A young woman awakes in total darkness, not knowing where she was or how she got there, leading her to believe she might be in purgatory or worse... Hell!

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SKYLAR awoke in total darkness, cold and alone.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, she struggled to stay awake, but it was a battle she felt herself losing. Just how long she had been in this state of semi-consciousness, she could not tell, only that, it felt like she hadn't been there a very long time.

Rolling and blinking her eyes whenever she found herself aware, she tried to focus on something...., anything, but there was only perpetual black. It wasn't long before she began to think the unthinkable. That maybe she had died and gone to some kind of purgatory....,

or worse...,

Hell.

Wherever she was, it was somewhere to fear, and afraid she was. Although she could feel her body, she couldn't feel anything beneath her. She wasn't standing, sitting or laying on anything, she was just floating. Not in water, but in space. Weirder still was the fact that she could not touch herself. It was as if her arms and hands could pass right through each other.

She became even more afraid.

Except for the faint, continuous sound of something unseen blaring in the distance, there were no other sounds to be heard beyond the ringing in her ears. Slowly she began to feel the searing pain of a sore throat coming on, and it was from that pain that she began to sense herself coming back into the now.

Suddenly, a blinding flash of white light enveloped her, followed immediately by the horrific sound of screeching tires and a violent crash.

Then silence.....

°°°°°°

When Skylar awoke, she found herself sitting in a booth at the back of a diner with her forehead resting between her right index finger and her thumb. Cautiously raising her head, she glanced around at her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was a digital clock on a wall above the door to the kitchen that read: 11:11pm and over the speakers in the ceiling was the song, 'Goodbye Stranger', by Supertramp. Except for one other customer sitting at the counter at the other end of the room, she was alone.

On the table, in front of her, was a dirty plate of something she had no memory of eating. To her right, wedged behind the napkin holder and the window, was a menu. Taking a closer look at it, she saw the name of the diner printed at the top.

It read:

"13 Diamonds"

Just then, movement outside in the parking lot caught her attention. Glancing out through the glass, she spotted a man lying on the asphalt, trying to drag himself along the ground. That's when she noticed that his legs were severed and he was leaving a trail of blood behind him.

Unexpectedly, something touched her on her left shoulder, causing her to cry out in terror. Jerking around to her left, she immediately recognized the person as a waitress.

"Oh dear! I'm so sorry", the older woman gasped.

Skylar breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh my GOD! You scared me."

"I didn't mean to frighten you my dear," the waitress apologized again. "I only came over to see if you wanted another cup of coffee."

Suddenly she remembered the man outside. "Oh my GOD", Skylar shouted, "We gotta call 911! There's a man badly injured out in the parking lot!". As she turned to look back, however, the man was gone. Bewildered, she wondered had she imagined him.

"What man?" The waitress asked.

Skylar looked back at the waitress, dumbfounded.

"What man," she asked again.

Skylar shook her head.

"My dear," the woman sighed. "This one's on the house."

Gazing blankly down at the table, Skylar barely noticed the waitress pouring coffee into the cup directly in front of her. It wasn't until chunky pieces of dark matter started falling out of the pot into her cup that she became aware. That's when something large and nasty fell into the cup, splashing coffee all over the table.

Shocked by the splatter that appeared to look more like blood than coffee, she raised her head to look up at the waitress. To her horror she noticed the lady's left arm suddenly morphing into horrific looking burns. When she finally locked eyes on the woman, the lady's entire head went up in flames. Oddly enough, the waitress showed no indication of pain as flesh fell from her face.

Pushing herself away from the woman in fear, the waitress smiled then turned away. Skylar watched in horror as the waitress strolled casually over to the bar just as her entire body spontaneously combusted into an inferno. After taking several more steps, she finally buckled then collapsed into a heap on floor.

Terrified beyond measure, Skylar fled the booth and sprinted to the front door of the diner. Just as she was about to the exit the building, she spotted a person next to her, standing behind the register. Startled, she let out a holler, but followed it with screams when she noticed a two foot long metal bar jutting out of the person's face with their bottom jaw and tongue dangling from it.

Bolting out the door, she fled through the foyer, down the steps into the dark parking lot outside. Almost immediately, she came to a screeching hault when she spotted a large crowd standing shoulder to shoulder on the perimeter of the diner's property. Black silhouettes with yellow dots for eyes, she couldn't tell if they were people or something more sinister, but everywhere she looked they were there, surrounding the place and they were closing in on her.

Overcome with fear, she began to cry and hyperventilate as she struggled to stay on her feet. Stumbling into the side of a car, she quickly realized getting into one was her only means of escape. Pulling frantically on the car's door handle, it failed to open, but in doing so caused an ear splitting alarm to go off. Panick set in.

Glancing around at several other vehicles in the parking lot, she tried to remember how she had gotten to the diner, but her mind kept coming up blank. Suddenly, everything around her started spinning as images of the approaching shadows flashed through her mind. Somehow she discovered a set of keys in her jacket's right pocket and it instantly brought her back into the moment.

Holding them up in her right hand, she noticed a chirper on the keyring and quickly pressed the button on it. Right behind her, a car beeped in response. Hit with a burst of andrenaline, she gleefully turned and ran to the driver's side. Pressing a second button on the chirper as she got to the door, she unlocked the car and jumped inside. After struggling for several seconds to get the key into the ignition, she finally started the engine, but as she reached out to close the door, a hand out of nowhere grabbed her by her left wrist and yanked hard on her arm.

Suddenly, a blinding flash of white light enveloped her, followed immediately by the horrific sound of air horns blaring loudly and then a violent crash.

Then silence.....

••••••

When Skylar came to, she found herself behind the wheel of a car, speeding down a very dark road, fleeing from something she had no memory of. Frustrated and angry by what her reality had now become, she let out a scream at the top of her lungs.

"What the fuck is going on?!"

Instantly her rage turned to tears and she began crying hysterically. More afraid of the unknown, than anything else, she kept glancing repeatedly into all three of the car's mirrors, looking for something behind her to match the dread she felt coming her way.

In her emotional turmoil, Skylar failed to notice a change in the speed limit as she entered the outskirts of the city. Blowing through an intersection nearly twice as fast as she was supposed to, she nearly collided with another vehicle that had started to make a left turn in front of her. Narrowly swerving around the other driver, the close call was enough to snap her back into the now.

Realizing that she had almost gotten herself killed, she quickly slowed down and fell in line behind a flatbed tow truck, matching it's speed at a safe distance. As the two vehicles moved through the night, Skylar noticed that her headlights brightly reflected the name of the company posted prominently behind the cab of the tow truck....

It read.....

"13 Diamonds"

Just then, a bump in the road jolted the car,

sending a chill down her spine as a foreboding sense of Deja Vu suddenly overwhelmed her. Something about all of this was starting to feel strangely familiar, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Thinking that a little music might relax her nerves, she reached down to turn on the radio, only to notice that the clock read, 11:11pm. For a second, she hesitated, staring at the time as if it meant something to her, then finally she thought..., 'Fuck it', and hit the power button.

As soon as the radio came on, 'Goodbye Stranger' by Supertramp began playing over the speakers, and just like that, Skylar had the volume turned all the way up. And it was in that magical moment, when the singer began singing, that all the tension she had been feeling inside suddenly disappeared from her soul.

Still stuck behind the tow truck, with the music blasting, she lowered the driver's side window and stuck her head out into the cool night air, letting the wind blow across her face and through her hair. Singing her heart out with a smile from ear to ear, for the first time that evening, she felt like herself...,

17 and happy.

Wanting to see what was ahead of the tow truck, Skylar steered the car onto the double yellow lines and carefully maintained it in that position. Squinting her eyes for a better look, she could see that they were nearing a large intersection with a popular diner located on the far side corner. A place that she both recognized and regularly frequented.

Ecstatic about finding a place where she could pull over, relax and gather her senses together, her joy was short lived when a thunderous explosion lit up the night sky. Somewhere up ahead, in the middle of that intersection, a fireball rose up like a glowing mushroom cloud until it darkened and faded from sight.

Almost immediately, the tow truck slowed to a crawl, forcing her to do the same. Thinking that she might need to pay attention to the situation outside, she immediately turned the radio off and cautiously tailgated the truck. From her position directly behind it, all she could see at first were people running around and a whole lot of burning cars. It wasn't until they fully entered the intersection, on their way to the other side, that the scale of the tragedy finally came into view.

With so much fire and smoke everywhere, Skylar could barely make out the cause of the accident, but to her, it appeared as if a tanker truck had collided with a white car, rolled over onto its driver's side and exploded into several other vehicles. In the aftermath of the collision, burning fuel spreading across the intersection, igniting more and more cars into the growing inferno.

Amidst the sound of roaring flames, piercing alarms and bursting tires, it was the bloodcurdling screams coming from the twisted burning wreckage of the white car that caught her attention.

From the safety of her vehicle, she watched in horror as a man struggled to open the driver door, only to roll out onto the street with no legs and crawl from the fire. She instantly recalled seeing the same man at the diner.

"No way", she thought. "How's that even possible?"

But Deja Vu struck again.

While she was still trying to wrap her brain around the man, a second person emerge from the same car on the passenger side, fully engulfed in flames from head to toe. Skylar immediately recognized that person as the waitress from back at the diner too, and just like her, this person only took a few steps, before collapsing to the ground.

What the fuck was going?

Not paying attention to the traffic in front of her, Skylar failed to see that the tow truck driver had stopped and exited his vehicle to get a closer view of the tragedy. It wasn't until she inadvertently banged into him that she realized her mistake. Looking through the front window, she saw the bed of the tow truck up over the hood of the car, with significant damage she was going to have to explain to her parents.

"Oh my GOD," she whined.

Just then, a wave of screams near her car caught her attention. Turning to her left to see what all the commotion was about, she saw a handful of people racing towards her as if they were running for their lives. Not even a millisecond later, a major explosion ripped through the intersection right behind the crowd, sending shrapnel and debris flying everywhere. As pieces of metal and human body parts rained down all around Skylar's car, she witnessed a man get impaled through the back of his head by a section of pipe, tearing his jaw completely off.

Shell shocked by the trauma of it all, she sat motionless in her car, staring down at the body of the man who landed in the street right beside her car. The sight of his torn up face, seared into her brain. Everything she had experienced at the diner had now played out in front of her over the last two minutes.

What did it all mean?

Sinking back into the driver's seat, she put her hands on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Although all manner of hell was breaking out all around her outside, she did her best to listen to the sound of her own breathing and focus her thoughts inward as a means of escaping her current reality. In doing so, however, Skylar never saw the white light that had begun filling the interior of her car from behind. Never realized that the blaring air horns and the screeching tires were something other than the tragedy happening outside. Never realized the one event that would forever change everything in her life.

The last thing she ever saw in that final second glancing into the rear view mirror, was the headlights of a tractor trailer rushing up to the rear window of her car.

Then silence.......

•••••••

SKYLAR awoke once again in total darkness, cold and alone.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, she struggled to stay awake, but it was a battle she felt herself losing, and she was. Hovering in a state of semi-consciousness, she finally figured out what had been happening to her all along and the fear from that revelation would be the last, most horrifying thing she would ever experience.....

She wasn't stuck in a coma...

She wasn't trapped in a nightmare...

And she hadn't even been sentenced to hell yet...,

No..., she was very much alive, but not for long and she knew it.

She began to cry.

•••••••

The devastation that the flatbed tow truck driver came upon immediately brought him to tears. Hoping against hope, he climbed upon the twisted wreckage of the tractor trailer only to find the driver torn to pieces. Seeing that there was no saving him, he dropped back down to the ground and tried to find the young girl in the car that had been behind his truck just before the accident.

For a moment, it looked as though the car had been vaporized in the carnage, because somewhere between his truck and the tractor trailer, the car was nowhere to be found. Taking out his cellphone, he turned on the flashlight and started looking closer at the debris all around him. It wasn't until he heard the faint sound of 'Goodbye Stranger' playing on a radio, that he found the girl's car beneath his flatbed.

Somehow during the crash, the frame of his truck had been replaced by the car, giving the illusion that they were one and the same. A closer examination of the situation revealed that the top of her car had been guillotined by his flatbed.

Kneeling down underneath it, he shined the flashlight into the interior of the car and immediately saw a bloody hand protruding out of the driver window. For a moment, it startled him. Reaching in through the window, he grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse. To his surprise, she still had one.

Motivated by the unexpected sign of life, the tow truck driver started screaming for help as he examined the door of the car with the flashlight. Again to his surprise, it looked like the door had survived the wreckage intact enough to simply open up.

"Hold on miss! Help is here!"

Putting the phone down on the ground, with the light pointing up, the man tugged hard on the handle of the door. At first it opened up just about an inch, but it was enough to inspire him to keep trying harder. After several more powerful tugs, the door unexpectedly gave way, causing him to lose his balance and fall backwards to the ground.

With the door now open completely and the flashlight shining in, he could see the young girl sitting in the driver's seat in a leaned back position.

"Miss?"

When she didn't respond, he got back on his feet and moved closer to the door. Grabbing her left wrist with his right hand, he gently pulled on her arm, expecting resistance of some sort, but finding none, decided to scoot up closer to her instead and slip his right arm behind her back.

•••••••

Back at the diner, Skylar remembered when she tried to escape in a vehicle as the shadows surrounding the place closed in on her. She also recalled reaching out with her left hand to close the car door only to be startled by a hand grabbing her by the wrist and pulling hard on her arm.

That's when the unthinkable happened.

••••••••

Just as the tow truck driver started to slip his right arm behind the girl's back, something wet and heavy fell on top of his right shoulder. Startled by it, he pulled back and watched as the object bounced over his knees to the ground below. When it finally stopped rolling, he let out a scream and fell backwards to the ground. There in front of him, was the girl's decapitated head, standing upright, and she was looking at him with tears in her eyes.

In the final seconds of her life, Skylar found herself looking up at her would be rescuer, grateful that she didn't have to die alone. As her vision began to fade, she smiled at the man and mouthed the words, 'Thank you', to him.

Although he was frightened by the sight of the girl's severed head lying by his feet in front of him, he easily understood what she had tried to say and he immediately smiled back at her.

"GOD BLESS", he replied.

THE END

By Michael Fright

From: United States

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