Something was there.
And it was watching me!
CHAPTER 4
“Hellooo . . . Who’s there . . .?” I scanned the sides of the road . . . no one. Not a car, not a person, not an insect as far as I could see. I looked behind me. Still nothing. I felt the sudden need to arm myself, but all I had was a packet of facial wipes and the car key. I held the key in my hand, pointy side out—not that it would inflict any kind of a significant wound should I need to defend myself. Maybe a small poke at best. But I gripped it nonetheless and tiptoed along the side of the car. I could feel I was getting closer to whatever was there. I could feel it in the air, some unspoken communication was happening between us. I knew that it was there, and it knew I was there. We knew. I carried on tiptoeing and when I finally reached the front of the car . . .
“Oh God!” I jumped onto the bonnet so quickly that I must have grown wings. I scurried up the windscreen, breaking a wiper as I went, and half pulled myself onto the roof. My heart was beating in my throat as I looked at the thing standing in front of my car.
It was huge.
It was huge and black.
It was huge and black and had one big, yellow eyeball fixed on me.
It was huge and black and had one big, yellow eyeball fixed on me and a massive tooth sticking out of the side of its mouth.
Oh God. I didn’t want to die. And certainly not at the hands of this big, black dog that was staring at me with its one eye . . . Where was his other eye? I wanted an open coffin when I was dead. I wanted to be beautiful in death. I’ve worked too hard in this life to be thin and beautiful, and I didn’t want to die mangled and ugly. Is that too much to ask? I took a deep breath and tried to relax a little; can’t they smell fear?
“Hey, doggy, doggy, doggy,” I whispered sweetly.
“WOOF!” it replied loudly, a long trail of spit dripping through the big open gap on one side of its mouth where it had the worst snaggletooth I’d ever seen. And then something happened. The beast and I locked eyes—well, eye and eyes or whatever you would call it—and I swear it was trying to look into me. Trying to scan my insides with its one yellow eye. We stared at each other for a while. Locked in some kind of stare-down, like we couldn’t pull away if we tried, and then it stepped towards the car. I closed my eyes tightly and shook my head.
“Please don’t bite me, please don’t bite me,” I repeated over and over again with my eyes tightly shut, as if closing them would somehow minimize the pain of those huge teeth sinking into me! I don’t know how long I stayed like that, eyes closed, perched on the windscreen, hanging on for dear life, but, finally, I forced my eyes open. And when I did, he was gone. Gone!
I whirled my head around again, left to right, front to back. No sign of him. Unless he was under the car, ready to nip at my ankles with his horrible snaggletooth. I looked over the side of the car, hoping to get a sense of his whereabouts, but couldn’t. Okay, I would have to do this quickly. I would have to slide off the bonnet, climb into the front seat—the door was still open which would make it easier—and then drive away. I could do this, in 3, 2, 1 . . .
In one swift movement, moving faster than I think I’d ever moved, I jumped off the bonnet, climbed into the front seat and slid the key into the ignition. It didn’t start. Shit! Immobilizer! I looked down at the key ring, and it was no longer there. I looked out the windscreen and there it was, right in the middle of the bonnet, glaring at me. I glanced around again for the dog, but like something that had never actually been there in the first place, it had disappeared. Just to be safe though, I didn’t climb out of the car. Instead, I climbed out the open window and reached around with my arm, grabbing the little grey thing as quickly as I could. I pressed the button, turned the key and then skidded off, leaving an impressive dust cloud behind me. When I was a little way away, I slowed down and looked in my side mirrors. The dog had completely vanished and for a moment it made me question if I’d really seen it. Maybe I was hallucinating under the hot, desert sun. Was I? Honestly, I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to that question anymore.
I pulled my phone out and went back to my mood-tracking app.
I pressed the crazy face emoji.
Then I pressed the confused face emoji.
And then a cold shiver ran up my spine and made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
Scared emoji.
I was definitely feeling scared.
CHAPTER 5
Three hours of driving later, I stopped my car and looked at the sign in front of me. It stared back at me, with a kind of ominousness foreboding. As if it were threatening me, or pointing an accusatory finger at me.
You are entering a radio quiet zone.
The use of cell phones, radios and Wi-Fi are strictly prohibited by the law.
I couldn’t believe it had come to this. That I was willingly entering a small town in the middle of an actual desert that had no internet and no way of getting it. Was I that desperate? Had my life really spun so far out of control that I was willing to do this?
I looked down at my cell phone. There were red and blue notifications signs everywhere. Twitter, Snapchat, Insta, Facebook, all lit up like Christmas trees, flickering lights, waiting for me. Beckoning me. Usually those notifications filled me with joy and a sense of excitement, but now they simply struck ice-cold terror into my veins. I closed my eyes and thought about it all for a second. About what had happened to me over the last few days. How had it all gone so wrong? And then I opened them again, and took a long, slow, deep breath. I had to do this. I pulled the mirror down to look at myself. I was a mess. I was never a mess. I always strived for perfection.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a hairbrush and my bulging make-up bag. I freed my bleached blonde hair from the messy bun it had been confined to for the past four days. It tumbled down to my shoulders looking wavy and unruly. Brushing it just made it worse, because now it was poodle puffy too. My natural hair is mousy brown and curly. But I’d been bleaching and straightening it for the past two years. @TheKyleWhite101 preferred it like that—he said it was better for our personal brand, and looked good in pictures with him, since he’s also blond. I gave up on the brushing and put my hair back into a bun, this time taking care to make it less like a bird’s nest. I unzipped my make-up bag and tipped the contents onto the seat next to me. It filled the entire space. Doing my make-up in the morning usually takes at least forty minutes. I have to conceal and contour and bake and blend and highlight and that’s just the foundation. Today, looking at myself in the mirror, I just didn’t have the strength to do it. I needed to at least get rid of the freckles, though. At least contour the sides and tip of my nose. And put some highlighter on the cupid’s bow of my lips, because without all that . . . well, I’m pretty ordinary. I’d discovered the transformative power of make-up some years ago, and then learned everything I could via YouTube tutorials. Make-up has the power to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, and I need that. Brown curly hair, brown eyes, brown freckles, a rounded face lacking cheekbones and non-pouty lips. That was all I had on offer really, until I put make-up on. So, I gave myself a quick makeover and looked a million times better, if I do say so myself. Then I placed my phone on the dashboard of the car carefully, looked at the road in front of me, and drove forward. Slowly. Very slowly. I inched my way towards the sign, glancing down at my phone, watching and waiting. Waiting for the signal to die, waiting for that dreaded “no signal” exclamation mark to light up my screen, waiting for it to all finally come to an end. But when it did, even though I was expecting it, I hadn’t expected the intense rush of emotions that flooded me.