This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Dizzy_Garlic_6388 on 2024-10-16 20:39:41+00:00.
For the past hour I’ve been sitting on the sticky tile floor of a public restroom, in a nasty little gas station that sits off an endless blank highway that I can’t seem to escape. I just want to get home to my apartment, but god, I can’t get out of this podunk town. I don’t know what else to do at this point, and my phone is dying. So I’m sitting my ass on this toilet paper littered floor next to a power outlet, trying to think of my next move. Maybe typing out my experience will help.
I moved away from my small, southern hometown 10 years ago. I left a note for my parents then drove up the coast to the city I now call home. A harsh way to leave things, but they didn’t deserve much more. I figured I’d never talk to them again. Figured I’d never talk to anyone back home again. The cleaner the break I could make from the roster of creeps and idiots from my past, the better. My life in the city was much improved, even though I spend my days working as a line cook, and my nights drinking to forget about my ex, who just dumped me for said drinking.
I hadn’t even spoken to my childhood best friend Mason in 10 years. Until he called me and fucking ruined everything. He invited me to his wedding.
“Becca’s just the best, man, you gotta meet her,” he begged breathlessly after my first attempt to reject his request. I reminded him the terms on which I left town. A solid reason not to return, in my opinion.
“I actually think everyone would really like to see you,” he said. “And hey, we believe in forgiveness here. I think the Lord really wants to bring us all back together.”
I rolled my eyes.
“And y’know, it wouldn’t hurt to knock back some beers for old times’ sake,” he says with a sheepish chuckle. And honestly, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia for the times we spent together as kids. I remembered Mason’s lanky frame, his shotgunned beer soaking his baggy Nirvana t-shirt, Mason’s gap-toothed laugh.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Yeah, I’ll come. Honestly I’m not doing too good up here right now, and maybe long drive could help me clear my head.”
So a few days later, I packed up my car and started my long descent down the coast. This car’s been good to me for the last 10 years, but it seemed like she was finally starting to show her age, guzzling gas like I’d never seen. I could hardly afford the half-dozen gas station stops it took. But hey, at least I got to see some of America’s most beautiful gas stations. The first one, full of chain-smoking truckers who glared at me, had an art installation (i.e., bathroom graffiti) that read, “THE WORLD IS BEAUTIFUL DESPITE YOU BEING IN IT.” I chuckled as I flushed and thought, yeah I must look like a real monster amid this gorgeous scenery.
Another station, almost scenic, was cloaked in trees and sat atop an absurdly steep hill. Never seen something like that before. I felt like a little worker ant, scrambling up then back down the hill with my two armfuls of stolen snacks and supplies. An easy theft, as there was not a soul in that gas station. Not even a cashier. Weird, but no problem – my shrinking wallet sure didn’t mind. As I pull out of the gas station, I see a leathery old man in a pickup truck pull in. I glance in my rearview mirror – his back windshield bears a decal that reads “YOUR WICKEDNESS IMPRINTS ONTO THE EARTH.” No idea what that means, but it gives me the distinct feeling that I’m finally entering the deep south.
I started getting hungry for something beyond potato chips and energy drinks. Lo and behold, the next gas station I stop at sits next to a rickety wooden stand selling “peches.” I buy a couple from the woman running the stand – an overly tanned woman with cheap blueish veneers regards me wordlessly over her newspaper, hands over two ripe “peches.”
I eat them right there, juice dripping down my bare legs, and I don’t even care. Then, pain. I look down. Red ants swarm my legs up to my thighs, crawling and biting, tattooing serpentine patterns onto my legs with their venomous bites. I scream, batting them away in the panic, to little effect. I look around and see the blue-toothed woman sits quietly as before.
I march over to her, ripping the newspaper out of her hands, and use it like a towel to slough off the impossible number of red ants massacring my legs. I then look up at her, panting, indignant, and now she’s smiling, asks: “You’re on your way to see Pastor John, aren’t you?”
“Who the fuck is Pastor John?” I ask.
“Oh, Levi,” she says, in a voice a sickly-sweet as the smell of death. “You can’t escape your damnation forever.” I blinked for a moment, in disbelief that she knew my name, and when I opened my eyes, her smile remained, but her icy veneers disappeared, revealing sharp, snake-like fangs.
I sprinted desperately to my car away from the woman, away from the smell of asphalt, gasoline, peaches, and for some reason now, blood. As I tore out toward the highway, I feel a creeping down my leg. I blindly slap at my leg, thinking I’d missed an ant. I instead feel lines of blood dripping down my skin, a new exit wound for every bite. There was no way I could pull over just yet, so I let the blood pool into my shoes for half an hour.
I couldn’t make sense of what I’d just seen, what had just happened. Once I deemed it safe enough to pull over, I used an old water bottle and some old fast food napkins to clean the blood off of me, and changed into some long pants to hide the insane sight of my legs.
I should have turned around and driven back to the city. But I wasn’t thinking straight. Or some part of me felt drawn to keep driving towards that small, stifling town. I texted Mason that I’d get there by midnight. He texted back a smiling face and prayer hands. I tried not to think a single thought for the rest of the drive.
I’m sorry – I’ll have to come back to this. Someone just knocked on the door to the restroom, and I can’t keep typing without the privacy of my humble, single-stalled abode. I will post more as soon as I can. Thank you.