Night People I: A Living Ghost

The dark stretches out into forever, night’s infinite veil seeps across the sky, draped over the trees on either side of the highway in that ghostlike way that sheets cover furniture in the homes of the recently deceased; dual walls of towering black leviathans closing in on either side of the asphalt, split by reflective white lines that I can barely see in my pickup’s dim headlights.
Gas is running low, and I see an exit a few miles up. Soon, streetlights come into view like counterfeit stars, until they finally come into full view, steel and concrete arms springing up like electric tombstones. I turn off, slowing down, and soon turn into the nearest gas station to fill up.
The pump makes a clunking sound, ka-chunk-ka-chunk-ka-chunk as it dispenses fuel, and once I’ve filled my tank, I prepare to hit the highway once more, like the last man on earth roaming aimlessly on a mission to nowhere. I light a cigarette, and roll down my window. As I’m pulling out, I hear a voice in the darkness: somewhere out there, in the misshapen mass of jagged dark that might be a town, coming down the street toward me. I think about ignoring it, but my conscience says “don’t”. He’s right. It might be important. I drive opposite the highway, slowing scanning the empty streets for life, and I see her, barely.
She comes closer into view, illuminated by my headlights: blonde, messy hair, maybe early twenties, white shirt and shorts. She looks wild and sickly, and she casts her head up like a wolf baying at a funeral moon and screams, “HELP!”
“Are, are you okay?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” she replies casually,”I’m just on a lot of drugs.”
She looks at me, and without another word or act of acknowledgment, throws back her head and starts howling “HELP!” again. I shrugged to myself, and drove off as the bewildering girl disappeared into my rear view mirror, into the darkness from whence she came. -CM