Rescue Me - by Deborah

Prompts were: Fan, Fog, Fear

Tess was driving along Highway 21, heading back to Corvalis from a great weekend with her friends at the Oregon coast. She had completed a brutal round of mid-term finals at OSU last week and her reward was a relaxing weekend enjoying the sand and surf. She should have headed back hours ago, but the group had been having too much fun to call it quits until it started getting very late. Half past midnight, thick fog permeating the deep woods, Tess had begun wishing she’d driven back in daylight. She’d just passed mile marker 32 and was calculating how many more miles she had to go. She calculated and figured she’d be driving for at least two more hours.

A loud clatter startled her and she hit the brakes, thinking she’d run over something in the road. As the car stalled out she realized the clatter had come from her engine. She coasted to the side of the road, put the car in Park, and turned the key. Nothing. She tried several times more without any luck. Popping the hood release, she got out of her car and lifted the hood.


“This is stupid. Like I would know what I was looking for.”

She returned to the car’s interior and locked the doors, keeping the headlights on. At least the battery was fairly new and the lights could probably last a couple of hours.

Pulling her cell phone from her purse, she scrolled through the contacts and located the auto club’s number. Pressing “Call”, she mentally sent a thank you to her parents for enrolling her in AAA. The lady on the other end of the phone informed her they would dispatch a tow truck immediately.

A brief ten minutes after hanging up her phone, a rough-sounding truck rounded the curve and slowly passed her, pulling to the side of the road in front of her car. She couldn’t believe how quickly the tow truck had shown up. She’d thought she was in for at least an hour’s wait considering how far away the nearest town was.

Tess got out of her car and walked to the tow truck. In the glow of her headlights, she could see that most of the truck was coated in mud. The few clean spots showed rust and faded black paint.

The driver’s door opened with a groan. Apparently the rust wasn’t limited to the truck’s exterior, she thought.

The man who stepped out of the vehicle was tall and thin. He wore stained dark overalls and work boots. He seemed very pale but, then again, most residents of Oregon were. He walked toward Tess, staring intently at her face. She felt brief flash of unease which she pushed away. After all, she was the one who had called him.

“Wow, you made record time getting out here. I thought I’d be stuck half the night.”

He pushed his lank hair out of his face with thin fingers. It appeared so filthy that Tess couldn’t tell what color it was. She could see beads of sweat shining on his forehead.

“I was in the area,” he said flatly.

He walked over to her car and looked at the engine. Tess followed behind a few paces, a little surprised at his unfriendliness. Most of the people in this area were very nice. Maybe he was just irritated at having to work so late, she thought.

He scanned the engine for a moment and turned to her, “Looks like you lost your fanbelt.” He pointed to the car’s fan and then the place where the belt should’ve been. His breathing seemed unnaturally fast and heavy to Tess, considering he couldn’t be more than twenty-five.

She again felt fear begin to lick at her consciousness. She mentally chided herself, blaming the spooky setting and the fact that she was indeed alone with a stranger, miles from anywhere. However, the stranger had been dispatched to her by the auto club. It’s not like this was some creep who just happened to drive up and offer her a ride.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the driver. “I’ll hook it up and take you to Netarts. It’s about a half-hour from here.”

Tess nodded, wrapping her arms around herself to combat the wet chill of the fog. She watched as he hooked the tow-bar up to her car’s undercarriage. He worked very quickly and it was done in just a few minutes.

“Ready?” he asked and she nodded again.

He walked her to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. As she climbed up in to the truck, she noticed him staring at her legs and self-consciously tugged her shorts down farther over her thighs, quickly getting herself situated on the seat. As the door slammed, she was unable to prevent herself from jumping a little, even though she’d been expecting the noise. She glanced at the door and saw it did not have an interior handle. Her unease returned with a vengeance. On the bench seat next to her was a long length of rope. As the driver’s door opened, the dome light illuminated the truck’s interior and Tess saw the rope was wet with what appeared to be fresh blood. Heart racing, she looked up and met the driver’s eyes.

The smile that slowly spread across his face could only be described as evil.

Forty minutes later, a big red tow truck with “Hal’s Towing” emblazoned on the side drove slowly along Highway 21. Hal had been back and forth along the road around mile marker 32 and couldn’t locate the disabled vehicle. It was bad enough that AAA had called him in the middle of a sound sleep, but now it appeared someone had screwed up the location as well. He picked up his radio to call dispatch. Someone was going to be in very big trouble.