Deloris grabbed the wheel without hesitation, as if the hairy thing’s command possessed her limbs and controlled her motions. Her ears rang again louder than before. It occurred to her even through the distracting pain that the ringing in her ears might be caused by her passenger’s voice. She drove just as she was instructed.
“Take a left here, Deloris.”
Deloris did as she was told, ears ringing. Despite the fact that there was no road to turn onto, no thought of protest entered her mind. She turned her wheel to the left, hard, entering a dark clearing in the forest she’d been driving through for over an hour. She drove until the road was no longer visible in her rearview mirror. Not that she could have looked in the mirror if she wanted to.
“Stop the car, Deloris.”
The thing opened the back door of the car and exited. It walked past Deloris and past the hood of the car for about 40 feet and stopped. Deloris’ headlights lit the path. Deloris could feel the tears that had been welling up in her eyes begin to overflow and fall down her cheeks. She was paralyzed. Not just her body; she couldn’t move her mind forward. She couldn’t think about an escape. She sat in stasis.
The hairy giant kneeled in the grass before a brownish mass lying on the ground. The monster stood up, the mass now draped in its arms. Turning its head to the sky and opening its mouth wide it began to scream. Deloris briefly noted the anguish in the sound of this cry as the sound drowned out all thought, all noise, all sight. Black.
