Scary Stories for Daring Girls to Tell in the Dark
So there’s this girl. Well, woman — young but not barely-legal, not jailbait — getting ready for a girl’s night out with her besties. She slicks on her favorite lipstick, deadgirl blood red, shimmies into her favorite skirt. Short, but not too short, almost too tight — she has to suck her stomach in, just a little, as she zips it. She puts some product in her hair — her red, blonde, brown, black, blue, purple, pink hair, whatever color your hair is. That’s her hair color, too. Straps on her dancing shoes and click-clacks to her car. It is October but still warmish, no need for a coat but the air nips the nape of her neck, sinks its autumn teeth in her. She shivers like a ghost just tapped across her tombstone.
Her car curves along the black backroads and then she’s at the bar. When she walks in her friends are already there, all sparkling eyeshadow and glossed lips, drinks glittering in their dancing hands. They have her favorite — rum & Coca-Cola, whiskey-ginger, vodka-cranberry, whatever is your favorite is her favorite, too — already waiting. They toast, clink, drink. They drink and drink and drink. Cocktails and beers and shots. Chug, pour, more and more. They are drunk and drunker. Drunkest.
She — our heroine, the one who looks like you — has a brief terror that snags like a cherry stem in her throat. She remembers something she heard. About a man. A rapist-killer. He roofies drinks at bars and nightclubs, lures ladies out into dark parking lots, locks them in his car. Or — no. He lurks in the backseats of unlocked cars, stabs unsuspecting women when they’re just trying to get home. Drinks their blood. No. He has a hook for a hand, he drives a van, he flashes his brights to get girls to pull over, he — She can’t remember, her head is spinning. Did she remember to lock her car? She thinks she heard that beep, but she can’t be sure. She thinks of warning her friends but the words are all muddled and anyway there’s always a man, a monster, a rapist-killer. And anyway she doesn’t wanna be a buzzkill. She washes her worry down with whiskey.
She and her friends keep drinking. Rounds and round and round. They are drunk girls — well, women — lovely in the barlight, jukebox ballerinas spinning to jukebox ballads, dancing in the barlight. They are spilling all over each other, all over the bar. They are magnanimous with drink. Their lovely cheeks flush. They coo to one another I love you I love you. They tell every other girl (woman) in the bar how beautiful she is, how darling her dress, how perfect her hair. And our heroine can’t remember ever being afraid, not ever in her life. But the night ticks on. Barclose tiptoes closer. One by one her besties leave. In Ubers and Lyfts, by foot and bicycle. Promises to text each other when they get home trail behind them like the smoke from a cigarette you can no longer light inside a bar.
She is the last one left. Woman alone, contemplating one final round when a man she’s never met says buy you a shot? She nods. Watches the bartender pour something brown and awful — glug — into their glasses. It’s some kind of bomb shot, tongue-bitter with bubblegum aftertaste. Gross but whatever. Bottoms up, she says. Cheers. The drink-buying man is talking to her, at her, baby baby baby something something. She is not really listening. She is not really there. Until his hand is in her lap. Until he leers about nice headlights. Then she is fuck off and he is fuck you. His baby-babies turn to — Bitch, he hisses. She stares at him until he staggers off. When you’re — I mean, when she’s — sure he’s gone gone, she gets up. Trips toward the parking lot. Her car is on the far side and as she walks she thinks she hears footsteps following her steps. Just a little softshoe through the dead leaves. She turns. There’s no one, just that October breeze which bites a bit harder now.
She slides into the car, starts it. The engine purrs on. She switches the radio to something bubblegum, pop, something that will keep her upbeat but not distract her. She’s too drunk to drive. She knows this. But what choice is there. Besides, she’s driven those backroads so many times she could do it in her sleep. The heat in the car makes her feel sleepy. She rolls the window down. The car tires hush over the pavement. The radio plays pop songs. She drives. Watches the white lines. She didn’t remember home being so far away. The music cuts out and a voice garbles something: there is a man, with a van, with a knife, with a — Look out. She sees a deer, caught in the high beam of her headlights. She gasps and slams the brakes but there is nothing there. She keeps driving. The radio is still silent. There is only static, and the sound of the wind, and the sound of the radials crunching over dead leaves. The sound of car tires crunching over roadkill bones.
There is a shocking flash of light in her rearview mirror. A vehicle — is it a truck or a van? — is following close behind. Trailing her. It has its brights on. They dim a little, switch back to regular headlights. She speeds up, a little. They speed up, too. Flash their brights, again. She drives steady, suddenly too sober. Drives white-knuckled, clutching the wheel. She thinks should I call the police. But no. She won’t. She’s (like) you. She’s black or brown and knows the cops are as apt to hurt as they are to help. Or she’s a white girl who smokes weed and voted for Bernie, woke enough to say fuck the police. Or she’s any woman who’s been drinking and knows they’d ask what she was thinking. Drinking, alone. In that skirt. In that bar. Was she asking for —
The van behind her — now she’s sure it’s a van — flashes its lights again. In the flash she sees the glint of a knife coming up behind her, held in a black-gloved fist, she sees a hand behind her coming to choke her throat, she sees the glint of the muzzle of a gun. She pulls over to the shoulder. The van parks behind, keeps its lights on. She steps out of her car and there is a man there. I saw, he says. A man in your backseat. He was going to kill you. She looks over. Into the backseat. There is no one. Just an old coat, crumpled like a deadgirl body on the peeling polyester.
Well, says the man. Guess I was wrong. But I swear I saw someone. You should thank me for trying to save you, anyway. Anyway you oughta be more careful. Pretty girl like you, driving alone. In that skirt. On this road. Anyway. The man says to her — I mean you — let me at least escort you home. The man smiles. He has eyes like hooks. He has teeth like knives.
