NightCurse

My knees trembled like a horrific earthquake as I searched the sidewalk for some dropped quarters for the payphones. So far, the only items I found were a dirt-caked Q-tips, a broken lead pencil, eight pennies, and a sun-yellow Juicy-Fruit wrapper. Soon, miniature raindrops began to patter down on the depressingly grey pavement as I plopped my behind down on a splintery, light wooden bench to take a break from searching. The lights above illuminated the front of the parking lot pretty well, but the back of it appeared creepily pitch-black. I felt my heart pound against my chest as I stared out into the darkness.

“Ugh!” I sighed to myself as I watched the tiny droplets ping down on the shoppers at the mall, “How I wish I had a cell phone! It’d save me so much hassle and would keep me safer in this horror-place!” I then noticed a gigantic, digital, neon-green clock on a huge building across the street, and it read, “4:30!” The clock had to be at least ten feet wide and five feet high. Oh, crap! I thought to myself. My mom would be waking up in two hours! How would I ever get home from where I was! I was at least twenty minutes of driving distance away from home; that’d take HOURS if I were to attempt walking the distance! Maybe I could call Jackson on someone else’s phone. Hopefully, I won’t ask some insane kidnapper guy or something. I intensely feared strangers around here, even if they were just a ten-year-old kids. You just never know what kind of wackos you’d meet around here.

Suddenly, I heard the clinking of metal about ten feet behind me and glanced behind me for just a second. About twenty feet away from me, there was a guy with wrinkly skin and greasy, long grey hair brushed to the back. He was about the size of the guy who tried to kidnap me about a half an hour or so ago, but I couldn’t tell if it were truly him. I hadn’t had a chance to see my kidnapper back there, because the forest and his car were so dark inside. His skin looked horribly oily and sun-burned all over, and his blue-jeans were torn and grass-stained all over. He obviously either enjoyed the outdoors or was a hard-working farmer. He had nothing over his torso at all, and I could tell he spent most of his days without anything over it because of the severe sun-burning all over him. At first, he gave me an ominous stare with his pale green, dilated eyes as he began to bare his teeth into a vicious growl. “You’re dead, motherfucker!” he shouted at me with pure animosity, probably because of the way I pepper-sprayed his friend’s eye back there and escaped his car. I began to back away slowly, but he was about a foot away from my face within three seconds. My arm instinctively gave his monstrously furious-looking face a sharp punch, and I darted toward the street with my eyes half-closed.

Suddenly, I heard the shrieking of the brakes of a car and felt the whipping of the gust from a car swerving about a foot away from me. My eyes suddenly flew open, and I noticed it was a blueberry-colored 1994 Nissan Sentra with a dented top. A woman who appeared to be around twenty-three sat in the driver’s seat with her lips curled up in stress and shock. She was a rather lean woman who was wearing natural shades of make-up and maroon nail-polish She appeared to be in a khaki business suit with a golden chain around her neck with a ruby heart and tiny, multi-colored diamonds between ten upper links each side. That thing must’ve cost a lot! Her hair was a peanut butter-brown with blond highlights, and she was wearing jet-black high-heeled shoes. When her car was completely stopped, she took a stride out of her car toward me with her head held up high, her brown hair not being fazed by the sudden increase of wind.

“Are you alright?” she asked. Her faced suddenly turned into an expression of both concern and apprehension at the same time. She then noticed a guy, the kidnapper, standing about fifty feet away from us and told me sternly, “Get in!” I automatically complied with her order and sat down in her passenger seat. We sped away about five seconds after that and were headed back in the direction where I came from.

“That guy.” she said in a serious voice, “He is a psychopathic killer with an obsession of teenagers. Well, an obsession with killing them. We went to college together and had been friends since, until I truly began to know him. We actually dated once.” She blushed for a second when she realized she’d just told me about her dating a killer. She then went on. “His name is Stan, and he‘s about twice as old as me. I was stupid back then.” She then blushed again and paused for a second, probably thinking about how to word what she was about to say next, “He, err, would’ve kidnapped and killed you.”

“Yeah, uhh, he tried that an hour or so ago and was just trying it when you came, too!” I told her, “When I was nearly hit by you, it was because he was chasing me!”

“Ugh! Just stay off the streets unless you have someone with you or have a really important reason to be on them. This place is VERY dangerous. That’s my advice, anyway. Anyways, maybe you should call someone to pick you up. I’m gonna drop you off somewhere public instead of your house, so he isn’t stalking us right now and finds out where you live. Where would you like to be dropped off?”

“Uhh, I really don’t know. Anywhere, I guess. What about the park?”

“That would be a good idea if it weren’t so notorious for having muggers and rapists at this time of night. How about the car wash?”

“Sure. That’s about a block from my house, too, so I can walk home.”

“Maybe that’s not such a good idea, then. It’s too close to your house. How about the convenient store about five miles from here that closed down about three years ago? Then, you can call someone to pick you up. Someone can pick you up, right?”

“I’m sure my boyfriend will be willing to do it.” Would he? Surely he’d be concerned enough about me to drive about five blocks down the road to save me, right?

“Alright. After I’ve dropped you off, I’ll wait five minutes for you to be sure there is no one at all around. I have a gun in the glove compartment in case there is anyone. Then, I’ll leave after I’m sure you’ll be safe. Be sure to keep out of the light until you see his car, alright?’

“Gotcha.”

I stared out the car window as figures of rainbow light whizzed past us as we traveled on the highway to get to the convenient store. They seemed to neutralize my emotion, and they temporarily took my mind off of everything that had just happened in the past two hours. Why was I always the one being kidnapped? Ugh! The car suddenly came to a halt, and we were at the closed-down, run-down convenience store. The air around it smelled of gasoline and rotting animal flesh. All seemed quiet, and I heard the harmonious chirping of crickets as I rolled down my window. The place was definitely deserted for quite a while; there weren’t even streetlights around the place! The closest streetlight was about ten blocks away!

“Uhh, I should probably stay with you.” the lady told me, “It was probably a very stupid idea to let you go yourself. Call your boyfriend up and tell him to come get you.” She then handed me a silvery, glittery phone with rhinestones outlining the top of it and opened it up for me. The numbers on the keypad instantly lit up bright-red, and the screen came alive. I then punched in Jackson’s number after about five seconds of staring at the phone’s shining screen. Jackson’s phone began to ring in about three seconds…

“H-h-h-h-who is this?” He sounded rather scared out of his mind right then. He sounded like some creepy ghost had haunted his entire house and tried to kill him or something.

“It’s me! Cheyenne!”

“Uhh… oh! Are you alright? Where are you? Whyhaventyoucomeyet?”

“It’s a long story. Can you please come get me?”

“Where you at?”

“The old, shut-down convenient on 3rd Avenue.”

“Uhmmm… Err… I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Well, why not?”

“Didn’t you see the news last night? About that psycho guy kidnapping random teenagers and killing them? He‘s supposedly been seen on that street about three times in the past week.”

Wow. Shows how much I pay attention to the news. “What does he look like?”

“Old. And very sunburned.”

“Yikes, uhh…” I didn’t want to scare him to death by telling him what happened not to long ago or worry him. How was I supposed to get home, though? “Can you please just come? It’s scary here, and I have to tell you something important. It’s the reason I’m out here in the first place. Just come here. It‘s only five blocks from your house!”

“N-n-n-ooooo!”

“PLEASE! It’s very scary over here, and I have no other way to get home!”

“Why’d you go over there, anyway?” I noticed a bit of anger in his voice.

“I’ll tell you when you come! It’s very serious!”

“CAN’T YOU JUST TELL ME NOW?”

“I think I should tell you when you come and take me to your house. Or maybe we should go over to my house where there’s a grown-up. Just get over here. Please! I’m begging you!”

“FIND YOUR OWN WAY HOME, CRAZY BITCH!” He then slammed down the phone in my face. I bared my teeth a bit at the phone then handed it back to the lady. What was her name, anyway? Did she even tell me?

“Uhh, he won’t take me home,” I told the lady.

“Why not?”

“He chickened out. Can you please take me home?”

“If I do, that guy’s going to notice me, and he’s going to go to your house and kill you! He has an obsession with killing, and if he doesn’t succeed in killing someone the first time, he doesn’t give up until they‘re dead! Until he’s stopped, you’re in so much danger the way it is! He probably even memorized in his mind exactly what my car looks like! He has a horrifically accurate photographic memory and probably has every detail photographed in his mind! If he sees it, you’re dead!”

“Ugh…” I just had no idea what to do besides calling my mother. She’ll be FURIOUS with me! Not only that, but she’s gong to worry her pants off once she finds out what happened! What other choice did I have, though? Suddenly, I heard some sort of sharp, bloodcurdling scraping against the car, kind of like the scraping of nails against a chalk board, and an ice-cold shiver shot straight down my back. I glanced behind me, and, sure enough, it was the psycho-killer guy with the saw in his hand. What was his name again? Stan?