February 4

Take this situation, for example. Sure, he’d be paid triple the amount the job was worth as long as he got it done in less than a week.  Damned deadlines.  He hated rich people who could toss around greenbacks and call all the shots.  And did he think he had a chance with that black-haired vixen with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen?  Not a chance in hell, and she probably wore tinted contacts anyway.

Dusk was falling over Long View hill and shadows were blurring the fields and trees.  Dane was under the dozer now, rummaging around in the weeds. His gloved fingers finally found the wrench—he backed out from under the machine, cursing through his teeth.

“I should’ve asked for more damn money. This is screwed up, working out here in the freezing damn air in the middle of the freezing damn winter with nobody else around.  I felt sorry for her, that’s all—using her own money to get these crappy machines running, or so she said.  I’ll just bet. I’m too damned nice, that’s my prob….”

Standing beside the dozer, facing the indistinct treeline, Dane let the tool drop from his hand.  What was that, way over there in the bushes?  He squinted…couldn’t make it out.   Damn creepy place, this.  Was probably a big groundhog or some other stupid animal.  He bent over to pick up the wrench….wait!  There it was again.

The skinny mechanic stood rigid, a human exclamation mark, staring at the floating white something that disappeared and reappeared in the trees.  There was no sound; no footfalls in the dried grass or snapping of branches…no suddenly disturbed birds erupting like black commas toward the sky.

 Suddenly the silence seemed louder than any sound Dane had ever heard.  He ducked behind the bulldozer, his eyes level with the blade, fixated on the darkening woods.  The white thing moved right to left along the edge of the field—an indiscernible shape, an uncertain existence. It vanished for hushed moments when the only noise was Dane’s strangled breath–then he’d see the thing again in an unexpected spot.  He refocused, like trying to adjust a pair of binoculars, hoping to somehow magnify the image, make it real.

 It started moving toward him.

His only remembrance of running through the weeds was the exploding certainty that hundreds of fingers were tearing at his leaping legs.  By the time he reached his truck, his jeans covered with thistle burrs, he didn’t care about his abandoned tools or if he ever came back here again, no matter how much damned money he got paid.

Of course he looked in his rear view mirror as his foot mashed the gas pedal —only humans want to see the heart-crushing horror that they desperately pray isn’t really there. 

And nothing was there.