone deaf in all the panic. You only hear the creature’s absence. Silence, empty road.
Crash.
It lands again, pushing a crevice in the baby blue hood. The vehicle jumps around you, shuddering at the thud. Your breath turns shaky. It screeches again and from the light of the dashboard illuminates its mouth, its teeth. It doesn’t seem to have a head, just a sphere holding those red eyes that blend right into its body.
The man next to you begins reversing the automobile rapidly. The creature slips off, its gripping claws not tight enough. But its wings spread to full size in the headlights as it catches itself in the wind. For a moment they are splayed out before you, they are angelic, and it is bathed in some holy light; the wispy hairs of its head are a halo. You are bewitched, for just a moment, this creature is something. It suddenly feels so solid, so real, so intensely physical and so intensely close to you. Breath fills your lungs and for a moment, all you see is your dim reflection in its burning sunset eyes.
In an instant it’s over, the fixation snaps in two and drifts off into the night. The terror fills your body again, coursing through your veins like a venom. The man next to you revs the engine. The speedometer increases in time with your heartbeat, thump, thump, thumping up in intensity. The vehicle swerves, spinning into drive and rushing down the dirt road, back to the direction you came in. You glance into the rearview mirror and see the thing lurching forward. Its wings slam against the road, swerving as it quickly launches into the sky. It gains momentum and occasionally blasts forward, gliding through the crisp night air at you. The man next to you cries out, slamming the gas pedal as hard as he can. You brace yourself for disaster as the creature, draped in thick shadows, spurts forward again. Closer, closer, gone.
The screeching stops, and you look in the rearview mirror again. It is not behind you. The man next to you chuckles slightly, relief exhaling from his mouth. You do not breathe. You hold the tension in your body close to you, as if it is a strong metal shield. The man next to you begins to speak, saying some immediate excuse as to what this encounter could have been. At the time, it doesn’t occur to you that the comedy of humanities need for a reasonable explanation; this won’t happen for many years. Merely, at the time, you are acutely aware of the scent of impending death that lingers around you both.
Moments pass. It descends again, once again crashing on the hood. But this time, its wings flutter forward as it drops, and splinters the glass on the windshield like marbles scattering timidly across the floor. A scream bubbles its way up through your neck but gets lost somewhere under your tongue. The man next to you lets it release from his throat, the sound waves mingle with the screeches and chatters of the creature. It blocks the lights so you find it hard to see but in an instant, the man is no longer next to you; the thing launches again, swooping into the sky, the man gripped in its clawed feet. Your head throbs with how shaken you are. The headlights feel distant and far off, their gaze only wide enough to see the edges of a scene. Your heart thumps, making your whole body rattle. But one thing becomes clear by the swaying of a nearby tree; the light only occasionally captures the view of his shoes, swinging in and out of sight. You squeeze your eyes shut, a whimper rising with your random bursts of breath. You sit for a while, listening to the branches sway, heart beating in a palpable panic.
You take a deep breath, and move your hand to the door handle, it clicks as you pull it. You slide out of the car cautiously. If you walk, you will make it back to town by dawn. In an ideal world, the creature doesn’t follow you home. The door stays open as your hand leaves the cool metal and parts the dark. You step slowly, off the dirt of the road and into the cool itchy grass of the hill. Below, a river runs quickly, and the water slows your breathing.
Slam.
The creature crashes down again, this time on the roof of the vehicle. Its eyes look purple on the reflection, the blackened sky making a perfectly blue mirror for it to look into. You recognize the horror of it, yet you feel yourself transfixed, hypnotized, locked in by the swirling colors. They look galactic. It crawls over the roof slowly, bending the metallic sea into sharp waves. Ignoring the sight of the open passenger side door, it positions itself once again on the hood. The creature settles itself in the crevice it had previously carved out and dangles the top of its body over the edge. Its eyes peer in opposing directions, each one locked on one headlight. In the stillness of the moment, you notice, for the first time, it’s breathing. Its breath fills and empties from its lungs, desperate to be there. It breathes like it’s never done it before; and so do you. You let yourself breath as you quietly venture further and further from the creature. Down the dirt road and back toward home. You look backward, paranoid, every few seconds. It doesn’t move. It stays put by the headlight.
Red Bank, New Jersey
Reader’s note: This piece is atmospheric, intense, and deeply immersive. The writer does a great job building a sense of dread and unease through vivid imagery and sensory language—lines like “threads of paranoia slip their way into your mind” and “the flavor of stars is missing” are especially striking. The pacing builds suspense well, and the ambiguity of the red eyes keeps the reader engaged and unsettled.
Bridge Ink 