The Decrepit Road

Written for:

"The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week"  13+: Write the best POEM in 24 hours or less and win 10K GPs!

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Chelsea groaned loudly. Another long trip just to see her elderly grandmother whom she hardly knew anyway. But her parents requested that she come up to see her for her eightieth birthday. She had to drive five hours north by herself because she couldn’t convince her friends to come or they already had other plans. She had just finished work at eleven at night. By the time she got home, got ready and stepped out the door it was almost midnight. A loud crack of lightning cracked close to her house, making her jump.

An hour and a half later she turned off the highway and onto the long decrepit road. She had to drive in the middle as the edges were crumbling and overgrown with weeds. The road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, that was if you even came across another traveler. She hated this road and always drove slowly, especially around the tight corners and in the rain like she was now. The wall of trees and bushes, as well as the heavy rain was obscuring her view from seeing if any animals were going to jump out in front of her.

Her jeep shuddered which shocked her out of autopilot and she looked down at the fuel gage, it was still on half. Her eyes flew over every panel, everything else looked fine. She slowed down and felt the jeep shudder again, then stall, then it rolled slowly to a stop. Chelsea could feel tears forming in her eyes; she couldn’t believe her car was breaking down here. She had been on the road for about two and a half hours which meant she still had that long to go, and the fact that this road was hardly ever used scared her. She could ultimately be stuck here for days.

Chelsea got out of the car and retrieved the torch from her boot; rain beat down on her head as she popped the hood open and was greeted by smoke billowing out of the car. She would have to let it cool down before she could do anything, climbing back into the jeep she checked her phone, of course, no service. Chelsea watched the rain as it streamed down her windows and listened to it pounding on the roof of the jeep.

She looked in the her rear vision mirror and saw a set of headlights getting closer to her, the high beams flicked down when the car realized it was catching up to her. She turned and watched as the car got closer, slowing down as it neared. It stopped next to her and she looked out her window into the car. She could see two men, around her own age, one had dark hair and the other light hair. Chelsea offered a smile and wound down her window.

“Hi there love, having car problems?” the one with dark hair started. Chelsea nodded in response. “My name’s Kurt, this is Jason.” He said indicating the driver. “Why don’t you hop in and we’ll take you into the nearest town.” She grabbed her bag from the backseat, hit the alarm on her car and climbed into the seat of the car with the boys.

“My name is Chelsea by the way.” The group made small talk while they drove. She kept her bag in her lap, holding it tightly. The boys told her how their radio had broken so it was very quiet in the car. The sound of the rain was extremely loud with no music to dull it. She leant back in the seat, resting her head on the headrest behind her. She could feel herself drifting off but was woken abruptly when Jason stopped. She sat up sharply, realizing that she had slid in the seat.

Both men got out of the vehicle, Chelsea poked her head out the window. “What’s happened?” she asked, her gaze following theirs up into the sky. She opened her door and got out with them. What they were looking at was an incredible sight. A triangle of lights, every color of the rainbow. She rubbed her eyes, not believing what she saw, she had only heard about reports of UFO sightings, and the triangle of lights was one of them.

The trio watched as the trees bent unnaturally without breaking and the bushes flattened, animals of all sorts wandered out of the trees and stood, looking up at the lights like they did. One by one the animals were disintegrated in a purple haze. Chelsea watched Kurt disappear too. Jason and Chelsea shared a glance before taking off. The lights were silent as they followed. Jason was taken into the light. She stumbled over her own feet and landed face down in the mud.

When Chelsea opened her eyes she was looking at a creature unlike anything described before. Their skin, which was similar texture to humans but had a purple hue and their body shape was more that of an ape, they were relatively small, only three feet tall. She could hear a series of buzzes and clicks which she assumed was their form of communication.

She watched as the aliens touched each animal, again they disappeared in purple light, and finally they reached Kurt, Jason and Chelsea. She tried to scream but no sound came out, she watched as the boys disappeared as the aliens touched them. Then Chelsea woke up in her jeep, sun streaming brightly through the window. She touched her shoulder where the alien touched her and felt it burn, looking at her fingers she saw a purple liquid resembling blood.