Night Shift

Sleep...

Sleep was the only thing on his mind after a twelve hour shift stacking boxes of assorted goodies. James was a night shift employee for his local toy shop, Knockers. It was 3:00a.m. now, and the only living things were the homeless people and addicts that wandered the dark New Jersey streets at night. He reached into his jean pocket for his phone so he could call what was probably the only Uber driver out this late to bring him back to his stale apartment on the other side of town. 10 minutes for next ride, read his phone, brighter than the stars in the night sky. He waited patiently. The outside of his work smelled of old gym socks and wasted lives. Time passed, and before he knew it, an older greyish car appeared down the street, slowly making its way towards him. Upon investigating his app, he noticed that it was in fact the lady it described. When the car rolled onto the side of the street, James swung open the back door, taking care not to hit the curb as the car was low to the ground. His driver was older, with reddish blonde hair, and her seat was rather straight. Wondering how anyone could drive comfortably that way, James said the proper hellos and slouched back. It was a 7 minute drive home at this time of night and the lady had good taste in music.
          Approaching the first red light, he felt a small kick in the back of his seat. Jolting up he asked himself what the fuck that was. “It’s probably nothing..” he muttered under his breath, low enough that the driver didn’t hear. Then it happened again, this time harder, more angrily. “Do you have something in your trunk? I think it’s flying into the back of my seat,” he asked the lady. She glanced up into the rear view mirror and told him that there was nothing back there, he must be imagining things. It was late, it was really fucking late. He was probably just dozing thanks to the lack of sleep, and the car was an older model. If he felt it again, he could pull the middle cushion out and look in the trunk himself. He slid himself over to the left when he heard a faint sound, almost like a whimper.
​Fuck, man, what if there’s some animal in there? he thought, pulling at the cushion. It was stuck. He kept pulling. The driver had noticed and was driving cautiously. He pulled again, and it gave a little. If he kept pulling, it would eventually open up. They were stopped at a red light when he managed to pull it open more than halfway before hearing a human voice. It sent a shrill, weak “Help me...” before the driver sped past the red light and pulled over.
      “Where the fuck am I?” James said, but the driver laughed and got out of the car. James’s girlfriend was going to be fucking pissed if he wasn’t home on time again tonight. He had taken so much overtime lately, and it was really straining their relationship. The driver gripped the back door of the car and pulled James out. Before he knew it, there was a cold hand on the back of his neck pulling him towards the trunk. Click. The trunk flew open. It was darker inside than the alley they were parked in, and he couldn’t see a damn thing. He tried to grab whatever was crying out to him in the car before his hand touched a damp spot on the carpet inside the trunk. He slid his fingers farther in before realizing that the trunk was more than damp--it was fucking full of liquid. He turned around as he felt the driver’s hand leave his neck. The driver was gone. She vanished into the night like some sort of fucking speed demon. He wiped his hand on his pants and looked at the mysterious fluids. It was a weird shade of orange. Grabbing his phone, out of his pocket he flashed it into the puddle and he turned cold. He was fucking terrified.
                 There was a young girl of about four. Her throat had been cut side to side. He smelled urine and saw that she had bled everywhere. He wanted to wonder what the fuck was going on ,but he was under so much shock that he had almost lost all sense of feeling. What was he going to do? His DNA was now all over the carpet. They could trace that back to him. Even if he was to tell the truth to police, he could still be charged with being an accessory to the murder of a fucking kid. He took the kid’s pale, limp corpse and flung it over his left shoulder before darting towards the bridge he had passed during the ride. He wanted to dispose of the body fast. He watched his sides, fronts and backs to make sure there wasn’t some fucking weirdo out to see him carrying the dead child. Approaching the river, he stopped and dropped the body, no longer silent. He started to cry. Why him? What had happened that he deserved this?
                 Then it hit him. Two years ago on this night, he and his girlfriend Danielle were driving home from a late party with some friends from high school. They were drunk, but he had still gotten behind the wheel, swearing on everything that he loved that he was able to drive fine. They left the party. On the ride home, they had hit something and took off without even checking to see what it was, never looking back, but they would never forget. The next morning, when James got up for work, he noticed something on the back right tire of his car. Inside the ridges there was a small patch of human hair. They had just shrugged it off.
       Staring across the lake, he noticed two white lights, almost phosphorescent, resembling eyeballs. Someone had seen him. He shouted with all the might he had left in his sleep-deprived body before it happened. Whatever the fuck that thing was, it charged across the water at him and ripped his intestines clean out of his stomach. He dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. It wasn’t human. Gasping for breath, James made eye contact with the thing. It shrieked louder than anything he had ever heard in his life before it plunged its hands up through his rib cage and pulled out his heart, leaving him sprawled dead with a dead child next to him in the sand. ​

- Dakota G.