3706
3705.
Eugene Marsh stood behind the gas station counter staring at the tv hanging from the ceiling. The news was on; some report about a missing guy found shriveled and pale and dead in a treetop. Eugene couldn’t tell, he was (admittedly) only half paying attention. The other part of his brain was lost in a daydream of sexy supermodels and a luxurious lifestyle he was sure would only ever be a dream. This was his usual day-to-day routine. Not much else to do when you’re stuck in an empty gas station on the edge of the state border. He’d be lucky if he got a customer any time within the next 3 hours.
The image of the dead man flashed on screen, only briefly grabbing Eugene’s attention. Hugh Forrester was his name (at least according to the news report) – and boy did Hughie look like a human raisin. The image wasn’t much of a shock to Eugene – late night crime documentaries had desensitized him to that sorta stuff, somewhat – but it was enough to pull him from his daydream and remind him where he was.
He let out a deep sigh and gave his eyes a quick rub. Of course he was still stuck in this hellhole and not off somewhere chatting up Miss April 1982. He quickly surveyed the store (empty as usual) and caught sight of a homeless man outside across the road. The man seemed to have been already staring at Eugene – boy did that rustle his feathers – and reciprocated his look with a toothy grin and a wave, long blond hair covering his face in strands. Eugene smiled awkwardly and waved back. Must be a fuckin’ meth head or something, he thought. He turned away from the man, back toward the tv.
It was then and only then that he realized he’d been holding in his piss for way too long and that gut-punch feeling hit him. Had he had to pee before? Where did the day go when he sat there in his fantasy world? He started the painful cowboy-waddle toward the restroom, and next thing he knew he nearly pissed his pants out of fright.
The first sound was like a mix of a jet plane taking off and a pack of coyotes screaming. That one caught Eugene off guard, but the one that really scared him was when one of the windows exploded behind him. He jumped 3 feet into the air and spun on his heel. He stared at the broken window – the one he had seen the homeless man out of – just in time to see something flop out onto the ground outside.
Seeing the thing drop from the windowsill turned his fear into rage. Fuckin’ birds. He charged out of the door to see what the thing was but found nothing. He looked out past the pumps where the bum was sitting – nothing. It didn’t occur to Eugene that “nothing” meant the bum was gone too. Maybe out of fright; something he saw but didn’t want to see– but Eugene would never know. His rage become less focused and more confused as he went around the side of the building, the side not covered by canopy. Again, he was met with nothing. Eugene gave a quick, frustrated shout into the air, but ultimately after a few seconds calmed down. He turned around and pulled out his phone to call his manager.
Eugene didn’t have time to register the sound the second time it came, nor did he have time to register the pain from the talons digging into his shoulders. He didn’t have time to notice that he’d dropped his phone or that he’d been lifted into the air. Before Eugene’s brain could register anything that happened after he turned around, his neck had snapped with an awful resounding crack that echoed throughout the hills. The first customer wouldn’t show up for another 42 minutes and by that time Eugene would be gone without a trace and the gas station would be empty.
3706.
