You guys always wonder if my stories are real. Here’s one that is.

It was a late night. I had gotten out of work and was driving back to my hometown through the dark, lonely backroads. Houses popped up few and far between, but it was mostly me and the open road. Or so I thought.

Pretty soon, my car started to get chilly. I looked down and turned off the AC, thinking that would help. It didn’t. The temperature in the car continued to drop, well below normal for even a cold autumn night. Soon I could see my breath against the dashboard lights, teeth chattering like I had been laying in the snow naked.

Then I heard it. A whisper, breathy and light. I could feel the warm air from its mouth on my neck, on the back of my ear. I kept my eyes on the road, pressing hard down on the gas. As my car sped up, the voice got louder, progressing until it was a yelling, shrieking vocalization that insisted my attention with no coherent words. Was I hearing the devil’s language?

The world around me started to warp into a nightmare, the road disappearing beneath skeletons and carcasses. I had to be dreaming. The screaming was continuing and I felt the pressure in my eardrums, like they would burst any second. A hand landed on my shoulder, another grabbing my cheek. Some instinct inside of me told me to avert my eyes, despite the peeling at my eyelids by bony, skin peeled fingers. Each tear that came out of my eye turned to blood and burnt the skin on my cheeks.

The cacophony suddenly stopped, leaving a ringing in my ears and a bizarre emptiness in the air. Had it not been for the physical sensations and the torture, I’d have thought the demons were gone. Instead, they started a quiet singing. I couldn’t hear the words but I could feel my mind losing touch with reality, forgetting who I was and what I was doing. Before every last bit of sanity slipped from my grasp, I yanked the steering wheel to the left, veering into where the other lane should’ve been.

My body was found lying on the top of an oncoming car which mine had crashed into. The collision killed me, the driver, and the backseat passenger of the other car, a young girl who was on her way home from the hospital after being told her cancer was in remission. I don’t know what came over me that night, but from now to eternity, I will walk that road dying to find the answer, and to prevent others from this horrible, haunting fate.