Some things are better left shrouded in darkness, never to be discovered. Unfortunately, I’ve brought something evil to the light by pure random chance. I wish I had never encountered that creature. Looking back now, I would’ve never got in my car that night, had I known what was about to occur. I was taking a backroad, traveling down the mountain side, because they were usually less packed than the main road.
I had been traveling down the same stretch of road for quite a while when it happened upon it. At first, it was just the silhouette of a person, just outside my peripheral. As my car drew closer to them, I noticed they were doing something strange. They were facing away from me, pacing on the road very slowly. They were pacing so slow, in fact, that I had to come to a complete stop in order to not hit them.
It was at this time I began noticing a change in my car’s headlights, they got dimmer. I leaned my head out of the car window to ask if they needed any help. I got no response. They just kept pacing the same sluggish pace. I called out to them again, this time slightly louder, “Sir, is everything ok?”
This time, I did get a response, one I’ll never forget. They stopped pacing and stood stock still. Their head began to turn. It turned and turned past the point where any normal human spine would’ve broken. I watched as it slowly began to reveal a face with heaps of muscle tissue sloughing off, each one hitting the ground with a sickening splat.
Its eyes were like cold, dead, greenish yellow bowls that looked straight through you. Its entire body was completely devoid of skin. It finally spoke, “GIVE ME YOUR SKIN!” Upon hearing this, I was very shaken. I tried to start the car back up, but it was completely dead.
I looked back at it. Its limbs were now completely twisted backwards, making defining pops with every irregular motion. It started to walk towards my car, making burning footprints on the ground like it had just crawled out of hell. I was just about to book it on foot when, miraculously, the car fired back up. I wasted no time in running the thing down until I heard it crunch beneath the tires.
I sped off into the night, assuming I was out of the woods by now. This delusion would quickly come to an end when I heard something rustling in the back seat. I had no children and no one with me that I recalled so this startled me. I looked back in the back seat only to be met with the same dead green eyes from before. It showed no remorse as it lunged for the steering wheel, effectively veering the car off the side of the mountain.
Everything grew darker and darker as the car smashed into more trees and rocks than I could count. It got so dark, in fact, that soon, I could see nothing, feel nothing. It was as if my soul had left my body. I watched on in complete terror as the thing began removing the skin from my body until none was left. I could do nothing to stop it as it perfectly assumed my identity.
It then walked away into the mist of the night. One thing is now on my mind, my family will never know that’s not me.
