Creepypasta & r/nosleep Stories

Tales from the Gas Station (8/?)

It's been about an hour since my last post.

We haven't had any customers yet, and if the gas station weren't an active crime scene I might have asked one of the other employees to squeegee the large pool of blood into the drains by the cooler.

For those of you out of the loop, you may want to catch up by reading my earlier posts:

I don't know what Arnold's personal grooming routine looks like, and I have to assume he spends at least twenty minutes a day in moustache prep, but even factoring that in he should have made it to the gas station by now.

I called him a few minutes ago to make sure he hadn't gone back to bed, and to make sure I hadn't imagined the phone call in the first place. The conversation went something like this:

"Yeah?"

"Hey, Arnold? You on your way?"

"Sit tight, we had a little emergency."

"Ok."

"The road between town and you is blocked off."

"Ok... Which one?"

"All of them. Even the service roads. It must have been a freak storm. I've never seen anything like it. All the roads are covered in trees. But they aren't, you know, fallen. The trees are growing in the middle of the street. I've been trying to find a way around all morning, but I've given up. I'm about to head through on foot. Just to be clear, you said you heard from Spencer Middleton last night? Has he made any other contact?"

"Well, actually, he's here. He came in and some stuff happened and now he's dead."

"What!? You're telling me there's a dead body at the gas station?"

I already told him all of this. Man, I really miss Tom.

"Did you not realize that?"

"I'm sorry," he answered, "When the phone rang earlier I had just woken up from this beautiful weird dream of a... dark god... calling me into his eternal grace, taking me by the hand and guiding me into blessed oblivion, freeing me from all the pain and suffering of this mortal prison. Nurturing me like a child and inviting the world into a realm of higher existence, allowing me the privilege to devote myself to his glorious servitude."

"Ok," I said. "I guess I'll see you when you get here."

I ended the call and checked the charge on the phone. The battery was sitting close to fifty percent.

"What's the deal, Lucille?" asked Benjamin.

"Arnold is on his way here on foot. But we might have another problem."

"Holy shit, you guys see that?" Carlos asked, pointing out the window. I couldn't quite make it out from where I was seated behind the counter, and I didn't feel like hobbling over a corpse just for a look.

"What is it?" I asked.

"There's a bunch of naked people out on the road walking this way." Carlos answered.

"The hell you say?" said Marlboro, who had suddenly taken interest. He pressed his face against the window for a better look. "Those aren't just any people. I know them. That's Marla! and Tyler! And there goes Fred! At least, those were the names I gave them."

Benjamin crossed to the frozen drink machine, throwing over his shoulder a quick "They friends of yours?"

"Family, actually. Well, they were anyway, before they disappeared. But I don't remember them looking like that."

"Like what?" I asked, starting to get an uneasy feeling.

"Like..." He took a second to find the words, but all he came up with was "They look funny."