By day, Brad is a mild-mannered Account Manager. But at night and in the wee hours of the morning, he summons the muses and transcribes the tales that their devilish tongues whisper in his ear. Always a horror fan, Brad loves writing and telling scary stories.
Brad haunts the neighbourhoods in Central Texas with his wife and their ever-hungry, never-satiated four teenagers. His debut novel “The Night Crew” is set to be released in 2024 by Wicked House Publishing. You can learn more about Brad by following him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BradRicksAuthor or visiting his site https://BradRicks.com
AN UNFORTUNATE WRECK
by
Brad Ricks
When I came to, a raging hot lead weight pounded in the middle of my forehead. The taste of blood cascaded down the back of my throat. I raised my hands up to the steering wheel and pushed my face away from it. When my back found the car seat, I glanced into the rearview mirror. My face was bloodied, and my nose broken.
I turned my head, hoping to see where I had crashed my car. Nothing but dark woods on both sides of me.
I unbuckled my seat belt, sending a fresh wave of pain across my chest. The safety belt left a harsh friction burn diagonally across my torso. Although my shirt hid it, I felt every inch of the burn.
Glancing down, I bent my left leg, moving it back and forth at the knee. When I tried my right leg, a fresh pain erupted. Just below my knee, the leg made an awkward turn.
Using my left hand, I tried to open the door pulling on the handle, but it didn’t move. When the car had spun off the road, I remembered ricocheting off of one tree and another like a pinball before finally hitting the one in front of me head on.
I needed serious medical attention. My cell phone had been in the cupholder, but it wasn’t anymore. It lay on the passenger side floorboard. I leaned over. The pain in my right leg brought a wave of nausea, and I nearly puked in the seat. As I stretched, my ear hovered close to the air-conditioning vent. I heard a strange buzzing sound coming from the vents.
Something’s leaking.
Finally, I reached far enough down to grab my phone, but the screen was shattered. In frustration, I tossed it against the front windshield. The window collision triggered the flashlight on the phone, projecting a beam of light.
My eyes went wide.
Bees, thousands of them, swarmed the car, covering the destroyed hood. Whatever combination of tree hits I did had crashed the car directly into some giant beehive.
The buzzing sounds!
The thought immediately exploded in my head. Quickly, I closed the vents. I leaned forward enough to remove my shirt. Whatever vents I closed wouldn’t stop them from coming out of the front defroster. Once my shirt was off, I confirmed my suspicion about the friction burn. I shoved the shirt into the vent just below the windshield.
I needed to escape before the swarm of bees found their way inside. With the doors jammed shut and my leg busted, I struggled for a solution. Think!
The swarm grew denser. The hood crawled and vibrated like living skin. The hum of their wings on the windshield filled the car. Furry yellow and black bodies, tiny claws at the end of each leg, stingers dripping in venom.
The beginning of a plan materialized. Step one, I had to brace my leg somehow. Step two, I could try breaking out the back window. Maybe I could escape with only a few stings. Hopefully, the further I moved from the car, the less they would care.
I pressed off of the seat with my good leg, raising myself enough to take off the leather belt from around my waist. The car’s owner’s manuals sat in the glove box. I grabbed them, pressed them on each side of my broken leg, and wrapped the belt around them. With a deep breath, I tightened the belt and screamed in pain.
The scream agitated the bees. A new sound emerged along with the buzzing. A high-pitched screeching.
I grabbed the cellphone light and immediately tried to crawl over the front seat into the back. My breathing increased to a hyperventilated state. I wanted to scream again but feared the result.
With their stingers and claws, they scratched at the glass, digging and chipping away at the cracks, expanding them. I only had moments before they’d break in.
I worked my way up between the front seats and fell onto the back cushion. I spun around, fighting every instinct to pass out from the pain in my leg, and kicked the rear glass with my left leg. As I did, I leaned my head back, watching the thousands, millions, of claws reaching through the glass for me.
Again I kicked.
Come on!
Cracks in the front spider-webbed out. I kicked again, creating my own spiderwebs.
Come on!
Again I kicked, and my spiderweb spread across the entire windshield.
I arched my back and looked behind me. As I did, the front window exploded.
Glass and stingers flooded in on me.
I felt their tiny hairs across my body, my eyeballs, my throat. Stingers buried their venom payload into my ear canals, eye sockets, and lungs. They burrowed themselves under my skin, making me their new home to replace what my car destroyed.