That Friday night, for the sake of appearances, Quincie hung out with some of her track teammates after practice. By ten o’clock, she had enough of the inane conversations, forced laughter, and awkward pauses. She politely excused herself for the night, thankful to be rid of it all. A call came in from Shara while she was driving home, a call she thought about not answering. She turned down her radio.
“Hey, what’s up girl?” she said, and immediately had to pull her ear away from the phone.
“What’s DeAndre’s number?!” Shara yelled, furious about something.
“DeAndre? I thought you were hanging with Steven tonight.”
“I called his cell, and some other bitch answered,” she griped. “He grabbed the phone from her and tried to say it was his sister!”
“Maybe it was his sister.” Quincie tried to stifle her laughter.
“Yeah right,” Shara shot back. “What sister asks, ‘Who’s that bitch, and does she know about our son?” Quincie burst into laughter.
“It’s not funny! Anyway, what’s DeAndre’s number?!”
“Why DeAndre? You haven’t spoken to him since before school started; and why the hell do you think I would have his number?”
“Because DeAndre is Steven’s cousin, and I can use him to get revenge, and I texted you his number that time I went out with him, remember? In case something happened to me.”
“Oh, right.” Quincie exhaled, remembering that, as a safety precaution, they agreed to send one another the cell number of the guy they were going out with so if either one of them went missing, the police would know where to start. It was always Quincie who got the texts, however, since she was never the one going on a date.
“You know you’d only be making a fool of yourself, right?” Quincie advised. “If you took the time to think about things instead of just reacting, you’d—”
“Quincie, please! I need the number, not a damn lecture!”
“I’m driving right now,” Quincie remembered the day her father bought her car; particularly the ten-minute speech he gave about not talking on the phone while driving. “I’m almost home.”
“Pleeeeaaaaasssse?!” Shara begged.
“Oh God, hold on a minute!” Quincie pulled up to a four-way stop sign intersection and decided it was okay to look for the number since there were no cars behind her. After a few moments, she wished she had picked a less-scary place to stop. There was nothing but tall grass and woods in every direction, and it looked as if something would jump out and grab her at any moment. She locked the car’s doors and activated the speaker function on her phone.
“Are you there, Shara?” She asked, checking to make sure that the phone’s audio had switched over.
“I’m here.” Shara’s pitchy voice came back through the speaker.
“Okay, talk to me. I’m stopped in a scary place right now.” Quincie scrolled through her text messages searching for DeAndre’s number.
“I appreciate you,” Shara said.
“You’d better!” Quincie’s voice was trembling a little. The wind had picked up, and she looked around and swore that the dried-out weeds surrounding the intersection were coming to life as they rustled and swayed. She found the number, copied it into a new text message, and sent it to Shara.
“I just sent it to you. Did you get it?”
“What did you say?” Shara asked. “I didn’t hear that.”
“I said, ‘did you get it’?”
“What? Speak into the—” Shara’s voice disappeared in a cloud of static, and then cut out completely.
“Hello?” Quincie looked at her phone and saw that she had no signal. “I’m out of here!”
When she looked down the road, she saw a light building just over the horizon, a light so large and so bright, it looked like the sun rising in the dead of night! It grew in intensity until the source appeared at the top of the hill, washing out the darkness. It slowly made its way toward the intersection where she had stopped.
The intensity of the light caused the transitional lenses in her glasses to darken, which enabled her to make out a large black object at the light's center.
“What kind of car is that?” She asked herself, growing more frightened as she saw that, this ‘car,’ floated just above the ground! The weeds on the side of the road were being pressed flat by some eerie, unseen force generated by the object as it moved.
It came to a stop just across the intersection, directly in the center of the road, blocking her path; its wraith-like blackness was surrounded by brilliant bluish-white light, making it impossible for Quincie to recognize, even from this short distance. When the lights began to overwhelm the shaded lenses of her glasses, she had seen enough, but when she stomped on the gas pedal, nothing happened! She looked down and saw that her dashboard had gone dark. She turned the ignition key but heard only the clicking sound it made in the lock. The car was completely dead! Terrified, she watched the object hover at the opposite side of the intersection, making no attempt to proceed across. She felt the ominous sensation of being watched.
There was a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach; like the feeling one gets when riding a roller coaster over a drop. She recoiled from something that floated by her face. She lifted her glasses and looked around the inside of her car. She saw all kinds of objects drifting in the cabin; coins, pens, keys, almost the entire contents of her bag, floating as if suspended in water. She let go of her phone and watched it drift out of her hand. It was as surreal as it was frightening. She was relieved when two patrol cars from the Sheriff’s Department came to a screeching halt in the middle of the intersection, directly between her and the strange object. As their car’s lights and sirens flickered and went dark, two deputies jumped out and began shouting at the object from behind their guns. A loud, deep droning noise, like the kind made by a large generator, shook the area, and the outlines of everything that she could see became distorted by the vibrations. That feeling in her stomach got worse, and she could feel her car rising in the air. She looked up and saw the deputies and their cars suspended several feet off the road, by what means, she didn’t know or see. She started screaming; her voice was deafening in her car’s small cabin. She wanted to jump out but was too scared. There was the sharp crack of gunfire as the deputies opened up with their pistols. A series of lights began to strobe all over the strange object, in rapid succession. They mesmerized Quincie, getting brighter and brighter until... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075Q48MPR
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