The smell of stale cigarettes washed over me as soon as I sunk into the velvety fabric of the Dodge. I gave the driver a quick glance. Blonde, smoke tanned, heavy set and gapped tooth, she reminded me of the women my mother was friends with when I was a kid and she spent a lot of time at the bowling alley.
“Thanks,” I muttered with a clenched jaw.
She put the car in gear and eased back onto the frozen road, the snowflakes picking up steam and sticking to the windshield until the wipers would wash them away every few seconds.
“It’s just a few minutes to the emergency room, hang on.”
My eyes fluttered. I wanted to text Peter I had gotten hurt and was heading to the emergency room, but my body was too tired to move, all I could do was keep my hand on my neck.
I shot a look at the clock, it was 2:49. Hopefully my incident with Bryce and his friends had put Bryce on edge enough to where he was on red alert for any potential danger the rest of the night. Maybe I ultimately did my job of saving him.
I put my eyes back on the windshield. The campus raced by, polka dotted with descending snowflakes before. I daydreamed on the scene until I was distracted by something marked into the inside of the windshield in the condensation, I couldn’t quite make it out yet, but it was circular.
“I’m glad I found you when I did. There wasn’t much time left,” the driver spoke up from behind the wheel.
“I didn’t realize it was this bad at first,” I slurred, losing energy and focus, my eyes still on the marking.
“The invisible hour is almost over and I don’t think Bryce was a possibility,” her words stopped me just as I realized what the marking on the wet glass was.
It was the outline of a clock with the time between 2 and 3 marked in. I turned quickly to my left and saw my driver take off the blonde wig. It was not some old barfly woman, it was Christopher, disguised in a wig and makeup.
We locked eyes. I scrambled for the door handle.
“I love when daylight savings ends on Halloween,” he said. “It’s so easy to hide.”
I tried to open the door, but couldn’t, it looked like Christopher had his free hand mashed down on the lock button. My eyes and breathing frenzied as I looked for other escape options.
“I was sad when you told me Bryce wouldn’t be interested in me, but I can’t describe how elated I was to see you laying in that road out there twenty minutes before our invisible hour comes to an end. You are more than a consolation prize.”
Christopher’s horrid ramblings gave me time to lock onto the only thing that gave me hope for salvation – a copper football perched on the dashboard just in front of me engraved with something about Wisconsin. I snatched it up and threw it as hard as I could at Christopher’s feet with the last of my strength. I was pleased with the hysterical scream that quickly erupted from Christopher’s mouth and the squealing of the tires of the car.
The car started to spin as if we were on some ride in an amusement park. I looked over to see Christopher wrestling with the steering wheel, but he was clearly losing at getting control of the car. We kept spinning until we flew off the side of the road and rumbled into the ditch.
