by Pam Johnson

Created on: April 30, 2009

Night of the Living Darkness

His car sputtered and coughed its life away a mile down the twisted, winding snake of a side-road he'd been detoured onto. Mere moments after he'd climbed out of the corpse that had been his lovely BMW, the first crash of thunder applauded overhead, followed by a great ripping streak of silver-forked fire and the skies ripped open to dump a torrential rain on his head.

Within a handful of steps the cold and wet rain seeped into his bones chilling him through to his very soul. He hastened his steps, stumbling over twigs and rocks that seems almost to slide under his feet with the sole purpose of landing him on his ass. And still he pressed on, forever stumbling...tumbling, ripping great tears in his expensive tailor-made cloths. Painful cuts and scratches filled with dirt and twigs, marring his perfectly groomed skin.

The mad thought that the road itself was laughing at him as it dwindled to little more than a cow track skipped across his mind. The morbid fear of what might be pressed him forward with ever quickening speed. Clutching the lapels of his suit jacket tight around his neck he bent over from the force of natures fury unleashed over his head. With each unsure, rabid step, the road seemed to reach out and snatch at his cuffs. Still he scrambled along in the mud and the rain, almost afraid to stop for fear the road might turn into quicksand and suck him down to drown in the dirt and the mud. Onward, always onward he pressed. The trail wound around a jagged hill and to his excited amazement he spied the dead end driveway where a nearly paintless, grey and dry-rot cripple of a falling-in-on-itself motel awaited his approach.

Uncaring of the building's forlornly feeble appearance, the dashed onward. He had found some semblance of shelter. It was enough and thanking whatever god had seen fit to offer him this olive branch, he rushed head-long inside the dilapidated shelter, nearly tripping over the doorstep in his haste to get out of the freezing rain.

A single, dim kerosene lamp on the check-in desk drew him forward even while it cast a frightening eerie illusion of midnight figures creeping across the floors of the desolate weathered motel. He could almost imagine he saw raven will-o-the-wisps darting here and there with no solid form to comfort the superstitious bit of his mind, brought to life by the forked lighting streaking across the moonless sky.

Swallowing down th dark imaginings that this nightmare of an evening had flushed

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