Journey Home

I wrote this story as a response to my experiences with cancer.

• Horror

								
The air was thick with humidity and the unmistakable smell of grease.  The smell was thick and heavy, and you had to swim through it to get to your seat.  It was the kind of smell that would stay in your clothes even after several washings, a trophy to remind you of the time you subjected yourself to a slimy wad of fatty meat slapped between two starchy pieces of grease-soaked bread in a wretched little diner off of the main highway.
The waitress walked up to the table and reached for the remnants of my burger, she winked at me as she pulled the plate from the table.  I was certain she was around my age, but a steady diet of Jim Beam and cigarettes had prematurely aged her twenty plus years.  She smiled her yellow nicotine-stained smile.  I nodded.  I smiled an uncomfortable half-smile and remembered what pushed me away from rural Indiana.  The Small Town Trap.
Every rural town was an identical town that existed in multiple points at once.  A multitude of portals that open into the same shitty town.  The same greasy diners, the same smoky bars, the same sad people caught in the same small town trap.  Everything was always the same, and it was both the appeal and the repulsion.   No wonder suicide rates were higher here.
I grabbed my keys from the table, tossed a twenty down and waded through the thick air.  The outside was more oppressive than inside.  The sweet smell of mint hung in the air, one of the few redeeming qualities.  Beneath it were the aromatic undertones of manure, crushed dreams, and crippling depression.
The drive to the old farmhouse was quiet and lonely.  My blue cord swayed on my rearview mirror as I guided my car down the gravel road that led to the old house.  I thought back to my youth and how I used to fly down these roads despite the loose gravel and deep irrigation ditches that flanked the road.  With age came caution, and I drove slowly.  
Up ahead I saw the farmhouse, a two-story relic from distant memories.  Its old windows were cracked and boarded,  rotted wood sagged from nails that stapled it to decayed window frames.   Fragments of siding hung precariously from dilapidated framing, and various spots around the house’s skeleton had sheets of plastic stapled to them.  The house was a leper, long cast out by the community and sent to wither and die alone with nothing but its sad memories to keep it company.
I slowed the car as the farmhouse crept toward me.  I glanced into my rearview mirror and the faint hint of movement caught my eye.  The cloud of dust that kicked up from my wheels seemed to be moving.  It had a certain corpulence to it.  I blinked my eyes a few times.  Too much time on the road.  I glanced back in the mirror.  The corpulence pushed through the dust and grotesque shapes reached at me through the billowing clouds of dust that followed me down the road. 
The world around me slowly disappeared. My vision narrowed so that all I could see was the rearview mirror.  The sounds of the world slowly faded so that all I could hear was the heart I was choking on.  The faint smell of mint in the air faded and all I smelled was the dust of the road.  It pushed from the dust and the monster took on its hideous form. 
The dust coalesced into a mass of putrid amorphous flesh.  The fleshy mound grew larger and larger as the central mass writhed and wriggled after me. It grew fleshy feelers that darted out of its body and reached out for the car.  All I could do was watch, terrified,  as the behemoth lumbered toward my back bumper.  It lacked legs, instead large masses of its bulk oozed forward, pulling the rest of its mass slowly along.  
In panic I gripped the wheel and my foot sank hard on the gas pedal.  The engine growled as it lapped fuel from the tank.  The writhing tentacles started to reach toward the back of my car like the Kraken dragging a ship down to its watery grave.  In the mirror I got a closer look at each appendage as it wriggled through the air.  Each was covered in countless eyes and mouths that writhed and flowed with the being’s every movement.  The mouths were lined in jagged teeth that shifted within squirming maws.  Nothing on the beast was static, and it was equally putrid and terrifying.  As the horror oozed closer to me I stomped on the gas with both feet in an attempt to run it straight through the floorboards.  My legs were poles, my eyes were wide and bulging out of my skull.  The gibbering mass was the only thing visible in my mirror now, and a hoarse scream was the only sound.
The tires broke loose and the rear of the car swung wildly.  Mindlessly I lumbered my pole-like legs to the brakes.  The wheels locked instantly and the car slid all over the soft rocky road.  The car slipped immediately from my control.  The outside world blurred by me and the only thing my vision could focus on was the now-gaping central maw of this terrible beast as its slimy flesh tentacles pulled itself quickly in my direction.  The central maw was a massive and terrible sight.  Pitted teeth were constantly shifting around, and massive strings of sticky spittle slowly seeped down from its fetid mouth.  A giant tongue, pocked and rotten rubbed against its mountain-like teeth and I could almost see its fog of rancid breath.
A Sudden and distinct crunching noise was followed by the smack of my head against the steering wheel.  The tiny window I had been viewing the world through had shut suddenly and the curtains were drawn down.  I only saw the swimming blackness of those heavy curtains, though a few seconds later they slowly lifted again and everything came back into focus.  I nearly fell out of the car as my adrenaline surged.  It was fueling my thoughts and my actions, and in that moment I was running purely on instinct.  I leaned against the car heaving as I pulled myself off of the gravel and onto my feet, the world around me still swayed back and forth.  I struggled to recover and soon I felt the grease-soaked burger and fries immediately eject itself from my stomach and onto the road.  
I stood there shaking, looking nervously in every direction.  All was still.  I could hear birds chirping and the warm breeze blew through fields of mint,  forcing its sweet smell into my nostrils again.  There was no sign of the enormous monster that had just previously reached for my car as if to drag it deep into the aether.  I looked around and my vision steadied again.  The crunching noise was the car stopping as it decapitated the mailbox that once stood in front of the old farmhouse.  The metal pole the box was once attached to still stood, concrete filled, and part of my car’s quarter panel had wrapped slightly around it, leaving a head-sized dent.  
Where is it? I thought.  I really didn’t want to know, I just wanted to know that it was gone.  I patted myself down, checking for breaks and bleeding. Once I decided that I wasn’t injured beyond a headache I started to move, leaving my car still embracing the thick pipe that stood headless at the end of the driveway.

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