It began with a drive, aimless and with no real direction in mind. I let my thoughts roll over as the scenery rolled by. I should have been at work, but that just didn’t seem right that day. I needed a break. My nerves were shot. Drifting through the world was about all I could muster. Before I knew it, I’d been driving for four hours. The sun was going down, the sky beginning to turn a vibrant pink, dissipating into the deep blue above. I was low on fuel and so pulled into the first service station I found. After filling up I parked in a spot facing the sun set and just watched. This time of day brought a calm over me that not much else could. My eyes began to feel heavy. I hadn’t been sleeping much.
“Hello”, came a muffled voice, after a hard knock against the passenger side window of my car.
“Hello,” I said, dubiously, opening bleary eyes and turning towards the window
A pale woman stood outside the car. She was wearing a onesie made to look like a cartoon parrot - bright blue and yellow – the parrot head-cum-hood pulled back. In her left hand she held a black cat up, its body stretched out awkwardly across her grip.
“Can you let me in? We need a lift into town.” She said, thrusting the cat forward.
My nerves spiked again, and my breath became quicker.
A voice piped up inside my head.
You shouldn’t pick up hitch hikers. It’s just not the done thing these days. You’ve listened to too many true crime podcasts to know that there isn't any eventuality other than a brutal murder waiting at the end of the decision to let her in.
“Er,” I stammered.
“No, go on!” she said, forcefully. It wasn’t an angry voice. More a plea. But a plea with authority. A command maybe.
I remained silent for a second more and just watched. She pushed back her white hair that hung around her shoulders, revealing a rucksack strap. Putting the cat down, she proceeded to take it off and dropped it to the floor too.
She ducked down below the window, and then quickly popped back up, holding a large multipack bag of crisps. Her face was animated in a wide smile, which looked more forced than sincere. “I’ve got snacks,” she said, her voice a mellow drone.
I would describe myself as somewhat paranoid, afraid of hitch hikers certainly. Quite honestly of just meeting strangers in general. But it’s also true that given enough insistence I will just about say yes to anything. And that level of insistence isn’t even that high.
Maybe she’s just a normal person. She doesn’t mean any harm. She even brought food for the journey.
“Alright,” I said. I reached over and pulled up the lock on the passenger side door.
No central locking here. Not even electric windows. This car’s a classic. No. Sorry I meant piece of shit. A Green Ford Polo. 13 years old. Five hundred quid well spent. Or spent at least.
“She opened the door and threw her rucksack into the footwell before ducking in. Black cat in hand, she threw him onto the back seat as soon as she sat down. The cat, quickly sunk its claws into the worn fabric, massaging it for a couple of seconds until it settled, curling into a ball.
“Hi,” the woman said. She reached out for the door and closed it with a slam. “Cotton,” she continued, and held out her hand to shake
“Erm, that’s your name?” I said, speculatively, shaking her hand.
“Its one of them,” she answered, bluntly.
“Well nice to meet you then, I guess. I’m Tom.” I mumbled.
I began to feel a pressure building inside me. My palms began to sweat as I pulled my seatbelt round me.
Cotton. What kind of a name is that? Not a normal one. What have you done? She’s a serial killer, she just is. Maybe she stuffs your mouth with cotton balls before she slits your throat. The Cotton Ball Killer.
“Thanks for giving us a ride,” she said, bringing me out of my macabre fantasies.
I turned the key in the ignition and leant forward to readjust the rear-view mirror, my shaggy black hair rising up into the reflection as I did so. The cat stuck its head up as I looked back to reverse, its green eyes staring lazily. It gave a wide yawn, revealing a strawberry pink tongue and a missing canine on the top row of its teeth.
“Nice cat,” I said, turning back round as we pulled out from the parking spot in the motorway rest stop. “What’s it name?”
“Carl,” she replied. “He’s alright. Get’s a bit angsty when he doesn’t get his cigarettes.”
She said this with a straight face. Her voice level.
Yep, she’s insane. Tell her to get out now before we get onto the motorway!
“Your cat smokes?” I asked, doing my best to ignore my inner objections.
“Yeah,” Cotton continued. “Especially when the summer comes around. He just can’t give it up. Its a nasty habit, I know.”
“Oh, right.”
I reached down to the radio and switched it on.
Better to drown out any potential conversation with somebody else’s.
The sombre voice of Phoebe Judge, the host of the Criminal podcast series, blasted loudly from the speakers suddenly. I must have left an episode running on my phone while I’d been napping in the car. Details of a brutal murder began to unfold as she relayed a killing, mid-sentence, before I quickly screwed the sound down to a dull murmur in the background.
“Sorry”, I said. After we pulled out onto the motorway.
“No problem,” she replied. “Sounded juicy. Blood and guts, that’s my kind of thing.”
Yep this is the end.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of stuff I get to spend time on nowadays.” she continued.
“Not much time for podcasts?”
“Podcasts?” Cotton said, as if she was forming the word in her mouth for the first time.
“They’re like radio shows but you can listen to them whenever you want. Crime is one of the biggest categories.”
“Never heard one. Is that a recent thing? Podcasts.” She said again, trying the word out for a second time.
“Erm, I guess so. Yeah. I don’t think they were around before ipods.”
She stared blankly at me. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been around civilization.” She said finally.
“Right. And what brings you back into our midst?”
“A job.”
“What kind of work are you in?”
“Mortality.”
“You work with mortality?” I asked, my brow began to sweat. “Like an undertaker or a mortician or something.”
“No, I come before them. It’s more like I’m making sure that people die. Or that I’m trying to find out why they haven’t died.”
I told you not to pick up hitch hikers. I fucking told you.
Any kind of emotional barrier I had erected between my thoughts and the outside world cracked, fear spilling over my tongue and out of my lips. “I’m sorry. Look, I don’t have much to live for, I’m just working in a restaurant as a waiter. I’ve come to a bit of standstill in my life. It’s all pretty stressful and sometimes I think about giving it up, but I don’t really want to die! Please don’t kill me.” My eyes began to tear up, as I stared forward at the road. I tried to concentrate on the traffic as best I could through the blur.
She turned to face me, cold blue eyes and sharp cheek bones stabbing at the edges of my vision. And then she began to laugh.
“Carl,” she said, turning around to the cat, somewhere between a deep chortle and an inhalation. “ Can you believe this? I try to make myself look all harmless this time, so as not cause any unwanted panic, and still the only reaction I get is fear.”
Facing me again, she spoke in a droll voice the occasional chuckle surfacing between her words, “I’m not going to kill you. I guess that came out the wrong way. I suppose you could say I’m like a detective. Privately contracted.”
“You’re a PI?” I replied, calming down slightly and wiping my eyes.
“What’s that?” she said flatly.
“A private investigator.”
“Yes, exactly! I like the sound of that,” excitement flooded her voice.
“You’re a private investigator that’s never heard of the term PI and has never heard a true crime podcast.” I said, blankly, unexpected confidence rising back into my being.
I’m still ninety percent sure I’m not leaving this journey with my liver in my body.
“Hey, look Tom I don’t need you to approve my professional credentials. I am what I am ok. It’s complicated. Doesn’t sound like you’re doing too well yourself, with your whole tirade back there about not having much to live for and thinking about giving it up,” she jeered, air quoting my words with her fingers. “You should sort your inner child out before you go judging others and their lives.”
“My what?”
“Your inner child.” She said again. “You know, that voice inside your head that keeps talking even when there’s no sound coming from your lips. Your conscience, your ego, your soul. It's got many names. Seems like yours is already a bit dislodged. He took control a bit there before, when you thought I might kill you.”
“You’re fucking crazy!” I said, as I indicated right, moving over into the fast lane.
My heart pounded, a rushing noise moving through my ears.
I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get off the motorway as soon as possible. I don’t care if she’s not a murderer, she’s off her rocker.
“I’m not crazy,” Cotton said, indignantly. “Tell him I’m not crazy Carl.”
“You’re talking to your cat!” I shouted.
“He understands me!” she shouted back. “Look I’ll prove I’m not. I’ll get your inner child to come out. I think he’s halfway to leaving anyway. And that’s not a good thing, just so you know. They're not meant to leave your mind, they get all dry and wrinkly, like a date or an old person.”
I turned to look at her, just as she unclipped her seatbelt. She leaned over towards me and pinched my left ear between her thumb and forefinger, pulling my head round towards her.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she whispered, her breath brushing my earlobe.
I felt a pop in my ear, as if we’d climbed in altitude, and suddenly I went numb. I felt nothing. My heartbeat slowed and the rushing in my ears subsided.
Then I heard a strange voice. “I honestly don’t think I could’ve lasted a minute longer in there anyway,” it said. The voice was quiet, but close by and its tone was odd. It sounded as if it were many voices at once, some low, some high. Some full of enthusiasm, other’s monotone and flat.
Then I realised i hadn't been paying attetion to the motorway ahead. The red lights of a car shone angrily in front. I needed to break, but it was too late. Instead I swerved left into the next lane, clipping a car at fast speed. The car span and I flew hard into my seatbelt, forcing all of the air out of my lungs. With a huge force we hit the roadside barrier and my head snapped back into headrest. I tried to keep conscious, my eyes wide open. The car flew into the air in a wide arch over to the grass beyond. With my head pinned back I stared into the rear-view mirror for what seemed an eternity.
In the seconds before we hit the ground, I saw two things that, had I been feeling anything, might just have caused me some alarm.
The first, a small man the size of my thumbnail, holding tight onto my t-shirt. I say man, it was shaped like a human, in that humans have a head, two arms and two legs, but the similarities stopped there. It almost looked like dry clay, or maybe earwax, except it had a grey pink hue to it. It didn’t really have any eyes to speak of, just two vague indents where you might expect them to be.
The second alarming sight was that of a large hairy man with bright green eyes, completely naked, sitting in the back seat putting on his seatbelt as we turned upside down.
And then, with a crash, the world went black.
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