Highway to Hell

I was driving back to school last night from my hometown.  The doctor's appointment ran long and as I had worried, I wasn't going to get back before dark.  I was sort of worried.  I hadn't ever driven on the interstate at night before and to tell the truth I'm not a very good driver to begin with.  To my surprise, things went surprisingly well.  That is, until the point which I found myself on the Shadow Highway.

I'm not sure when it happened, but suddenly I was acutely aware that I wasn't on any stretch of the Interstate that I recognized.  At first, I passed it off as never having seen it at night before.  An understandable conclusion.  Except then I passed my first exit.  A town called "Cruciatus".  Incidentally, there is no such place in Arkansas.  And then came the deer-things.

They appeared against the myriad trees which edged the road on both this and the normal highway.  Any time of year, it's not unlikely one will see a deer streaking across this particular stretch of highway at nice.  I first noticed their emaciated frames, the ribs that stuck out against patchily-furred skin, their spindly legs which ended in threatening points...  But that wasn't the scariest thing.  No.  It was their heads.  The portion near the neck was deer-like enough.  But the closer you got the the nose, the more they resembled the head of a female dobsonfly.  And I don't want to think of why, but there were blood-colored stains all over the mandibles.  The worst part, though, were the eyes.  They would watch me as I passed, gleaming with strange alien intelligence behind them.

It was all I could do to not pull over and mentally break down.  I kept driving and eventually reached a stretch of highway where the deer stopped appearing.  So did the disturbing signs.  I thought that maybe I had somehow made my way back to the highway I knew and was still completely terrified of for understandable reasons.  No such luck.  I hadn't occurred to me that there weren't any other vehicles on the highway with me.  Ironically, the second I realized it, I was immediately aware of lights of two semis filling both the lanes behind me. They were coming upon me really quickly and when they looked to be overtaking me, probably just to spite me, they burst into flames.  Clearly I've survived or I wouldn't be writing this, but I spent the next two hours pushing 100 MPH passing exit signs, each with a more horrifying name than the last.  Finally, as the needle dipped just below 1/4 tank of gas, a miracle happened.  I saw my exit.  I pulled off with reflexes I hitherto hadn't been aware I had had before then.  The semis barreled past where I had just been and I almost hit someone on the offramp but dammit I was safe.

And THEN I pulled over and psychologically broke down.