In the valley of California, during the winter, it can get so full of fog that you would think Death itself is hiding in there. Why not? Every year it claims the lives of so many poor souls. Its always is in patches everywhere just outside the nearby major city. A good amount of small towns exist all around it. Some have 10,000 citizens, others as little as a few 100. Every winter every driver has to contend with this devouring fog as Death simply waits within carefully choosing it's victims.
It is true that some are late night drunks, but others are just working people out of a graveyard shift. I found out, as you shall too, that Death has no mercy only a primal desire to feed its insatiable hunger by some grand design. Who knows what it was in its inception, but I know now it's sadistic.
My encounter with this ancient creature originated late one night driving home through that fog (of course). I had went to an all-too-familiar bar just to meet with friends. I could have drove in my car, but I took my used Victory 8-Ball instead. I thought I would look cooler pulling up on a bike. I believe this until that cool breeze hit me at 70 miles per hour.
After roughly two hours and just as many drinks, I decided to bid my friends goodnight. The place was dead for lack of a better term. Something about that night kept people in and the fog was so ominous it poured through the city like tentacles. The city was were all the bars were (At least, all of the good ones.) and that's where you had to go to have some fun. For my friends, it was a short drive, but for me, it was twenty miles outside the city...through the fog.
There was a short-cut home and as every horror movie warns us, never take the quick way home unless someone is chasing you with chainsaw and a hockey mask. It was extra chilly that night and, like everyone else, I believed things in horror movies happened to other poor bastards. Ancient monsters are pure fiction, I recalled thinking to myself. Another thought followed after like an inner voice that never took a drink with my friends.
¨What if evil monsters do exist, but they're never stupid enough to leave evidence behind?¨ This voice inside said. ¨Or they always make it look like an accident?¨
I laughed to myself and wondered if my inner voice was always stuck in the toilet when I was dating someone new. A chill still had run down my spin that night as I entered the road. This long, country path lead straight into my town unhindered by stop signs. The entire passage was flanked on both sides with giant 100 year old palm trees about a yard apart for twenty miles. Travelers have claimed to see things and those ancient behemoths have never wavered for any vehicle. Few liked to use this way at night with good weather, none in the fog, unless a foolish invincibility had overtaken them. I convinced myself that a little doubt wasn't going to masquerade as fear. Of course, at that moment, ¨fear¨ was meaningless.
My last memory, before I found myself lying on the side of the road staring at my bike 100 feet away, was I thought I had seen someone. It was only a flash, but I had seen a woman, but her face was not there. She wore a white dress and had milky, white skin, but her face was not visible. It was missing like when they do interviews on television with someone who wants to be unknown. To this day, I'm still not certain. Sometimes the mind sees things that are not there and, sometimes, the mind protects us from the things that are there.
It was a good thing that I had rode with a thick leather jacket, biker pants, thick gloves, and a full helmet. My body was sore, but nothing was broken. Looking up I had notice other cars smashed and mangled further up the road. Reaching in my pocket I had pulled out a shattered phone and put it back. Damn cell phones cost so much, I thought, that they should be bullet proof and get a signal on the moon.
The first car I got to was empty. The front of the car was almost completely gone and glass was everywhere. The inside light was still on somehow and it showed me no sign of blood anywhere. Fifty feet away a recent model F-150 was rammed into one of the giant, unyielding palm trees. Again no sign of life. Down further an SUV with a caved in bumper, doors open with nobody in it. Clearly, this was an accident created by fools that should have known better than to take an infamous road draped in a nightmarish fog.
