Freight On a stretch of lonely highway, in the middle of a barren truck stop the strangest things can occur. This is a story of one of those occurrences. Freight "Bullshit! You God damn liar." Carl Striber, truck stop curator and resident (the only resident) skeptic scowled at the trucker and his tall tale of drugs and women. "Settle down old man, no need for all those words. A simple, I don't believe you would be fine." The burly trucker, who carried a pair of deep scars in the shape of an "X" across his face, commented. "Who the fuck you callin’ old man?" Carl took to his feet as if to call the trucker out. It’s a wonder, Carl Striber who sits in the stop by himself for countless hours and with each passing pair of headlights, or single burner for that matter, leaps to his feet, grabs a dish towel and wipes down the counter getting himself ready for a customer. Customer indeed, he sees one maybe once a week at best. The stop sits off highway one fifty seven which has little to no traffic since the interstate was repaired. There was a time when the stop was booming with customers, not too long ago when the Mississippi flooded the interstate. Strange how Carl sits and anticipates some company but when they arrive he’s an unruly ass-hole, sending most of them packing in mere minutes. This trucker however was proving to be some work. "Easy, sorry didn’t mean to offend you sir." The trucker raised his hands in submission. "No trouble here, really." Carl peered, memorized for a moment at the massive size of the trucker's hands. They looked as if they could snatch up Carl's entire skull in one swift snatch. "What a beast," he thought to himself before snapping back to reality. His reality. "Damn right." Carl sat back down across from the trucker who reclined in the booth opposite his table. "You can stick that apology in your ass-crack son." Carl continued. Dead silence filled the stop for a moment before Carl broke back into the questioning. He loved to ask questions, the answer he could careless about; he just liked being inquisitive. "What you carrying anyway?" The trucker replied with puzzled silence. His globe eyes wandered from Carl's gruff face to his sweat stained T-shirt. "Whew! You really are a dumb one. Carrying? What’s in your damn truck?" "Oh," the trucker smiled passively, "that’s a hard one to explain." Carl exhaled loudly, pushing his sour breath across the stop. Rubbing his hand over his sweaty baldhead he grinned a broken grin, which reveled a line of crooked yellow teeth. Letting his hand drop to his pig grease filled stomach, he rubbed it like Buddha before spitting a spec of bacon across the table. Breaking open a Slim Jim he snapped off a bite, gnawing at it animal like before he remarked, "Drugs, you’re running drugs." "Oh, no sir, no drugs. I would never move something like that." The trucker said, sitting up straight in his booth. "Hotdamn-bullshiting-son-of-a-bitch, why else would you be traveling off the interstate?" Carl raised his hand shaking a finger at the trucker as if he were his wayward son. "Well, it is true that I am traveling this route because of my freight but certainly not because it is drugs." The burly trucker reclined again, looking out over his shoulder at his black and red rig. "Then what? immigrants? whores? money? you running laundered money for the mob. That’s it!" Carl stood, walked over then out the front door, heading for the black and red rig. "Wait a minute sir!" The trucker gave pursuit, his massive muscles inflating with each torque of his body. "None of those, sir. None of those are my freight." Carl marched to the back of the rig; he searched for the handle, a lever anything to open the rig but found nothing. The doors to the rig were sealed tight; he could find no hinges, lever, switch, nothing that would allow him to open it. Carl shot the trucker a animalistic glare before he spat, "What the… is this some kinda fucking joke?" "No sir, no joke, this here’s my rig," the trucker patted the rig proudly. "You’re a stupid son-of-a-bitch aren’t you?" "Sir, I really must ask that you refrain from using that terrible language." Carl stepped up to the trucker, his chin level with the base of the trucker’s breastplate. "Your rig is nothing more than a box, there’s no way in. What did you say you were carrying?" "I never did." "Look I ran a whole string of words together without one God forsaken curse word, now tell me what the fuck is in the God damn rig." The trucker shrugged his shoulders, his eyes wandered about as he thought for a moment. "Okay, I’ll tell you but you have to promise not to give me any grief." "What’s in the rig?" Carl slammed his fist against the box, sending a hollow thud through the air. "Empty? This fucking thing is empty?" "No sir, not empty in fact it’s nearly over filled." "With what? Your imagination?" "Evil." Carl frowned, furrowed his brow and crossed his arms across his sunken chest. "Evil, the rig is filled with evil. Demons, imps, succubae, incubi, monsters and the like." The trucker rubbed a caring hand over the side of the rig sending red sparks into the air. "How’d you do that?" Carl asked stepping away slightly. "It’s the evil, it likes to be caressed." Again, the trucker rubbed the rig sending more sparks into the gloomy night. "Bullshit, who do you think you’re messin’ with boy?" Carl rolled his eyes, rubbing his sweaty palms across his T-shirt he continued, "how ignorant do you think I am?" "Would you like to see," the trucker ran his hand over the backside of the rig sending black flakes into the air. Magically doors appeared and mysteriously opened before him. Carl stepped closer to the rig, staring deeply into the darkness he peered suspiciously at the trucker, "What is this?" "Evil, go ahead climb aboard and see my freight." "Evil?" "Evil." "Ah! Bullshit boy, there isn’t a single damn thing in that rig." The trucker pulled himself onto the rig, sat at its edge and invited Carl aboard. "Then you have nothing to fear, if I’m bullshitting as you say." Carl sneered, "You can’t scare me with that nightmare in my closet crap." He pulled himself up and stood facing the darkness that filled the rig. An unspeakable silence hung in the air, an eerie hush like the whisper of death filled the night. He stood at the edge of the rig looking into the impenetrable darkness. Carl shivered, be it ever so slightly, in that moment, that miniscule moment he felt like a child. Like he should run and hide beneath the sacred covers of his old twin bed. The covers that always provided the aegis against the creepy-crawlies. In that moment he whimpered like a scared five-year-old looking down into the dark and dank basement, the basement his father use to lock him in for hours on end. Punishment was what it was, torment that made a young boy a bitter and cynical old man. Carl gasped as a cold breeze chilled him, a breeze that came from deep inside the rig. The rig, the box, the one without an entrance. The one he stood in. It was deep, too deep for its size. "You scared?" A whisper grazed his ear followed by a childish chuckle. "Hell no. You can’t scare me you dumb faggot, I’ve seen more of hell then you could ever imagine." Carl snuffed before taking an exaggerated step forward. The rig was cold, Carl shook, his teeth chattered but he wouldn’t retreat. He could hear whispers from deep inside the rig, whispers that drew him in. They were the same kind of whispers he use to hear when he was a child. Menacing whispers, familiar whispers. Carl locked his jaw and stepped deeper into the raven shroud. The whispers grew louder. Deeper still he ventured, closer to the whispers he journeyed. For a moment, he was back in his basement, not a scared boy but an angry bitter old man. Eyes, small pools of emerald shone in the rig, shimmered and bobbed just like they use to back in the day. Carl remembered his father, the bastard. How he hated the man. How he hated everything about him. "Prick," he whispered. A hush filled the rig before a chorus of laughter resonated throughout. Carl clutched at his ears; the emerald eyes drew closer. Little beasts like the ones in his basement chortled about him, holding hands and dancing around him. Carl remembered them; they were the monsters in the basement, and they were the creatures that left him sniveling in the corner beneath an old blanket. The blanket his mother died on, the blanket his father raped her on. He could still smell the blood and his father’s pleasure. To this day, it crinkled his nose. The beast, bogeymen, the same ones he burned (at least they looked like the same ones), in the basement when he torched his home. The bogeymen with their shimmering emerald eyes, glistening acorn fangs with breath so bitter it wilted the hair in his nostrils. Green scaled, forked tongue, hunched-back four-armed lizard bogeymen. The ones he heard crying out as the fire engulfed their slimy bodies. They danced. They laughed. They spoke, "remember Carl, we said we’d get even with you. We told you it would be our turn and now it is." Four, eight, sixteen claws reached out for him, tearing him down to the floor of the rig. "Eventually we get all the bad little boys and girls," they said. Carl smothered beneath their small bodies. A whimper rolled through the rig as the doors closed behind him. The trucker chuckled lightly, his emerald eyes shone bright against the sheet of night that held them. "Eventually we get all of you," he said as he watched a river of blood bathe the gray concrete at his feet. "Eventually we get you all." L.J. Blount has had over thirty short stories published in print and on the web to include - MuseIt, Eotu, Blood Coven, Dream Forge, Death Grip, Nocturne, Shadow Keep and a host of others ... October 2000 |