It was a long, quite rural road of happenstance.  

The white rock country road cut through the very heart of the surrounding cattle community, one characterized by its acres, upon acres of wide open spaces, like a scar upon the earth.

The road was sporadically shaded from the blue twilight of the nightly stars by heavy tree-cover, which framed the land around it, however one section of the road was shaded far more than others.

Here the overhanging trees were so thick they tunneled the road to a near sightless black, just where two hills merged at their base to form the valley below.

Few animals dare cross over this pitch point of shadowed nothingness. No crickets chirped their nightly song from the heart of those lightless shadows. No lightning bugs dare breach that absolute dark.

Something was in there however…

Something which waited.

Patiently.

It waited for the perfections of delicious opportunity which was often afforded to it by time.

It waited for those malevolent twists of fate which were gifted by the night.

And it waited for that perfect moment of happenstance, when prey fell helplessly into its trap.

Tonight?

It didn’t have to wait long.

…

“GPS sucks.” Jack carried the empty gas can with one hand and tucked the other deep inside the pocket of his denim jacket, as if to ward off the chill of the wind of night that seemed to grow more bitter the longer he walked, and stomped down the hill toward the motionless valley below. “Shortcut to my destination my ass. Leave it to me to not only pick the only GPS system with a crappy sense of direction, but one that leads me to the middle of Nowhere, USA with the promise of a ‘Gas station just ahead’. What bullsh*t!”

“Are you lost?”

“Good Christ!” Jack yelped, dropped the plastic red gas can and jumped nearly out of his boots. He stumbled back and fell painfully on his pride. His hand clutched at his chest and he gasped for air at the surprised start due to the voice from the darkness.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The voice was femininely melodic, smoothly angelic, and serenely calm.

“No, no, it’s OK.” Jack lay back onto the white rock of the dirt road and took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm his racing heart. He just had the crap scared out of him by a freaking woman out in the middle of nowhere that was all.  Nothing to be frightened of. “I’m OK.”

Jack tipped his head up to stare into the shadows ahead and through squinted eyes, thought he saw some movement in the shadows, by darker shadows still. The darkness before him was so all-encompassing however it was hard to be sure for the black gave little away…

It revealed nothing.

He knew why he was out in the middle of nowhere, but what the hell was a woman doing out, lurking in the dark?

“Oh,” The woman laughed lightly. “That’s good to hear, I was afraid I gave you a deathly scare.”

“Trust me, you did.” Jack cleared his throat and pushed himself up to his feet, and leaned over as he began to dust himself off. His eyes scanned the rock road for his gas can. Where had it gone? “But I think I’ll live.”

“Do you?” The woman whispered.

Jack jerked his head up, his heartbeat thumped heavy in his chest at that whispered, almost hissed, question. “Excuse me?”

The previous light, chilled wind seemed die down and in that one particular place, that point where Jack stood at the threshold of shadows, the air seemed impossibly heavy.

Smothering.

The feeling was unnerving.

It wasn’t only he, which felt it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack watched a jack rabbit dart out of the bushes to reveal himself in the blue starlight of the night.

It ran, head down, as if it’s life depended on it.

The rabbit however stop quickly before the shadows of the valley which held them both, as if it had slammed on its proverbial brakes or as if it had hit some invisible wall unseen to human eyes. After a quick twitch of its nose, it darted wild eyes up to his, and for a second Jack could have sworn he had seen terror there. A fact reaffirmed by the puddle of the remnants of its fear as it was left to gleam in a single sliver of stingy starlight that had broken through the tree-cover, a tale-tell sign of the rabbits bowels loosened in fright. Breath held, jack watched the rabbit as it backpedaled quickly, kicking up rocks in its frightened bid to escape whatever it sensed in the shadows.

The rabbit turned, ran afraid in the opposite direction of the shadows, only to dart back into the safety of bushes from whence it came.

Jack swallowed painfully and watched the bush uneasily as it trembled, only to stop now deathly still.

Waiting?

But for what?

Jack turned back to face the woman in the shadows before him, with great hesitation. Why did he suddenly feel like he should run, flee like the wild rabbit as well? “What are you doing out here?” He had to know.

“Funny, I was about to ask you that same question.” Jack didn’t have to see the smile in the woman’s voice, he could hear it.

Odd thing was?

The sound was not a comfort.

His ears were straining now, as he tried to make out the sound of movements that came from the shadows, for his eyes gave hints of nothing away, save for a faint shade of red there in the heart of the darkness.

His gas can? Jack couldn’t be sure.

Jack leaned slightly closer to the dark border, eyes squinted hard.

Goose-flesh rained over his body. Was that an almost inaudible growl which had come from the sightless depths. Surely not. “Um, my truck ran out of gas just off the main road and my stupid GPS informed me that there was a gas station down this way.”

“There was, many years past, just down this road, but it was closed long ago. Lack of business. You see few people came down this road, then or now. Seldom the need to.” The woman said, “But thanks to the wonders of GPS that has changed of late. Insane, isn’t it, how much trust we put in technology these days to keep us on the right path and to keep us out of the hands of danger?”

Wasn’t that a strange way to put it, “I guess it is.” Jack uncomfortably cleared his throat past the lump that was forming there, and squinted harder into the abyss of the shadows before him, while a sense of unease tickled the back of his neck like the tentative raking of nails across his skin. “But that’s my reason for being here, what’s yours?”

“Oh, I’m hunting for my food.”

Jack’s lips trembled with an attempted fake smile. Woman or no woman, he didn’t like the sound of that, or the feel of this place at all. Screw the gas can, it was time to get gone! He took one step back slowly…“The trails of small town living, huh? Hunting at night – Isn’t that dangerous, even for a country girl?” Then he took another.

It wasn’t far enough.

An unmistakable deep growl erupted from the blackness this time and shook the trees overhead. It sent the branches trembling as leaves rained down like brown, brittle snowflakes of death.

Jack whimpered, his body locked tight at the sound, his mouth dried instantly in fear, even as a rough voice growled out, no longer femininely melodic, smoothly angelic, or serenely calm…

In that instance he knew there would be no escape.

“I never said I was a girl.”

Agonizing screams  of terror and pain rent the crisp night air, soon followed by the louder sound of enforced silence.

The jack rabbit shivered uneasily in the burrow he had made for himself underneath the bush by the fence-line, but dared not look back over his shoulder towards that place where the stench of death once again stained the Earth. The rabbit closed his eyes and trusted in his knowledge that as long as the beast’s hunger was satisfied, it would not hunt more prey this night.

No, tonight the rabbit had to believe that it was safe.

But oh, there was always tomorrow…

When the beast would grow hungry once more.

So as the rabbit slept, the beast lapped up the remained of its feast.

Utterly sated.

Well…

For now.

~ Anguished Repose