Location: Unknown; a mountain-forest area

It was hard to tell exactly where we were considering that we were dropped off here in the middle of the night. Dusti and I were hitchhiking down what seemed to be the main road in the town, although there were not many cars to vouch for it.

After a few miles and no ride, we came upon a log cabin diner/gas stop with a sign reading, ‘Puckers. Famous for our sugar plums!’ We enter and take a booth available by the bar. Our waitress, a hippie-type girl with dirty-blond dreadlocks in a pink dress, whose name tag stated simply:

“Hula Lei. From Hawaii”

Hula asks us if we’d like a drink, we say “yes” and she sends over the bus boy with waters after our response.

This acne-plagued teenager with a name tag that read “Rusty” prepares the waters on his tray and as he comes over, he trips on the side of one of the booths and a single glass of water falls off his tray perfectly straight down; just in that instance, a man at the bar sitting across from us reaches down quickly and catches it before it hit the ground, without spilling a single drop, without even turning his head to look at the glass while catching it!

Dusti, Rusty and I sit there dumbfounded. The man turns around, calmly places the glass back on the tray and returns to his meal.

I couldn't help myself, I say “Wait a second sir, how did you catch that glass so smoothly? It was almost like you have eyes in the back of your head!”.

The abnormal man turned around, as he did it was like all went quiet. He showed his weathered face to us in detail but we could not see his eyes as they were hidden behind his black-hooded coat. This particularly bugs me because I believe that the eyes are the windows to one’s soul and I could not get a true reading on this gentleman. However, his slender body combined with this long face showed us how wise this man was as he has undoubtedly been through many tough struggles.

He slumped over motioning us to come in close as if he were going to whisper something to us and then he slowly said.

“The human mind is capable of so much more than most believe. People say that the body produces energy which is created from the soul. Your body is simply a container for that immense energy source, people say. If you use 100% of your mind, you would not need the body, you would be able to float freely as an ‘energy soul’. Others say that we do use all of our mind everyday, different parts of the human mind are used for different aspects of life.

You want to know what I have discovered? Well, a man in his early twenties was deeply in love with his known soul mate who shared the same feelings as he did. They were planning a marriage soon and had lived a beautiful life together so far. One morning, the healthy beautiful young woman died in the man’s arms as they were about to embark on their day. This event hit this man so hard that it took several years for him to get back to what people would call his normal self. Over the next decade, he learned that he developed an ESP toward death related issues. He found this out for he always got strange feelings upon the eve of certain deaths that he was near. I only met this man one time and as this fellow looked in my eyes he knew, that after that, he would never see anything with those eyes ever again.”

We sat there in silence with no movement for what felt like an eternity before Dusti asked, “are you a veteran of war or something?”

The man replied, “yes.”

I asked, “what war WW1?”

The man paused then looked at us and said, “all of them.”

The strange bloke then all of sudden squashed a spider with a stomp of his foot as it scurried past on the floor, he then turned around and went back to what he was doing as if nothing had happened.

Dusti and I noticed that Hula, Rusty, and the only other two people in the restaurant, a couple in the back, appeared to have listened and had been equally mesmerized by the story; however, when the story concluded they went back to their activities as if they didn’t hear anything at all.

Dusti and I were equally weirded out by this. We looked in each other’s eyes and realized that we both were thinking the same thing (Let’s get the hell out of here!). Dusti says to Hula, “can we get some coffee to go?” while grabbing some packets of C&H sugar as we proceeded to leave.

As we’re paying our bill we notice a guy through the front window at the pump getting some Diesel. The pump in front was old; it had a hand pump like in one of those old scary movies. It seemed strange to us that a car had stopped here for gas because we had not seen many cars driving that day and we did not see a single sole pump gas while we were inside.

We both thought to ask the gentlemen getting gas out front for a ride, but as we were walking toward him he walked right by us bumping into us rather rudely with his shoulder while giving us a strange look as he rushed inside.

We then continued our path hitchhiking down the road to our eventual unknown destination.

Dusti looked over at me and commented,

“What was up with that spider squasher guy?”

I replied,

“That guy was so trippy.”

We continued for about fifteen minutes when we saw headlights coming behind us. The car responded to our hitchhiker thumbs and just as we were getting into this four-door primered-paint sedan, we noticed that it was the guy who bumped into us as we were leaving the restaurant; I noticed his appearance and I remember thinking in my head, “he was a Luke Perry looking mother fucker.”  Coincidentally the first words out of the guys mouth were,

“Hey guys, my name’s Luke.”

We introduce ourselves.

He then says,

“I sure would hate to be walking out here myself so how bout a lift?”

There was a short pause and then he continued to say,

“Sorry about running into you guys while going into that grease pit, I had to go P-diddy real bad!”

Laughing at the P-diddy joke, we decided to accept his offer and get into his old Cadillac; probably from the early 70’s.

Dusti rode shotgun on the classic bench front seat and I got in the back and we rolled. We both went to put on our seatbelts and smirked at each other upon finding out that this car had none.

I instantly noticed that the Souls Of Mischief song “Make Your Mind Up” was playing on his stereo system.

“Actually, you will be cookin’ like bottom ramen

Never top, cuz you’ll never stop the atom bombin’

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, don’t copy

The manuscript - man, you slipped, you’re sloppy

Joe Schmo, never no more, I’m clever and you’re

Never gonna score cause I’m sure I’m better and pure

Like canibus, and if it’s possible I’ll drop a new

Line with the lyrics, live with the spirit

And soul, I got plenty in me, eeny-meeny-miny-mo

Slo-Mo, approach with yo ho, yup

Cuz I’m the man and you can read it in Genesis

A-D-A-M, the A-P-L-U-S”

As we journeyed on, I noticed a bag next to me on the floor in the back seat. I remember thinking something was not right about this Luke guy so I decide to see what’s in the bag. I find a gun and some money in the bag. I look at Dusti who looks at me and points to what he had noticed which was spots of blood on Luke’s clothes.

Just at that moment, all of a sudden the spider squasher appeared in the back seat sitting next to me! Dusti saw him too and both us were frozen at the sight. Like it was some huge dream, the driver door lock (that little knob above the door handle next to the window) jumped up and the driver door swung open with no one touching it or doing anything to cause it.

Dusti looked at me, I looked at him, we both looked at the spider squasher and he proceed to give us the slightest slow nod of his head like if to say, “go ahead my little padawan.” Dusti then grabbed the oh shit handle, lifted his body in the air and drop kicked the seat-beltless Luke out onto the road. He then took the wheel, jumped into the driver seat and slammed the brake to pull the car over. The spider squasher who was in the back seat had vanished and all that was left was Dusti and I sitting there in utter disbelief and silence.

We used the car to get us where we needed to go sitting in complete silence most of the way, only talking if it was a necessity. It was weird, you’d think we would talk this traumatic experience through but it was like we could read each other’s minds and nothing needed to be said. When we got where we were going, we dumped the car and gun into a river, spent the cash and went about our business. We later read in a newspaper that Luke had killed everyone in the diner, he probably planned on killing us as well……...

Written by,

Gunja Dunn