MicroHorror

Julie adjusted the rear-view mirror and let up on the accelerator. The tires on the pavement whined and the wiper blades were too loud. She turned on the radio, but all it received was static. Somewhere behind her was Max. Somewhere, she knew, he was hunting her. She shuddered and glanced behind her. No headlights. “He can’t be following me. He doesn’t know where I’m going.” She took a deep breath and focused on the road.

Faintly, from the passenger seat, she thought she heard a scratching sound. “It’s your imagination.” She snapped off the radio hard, as if the action could banish the voice between her ears. Max always knew how to get to her, even here, on the road, far away from him.

Again she thought she heard the scratching sound. Reaching up she flicked on the overhead light and glanced over at the seat. It was bare. “I told you it was your imagination,” she muttered and snapped off the light.

A car appeared around the upcoming bend and she squinted in the sudden light. As it was about to pass she glanced over at the passenger side of the windshield.

A large hand was crawling on the dash.

No, a spider, a very large spider, the size of a hand, was crawling on the dash.

Max had known she was terrified of spiders.

She screamed and swerved to the left, barely missing the oncoming car. As she swung back into the right lane she scrabbled for the dome light again, but she missed the switch and hit the open case instead, breaking the bulb. The spider was no longer on the dash, but there was a scratching among the fast food wrappers on the floor. She looked up just in time to narrowly make the upcoming curve. There was nowhere safe to pull over.

“Please, please.” Absurdly, the sound of her voice steadied her.

Headlights appeared in her rearview mirror. The same tinted license plate light as on Max’s car.

Her tires shook as she hit the graded pavement on the side of the road and she jerked the wheel in time to avoid plunging into the ravine. Whimpering, she glanced in her mirror.

“There is no way you could be following me. No way.”

The scratching was on the seat beside her, and something touched her bare thigh. Julie screamed, and swatted whatever-it-was away, her hand connecting with something large and prickly that flew away towards the floor, landing with a soft thump.

“Oh-god-oh-god.” She was only glancing at the road now. The headlights behind her filled her rearview mirror. To her right black nothingness spilled over the guardrail.

Then something scratched her sandaled foot, and she jerked it away from the pedals, screaming, trying to kick it, looking down and not at the road. Her car lunged through the barrier and down the rocky hill, rolling several times, coming to rest at the bottom.

She couldn’t move. The car behind her had stopped and someone was scrambling down the slope, carrying a flashlight. It was bright, very bright, and it made her eyes hurt and her vision flicker. Then she realized that the flickering came from the flames licking around the body of her car. Gravel bounced down the hill as the figure came closer.

Then she felt the spider crawling over her shoulder. But she couldn’t move. Her arms lay there like dead things.

The spider slowly crawled through the blood streaming down her face.

All she could do was moan.