Request: Mike ride

Lord_Hoppy says…

Hurricane locale here. I know about all the Freddy’s stories, and I know you guys are sick of that crap, but this isn’t really a Freddy story.

This is back in 1984. Me and a few friends are driving around that area at something like, two am.  We’re on the outskirts at this point. It’s pretty dark at this hour. My pals are all in the back, laughing their ass off at something I can’t be bothered to remember right now. And that’s when we see this guy.

You guys ever seen an old person walk before? How it’s stilted, forced? Kind of like a puppet show. You don’t get the feeling that they’re quite in control of their body. That’s how this guy was walking.
He wasn’t walking, more like lurching. I slowed down a little, just to see what he was doing. He’d make a step forward, then throw himself forward.  When we slowed down, he threw out a thumbs up.

At this point I was still worried about him, so I complied. I stopped, and told my friends to open the door. He climbs in, and I notice something weird.  His sweater’s too damn big. He’s not a small guy, but his sweater was at least three sizes too big. His head was the only clue I had to go on for his size.  Think of how your girl looks when she’s wearing one of your jerseys, and that’s it.

“Where you going?” I ask.

“You guys goin’ through the city? he asks. He says this in a really thick New Jersey accent, which already sets some alarms off.  “Because I need ta catch a bus dere.”

I go, “Yeah, we are. Where do you need to be dropped off?”

“Really, just at da nearest Subway. I’m hungry, man.”

I’m looking at him in the rear-view mirror now,  and my friends are both looking ahead. We’ll call them Al and Kimmy.  This guy’s  looking out the window, watching the lights pass by.

“What’s your name?”, I ask.

At this, he gives a pause. A real long pause. I’m watching him as he’s looking out the window, and he’s deep in thought. A good five or so seconds pass of awkward silence until he talks.

“Myy..” he says. “ Or Aygs.. Ben…” He says this aloud, he did it with the quick and brusque way you whisper to yourself. I’m not sure if he knew he was speaking so loud.
He’s still thinking, hard. And it’s here that he stops looking out, and he looks straight at me, or the mirror really.

“Billy”, he says.

“Just call me Billy.”

I nodded. “So, how long you been out here, Billy?”

“Really, I forget,” Billy says. “Been a helluva long time since I had a nice meal, though.”

At this point, I realize he’s now Texan. Al and Kimmy are still not talking, and I can see Kim’s scooted over a little towards Al. I wonder why, and that’s when the stench hits me.

It’s awful. It hurts the nostrils. An acrid, rotting stench. I really did want to hurl, until I looked at Billy.

He was a handsome man, once. His face was clean, unmarked by pocks or scarring.  But his mouth was frozen in a weird, saggy smile. His lips were turned up, but his cheeks drooped.  Grab your lips and pull them down a little. That’s how he looked. It was downright grotesque, and it shocked me enough to take my mind off the smell.

I’d heard my stories about hitchhiking gone bad. And I’ve heard about our local hitchhikers. Kids who pop up on the roads by Freddy’s  asking for a ride. You take them five or so minutes away, look back, they’re gone. As if they were never in the seats.  Call CPS instead of driving them, they’re gone the second you look back. That’s why I said this wasn’t another Freddy’s story.

This was something else.

“How ‘bout you, driver? Where you headin’?” It was now a weird mix of English and Australian. That’s the only way I could really describe it. I don’t know how he jumped from New Jersey to that, but he did.

“We’re just going home, man.”

“Oh? You’re all family?”

I looked at Al, and wondered what to say. He threw a look back at me. “Yah, we’re family. What about you, you got any siblings?”
When I said this, Billy’s smile dropped.

 I don’t really have way to describe it, but if you’ve seen a pug you know how strange it’s face is when you compare it with something like a golden retriever. It’s all smushed in, and wrinkly.

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters”, Billy said, before staring out the window again. He said this with a really heavy impediment, slurring all the words together.

He then said “I’ll get out here.”

“Okay,” I said. I pulled over to the side of the road, and even though we were nowhere near the city he got out.

Billy stumbled over to my window. I could see now that his eyes weren’t really eyes. They were normal from a distance, but as you got closer you could see they weren’t quite right. They were violet, and unven. One eye drooped lower than the other, and there was no sclera. No eggy white to show you he was still vulnerable. They didn’t even have a liquid, they looked like someone had replaced his eyes.

I didn’t do anything but look at him, slumped onto my car. He looked thin, almost skeletal in that big sweater of his.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said. He slipped some money through the window, and as I took it I saw and felt his hands. They were really clammy, and discolored. Splotches populated his skin

And his hands collapsed when my fingers “pinched” them. I let go in shock, and as he stumbled away, head hung low, I realized that Billy had handed me three one-hundred dollar bills.

Kimmy, Al, and I talked about it during the ride, but it took until now to get it down anywhere but my journal..

Kids know better these days, but if you see anyone on the roads around Hurricane, don’t stop. Kid or man, they’re not worth it.