This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MicahCooper on 2024-11-14 17:36:30+00:00.
“God damn, that smell!”
I pressed one of the buttons on my car’s dash– the one that had an arrow going in a circle. Interior air circulation or whatever. The sharp, sewer-death smell that had entered my car was gone just as quick as it came. After a moment, my car flew past the culprit; a deer, judging by the size. It wasn’t like I could tell by looking at it– the thing was nothing more than a pile of rotting meat. I caught a glimpse of white bone, some brown that could be antlers, and then I passed and it was gone.
Fuckin’ deer. Things were menace, especially at this time of night. I slowed the car slightly, bringing her a few miles-per-hour closer to an acceptable speed. Ten miles over the limit was what you could get away with on this road, usually. And at this time of night, the place was empty. I wasn’t hurting anyone by going a little fast. Hell, it wasn’t the end of the month. Cops wouldn’t be out lookin’ to fill ticket quotas. I could get away with doing eighty, maybe even eighty-five.
I was tired and it was a long drive. Can you blame me for wanting to get home faster? I was coming back from the bar, my nightly post-work ritual. Yes, I was fine to drive. I know my limits, never gotten a DUI in my life. Damn what a breathalyzer might say, they rig those things just the same as they plant pot on anyone they wanna arrest. I wasn’t slurring my words, I could walk in a straight line, and I sure as hell could drive my car home. I only wished the drive was shorter.
I saw something off the side of the road again as I continued. Another deer, a little fresher than the last. It was on the right shoulder, just like the other carcass was. The meat on this one looked redder; more skin was intact too. I could actually tell it was a deer, if barely. Seein’ antlers peeking from behind some of the flesh helped. My car sped past it as I clicked my tongue. They were only getting braver as the years went on.
They’d stand right on the side of the roads now and won’t even move when you drive by. Some of ‘em don’t even look up, they just keep eating their grass or whatever the hell it is that they eat. They just stand there and eat; they don’t give a shit. It’s like they don’t care if you hit ‘em, blissfully unaware of the aftermath of a collision, the endless insurance calls and weeks of car repairs. It doesn’t even stop with cars, either. They’ve been getting brave enough to just walk into my backyard. I mean, sure, my daughter loves them, but they’re destroying the property value. They’re eating from every bush and tree they can reach.
I swear she’s feeding them. She always liked them for some reason. I catch her out there with them, sometimes. I told her not to get close. Ticks and lyme disease. That would be another headache; another trip to the doctor’s, paying god knows how much. We had just been through that whole song-and-dance. It’s why I was stuck going to this out-of-town bar.
I got kicked out of the usual watering hole recently. I had, admittedly, gone a little too hard on the booze and that must’ve broken the camel’s back. Not like I didn’t have good reason to drink. They didn’t care. That bitch at the bar didn’t give a shit about my problems. I told her ‘sorry if I’ve had too much, but I’ve had a bad week, we just had to take my daughter to the hospital recently’. She didn’t fucking listen. None of them did.
The car flew past a third deer carcass, more intact than the other two. The body was mostly there, if bloated and bursting in parts. Scavengers had gotten to this one, starting at the rear and exposed stomach of the thing. The head was mostly intact, and I could see it was another buck. I was glad the car wasn’t pulling in any outside air.
You never realize just how fragile kids can be. It’s a wonder, really. They’ll fall out of trees with nothing more than a bruise sometimes. They’ll walk off skateboard and bike falls like it’s nothing. Hell, in my day we used to throw rocks at each other for fun, coming out no worse for wear. Other times, though, they get just as hurt as the rest of us. They’ll be running around the house, no matter how many times you tell them not to. Running all around up and down and up and down and all around and all around until they trip. They might trip down stairs and they might wind up with a broken arm and it’ll be sad and upsetting but, really, if they listened in the first place it wouldn’t have happened now would it? My daughter’s arm wouldn’t have to still be in that cast, I wouldn’t have had to spend all that money at the hospital. Wouldn’t have had to get that judgemental stare from the doctor as we told him the story, and again when he looked at the x-rays. God damn prick.
Come to think of it, my daughter had been out there in the backyard more since the accident. With the deer. They would get so close to her, so close she could touch them. Sometimes I swear she’s talking to them, acting like they’re her friends.
She has to be feeding them. She’s using the cast to hide the food. Young as she is, she’s always doing little things like that. Finding ways to go around me. I’d need to keep an eye out. Need to catch her in the act. Then I could talk to her. Then I wouldn’t have those things eating up the yard, ruining the property value.
Movement up ahead caught my eye. Something in the corner of the headlight beams, on the side of the road. A fourth deer. The freshest by far. The thing was still twitching. I got a sudden chill as I approached, slowing the car so I could get a better look at it. It lay on the side of the road, as if it had been pulled there, just like the others had. It twitched a back leg that bent horribly in a direction it shouldn’t have. One of the antlers was torn off and bright red blood leaked from the thing's mouth and onto the pavement. I swear, it looked at me as I passed, its eyes red and full of blood and death.
The car was soon past it, but it stuck with me. There was something about it, something that screamed at me from the back of my mind. There was something off about that deer. I couldn’t quite put it together. Come to think of it, the amount of deer I’ve been seeing on the side of the road was strange. It had been, what, five minutes of driving, maybe ten? And I had seen at least four deer on the side of the road, all in varying states of decay. Each was fresher than the last, this one-
It hit me, all at once. Thinking back to the other carcasses, I realized something. The pose was the same. Exactly the same. It was impossible to tell with the first carcass, but running through every subsequent one I passed, I was sure of it. The thing was laid out on the side of the road in the exact same way every time, back leg twisted and broken in the exact same way every time. More than that…now that I thought about it, weren’t the antlers the same? One intact, one torn off? I wished I hadn’t been driving so fast, wished I paid more attention as I passed each carcass. The antlers…they-
It was there. One second, it was just empty road. The next, the top half of a buck filled my windshield. There was nothing I could do, no reaction quick enough. I looked at the thing as I felt the car begin to collide with it. Looked at its face. Looked at its already blood filled eyes. I swear to God, I saw the thing’s mouth curl so slightly into a smile as it slid up the hood of the car. My vision went black as the body broke through the glass, and the last thing I saw was one of its antlers coming towards me.
I woke up in a hospital. A state trooper on patrol had found me, they said, my car totaled in the middle of the road. I had hit a deer, almost died actually. One of its antlers had impaled me. A miracle, they said, that it missed anything vital. They had just removed it, actually. I didn’t want to see it.
So that’s where I am now. In the hospital. They’re keeping me for a while. Want to make sure there’s no complications from the surgery, let me recover, that kind of thing. I’m worried, though. I don’t think I’m gonna see the outside of this place.
That thing I hit is still out there. Quite literally. It’s outside the hospital. I’ve tried to tell people, pointed it out to them, but they just think it’s some kind of post traumatic stress. It’s just some roadkill, after all. Just a dead deer on the side of the street, right across from my hospital room’s window. It’ll get picked up in the morning, there’s nothing to worry about, they say.
Except that I’ve been watching it. I know for a fact it didn’t have that much fur on it a couple of hours ago. I know that it’s bloated stomach seemed to shrink as the minutes go by. That its leg, twisted into a brutal angle, looked to be twitching.
That its eyes, filled with blood and death and hatred, were looking right at me.