Sean E. Britten

On their way home late at night, Dylan and Jenn come across a naked and seemingly drugged woman in the middle of the road. As much as they want to help her, it’s soon apparent that the girl is not all that she appears.

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A flash of movement on the road ahead jarred Dylan and he kicked at the brake pedal. His mind refused to make sense of what he was seeing as headlights reflected off a ribbon of naked flesh, so pale it almost glowed. In the passenger seat beside him, Jenn screamed and lashed out to find a handhold.

The car shrieked to a stop, its back end sliding toward the lines in the middle of the road. Fortunately, there were no cars traveling behind them or anywhere else in sight. Leaving the festival, Dylan worried he’d taken a wrong turn. The back roads and suburbs were unfamiliar to him. There were no streetlights on this particular stretch of road, just ranks of densely packed trees and some houses in the distance.

“What the fuck?” Jenn said.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Dylan said. “There was something, someone, in the road.”

Dylan leaned over the steering wheel, peering past the nose of the car. His brain was still putting fractured pieces of what had happened together, convinced he hadn’t really seen what he saw. He was pretty sure he hadn’t hit anyone but they had fallen to the road instead of trying to get out of the way when he braked.

“Holy shit,” Dylan said.

A naked woman knelt in the road in front of their vehicle. Bathed in the harsh glow of the headlamps with a chiaroscuro of light and shadow carved across her body. She made no attempt to hide herself, staring into one of the headlamps like a stunned animal.

“What is it?”

“It’s a girl, some naked chick! She’s just sitting in the road.”

Anger spiked as Dylan unbuckled his seatbelt and threw open his door. The shock faded but adrenaline coursed through his veins.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dylan yelled.

“Hey, hey, calm down!” Jenn jumped out of the other side of the car. “Maybe she’s hurt, or maybe she was attacked!”

Dylan took a deep breath. “Sorry, you’re right. Hey, are you alright? Are you hurt?”

The girl didn’t answer. The woman, Dylan mentally corrected himself. She looked only slightly younger than the two of them, in her early twenties at least. And while she was small and waifish, there was no escaping the near perfect contours of her breasts and hips. She stared, huddled, dumbly, at the nearest of the two headlamps. Her face was pretty but strangely still. Pulled straight across her head yet falling loosely behind her neck, her hair was a blonde so pale it was almost white.

“Hey, are you alright?” Jenn asked.

The girl turned away from the light and met Jenn’s eyes. Her features were curiously blank and beatific. As conventionally attractive as she was, Dylan felt like there was something slightly off about her. Something missing in her face.

“Home,” the girl said. “Want to go home.”

“Shit, she’s on something, isn’t she?” Dylan said, trying to look anywhere other than at the girl’s nudity.

“Are you hurt? Did someone do this to you?” Jenn gestured at her lack of clothing.

“Home.”

“Shit.” Jenn straightened and met Dylan’s eyes. “She must be on something.”

“What do we do?”

“There’s a picnic blanket in the back, can you get it for her?”

Dylan moved to the trunk, relieved to have something to do. The girl, the woman, was painfully tempting to look at even with Jenn standing right behind her. Opening the back of the car, he remembered something he’d read about hijackings in third world countries. They would send people, sometimes children, into the middle of the road as a distraction or obstacle and when drivers stopped the hijackers would attack and rob them. She would be one hell of a distraction. Nervously, he peered around at the surrounding trees but nothing moved out there. No other cars passed them.

Dylan returned to the front of the car and handed the picnic blanket to Jenn. She coaxed the naked woman to her feet and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. It took a moment but the girl came to understand what Jenn was trying to do and reached out to help. It was only then that Dylan realised she only had one hand. He’d been so distracted trying not to look, and looking at the wrong places when he dared glance at her, that he hadn’t even noticed. She clutched the sides of the blanket over her chest with her right hand. Her left arm ended in a fleshy stump just above where her wrist should have been, uneven but weirdly smooth. It evoked the thought that maybe the girl might have escaped some serial killer’s basement and that was why she was running around naked in the middle of the night, but she remained weirdly calm if that was the case.

“What’s that?” Jenn said.

Higher on the girl’s forearm was a discoloured patch of skin, shaped almost like a paint splatter. In the light of the headlamps, it appeared to be a pale grey against her pale pink, perfectly smooth skin. Out of curiosity, without thinking, Jenn reached out and touched it. Tapping, she ran a fingernail across its surface.

“It’s hard,” Jenn said.

“Want to go home,” the girl said.

“What did you take?”

“Take?”

“Did you take any drugs?”

“Drugs?”

“What are we going to do with her?” Dylan said. “Should we call the cops, or take her to the hospital?”

Jenn made a sour expression. “Cops won’t help her, it’d probably end up traumatising her. Maybe we should take her home, if we can figure out where it is.”

“Home!” the girl added.

“How are we going to find home?” Dylan said. “I’m assuming she’s not carrying ID.”

“Do you know where home is?” Jenn asked.

“Home!” The girl pointed, her right arm shooting forward and causing the blanket to fall open.

“Shit.” Dylan looked away, throat tight.

Jenn steered the girl into the backseat. It was impossible not to think of her as a girl, really, a child. She acted like she’d never been inside a car before and Jenn had to pull the seatbelt on for her. Dylan sat back in the driver’s seat. After a moment, Jenn joined him in the front of the car.

“We’re just going to drop her off back at her place?” Dylan said. “Like this?”

“Hopefully someone there can take care of her,” Jenn said.

“If you weren’t with me, I would definitely just call the cops. No way am I just going to turn up at someone’s door with their naked daughter or girlfriend or whatever in my car.”

Jenn twisted in her seat. “Which way is home?”

“Home,” the girl echoed.

“Which way? Or can you give me an address?”

“Home.” The girl turned, naked thighs falling out of the blanket, and pointed through the rear window. “Way.”

“Drive that way, I guess?” Jenn turned back to Dylan.

Dylan pulled off the side of the road and circled around. Annoyance began to burn him. This one-handed chick decided to take some pills or something, strip off, and go running around in the moonlight, and now she was their problem.

“What’s your name?” Jenn asked. “My name’s Jenn, and this is my boyfriend Dylan.”

“Home.”

“I know, I know, but what’s your name?”

“Nude,” the girl said.

Jenn laughed. “I mean, yes, you are.”

“Six.”

“Did she say sex?” Dylan asked.

“You wish, she said six.”

“Gran,” the girl said hesitantly. “Gran nuts.”

“Okay, she’s just talking nonsense,” Dylan said. “Which way do I go?”

A side street branched off the main road. It wound toward more houses and buildings while the main road was surrounded by trees. To Dylan, it looked like the more likely option.

“Which way?” Dylan asked.

“Home.” The young woman pointed down a side street.

Another car rattled by as Dylan turned. Both roads remained quiet. Dylan kept moving slowly, gesturing at the surrounding streets.

“Where am I going? Here? Here?”

“Home.” The girl pointed straight ahead.

“I hope this is right or we’re taking her to the nearest hospital.”

Dylan found himself driving around a small town centre in a circle. A few people milled near the nearest train station but otherwise the roads and sidewalks were empty.

“This is ridiculous,” Dylan said.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Jenn turned back on the girl.

“Home.” Their passenger pointed at another intersection.

Dylan drove slowly. The street was mostly dark, with streetlights few and far between. He couldn’t see many houses. Suddenly, the girl in the backseat started gesturing excitedly. Her left arm, ending in its fleshy stump, bounced against her window.

“Here?” Jenn said. “Okay, okay, calm down!”

Dylan pulled to a stop in front of a pair of looming gates. He assumed it was some kind of gated community but he didn’t see its driveway. Jenn got out and moved to the back door. She had to reach over their passenger and help her out of her seatbelt like she was a hyperactive child. Suddenly, Jenn stiffened.

“Oh, shit, look at this,” Jenn said.

Jenn switched on the overhead light and pointed at the girl’s legs. Dylan looked at her thighs and tried to keep his eyes from creeping higher. Beneath the picnic blanket, she was awfully smooth. After a moment, he processed what Jenn was pointing out. Two more of those grey and oddly solid patches marked each leg, one on each thigh. Like the one on her arm, they were roughly oval but blotchy and looked more like drips of paint than anything else.

“What the fuck are those? Are they spreading?” Dylan asked. “Maybe don’t touch her.”

“Maybe we should just take her to the hospital,” Jenn said.

The girl suddenly burst out of her seat, pushing past Jenn. “Home!”

Crossing the sidewalk, the young woman rounded the white gates with the picnic blanket wrapped around her. For a moment, Dylan just stared. Jenn, however, followed her and disappeared between the gates as well.

“Jenn!”

Dylan wrestled with his seatbelt and kicked his door open. Leaving the car with its headlights on, he followed his girlfriend and the other woman past the gates.

The area beyond the gateway was pitch black. Dylan had thought it was a gated community but it was just some park. For a second, he thought it might actually be a graveyard. An old urban legend popped into his head about a person picking up a weird hitchhiker. The hiker ends up guiding them to a graveyard before disappearing, revealing they were a ghost the whole time. For just a moment, in the darkness, it seemed to make as much sense as anything else. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone and quickly swiped on the flashlight.

Strange figures loomed out of the darkness. Dylan jumped backward as a man holding some kind of weapon towered over him. They must have been a giant, at least ten-foot-tall. Another bizarre creature, some kind of massive spider, lurked at the edge of his light. It took him a couple of heartbeats to realise they were only statues. The first was a copper statue of a Roman gladiator or something, holding a spear. The second wasn’t a spider, it wasn’t really anything, just a series of arches that had evoked a giant spider for a second at the angle he’d first glimpsed it in the darkness. The girl had led them to some kind of sculpture park.

“Jenn!” Dylan shouted.

Ahead, Jenn obviously had the same idea and switched on her phone’s flashlight. Dylan ran to catch up with her. The girl sprinted ahead of both of them. She dropped the picnic blanket, letting it slide off her shoulders, and in the reflected glare of their lights her back was smooth and her twin buttocks, rolling with motion, looking perfectly sculpted. More of those grey patches, however, spread across her back and her butt, like mold on old bread, spoiling the view.

“Wait, what are we doing?” Dylan grabbed Jenn’s shoulder and the two of them slowed.

“We can’t just leave her out here!” Jenn said.

“We can’t just grab her and hold her down either! We need to call the cops and let them deal with her.”

“I guess. You’re right, I was just trying to help.”

The two of them slowed down but didn’t stop, Jenn still probing the darkness ahead of her with her phone. The girl had vanished ahead of them. Vast swathes of night fell across the park. Strange statues cropped up beside the winding path. An elongated human figure, a metal horse with holes punched through it, and more abstract shapes.

“Wait, is that-, is that her?” Jenn said.

A waist-high platform sat at a fork in the path. Poised on top of it was a female figure, a young woman, slim, naked, posed almost like a ballerina about to leap into her routine.

“It’s not,” Dylan said. “It can’t be.”

Light from both phones glanced off a brass plaque on top of the plinth, sitting at the statue’s feet. ‘Nude No. 6 in Granite’, Dylan’s eyes grazed over the name and the artist’s name without really taking them in. Their lights trailed up the statue’s legs, stomach, breasts. The same legs, stomach, breasts they’d seen on the girl. The face was difficult to make out from below but it appeared to bear the same vacant and happy expression the girl had worn.

The statue’s right arm tucked against its side. Its left extended over her head but there must have been some kind of accident. Instead of a hand it ended in a smooth, uneven stump just above the wrist.

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Sean: The absolute madman! He did it, the last story I was talking about how I keep writing about things, particularly statues, coming to life and trying to kill people and I did it again! Well, the coming to life bit, this was a much more chill statue than most.

Actually this one came to me in a dream, or I was kind of half-asleep thinking about writing, I really didn’t have anything in mind for story one hundred and I was tossing over doing something else with living statues and yeah, this one just came to me, pretty much beat for beat. Was hoping to do something a bit laidback to round out the year rather than getting too intense.

Yes, this is STORY ONE HUNDRED to go up on my website! Which is exactly why I changed up the website recently, to make the archives much, much easier to browse through. I’ve counted them up and not including blurbs or these author notes, that is 498,094 words. Oof, so close to half a million, I should have written something longer. There’s a lot of fiction to tide you over in those categories and I’m hoping to keep cycling stories through the new ‘Featured’ category on the front page to keep things fresh.

This will be my last story for the year but keep your eyes open because I’m going to post something about the new theme I’m going with next year sometime early next week, and you can find updates on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. Thanks for reading!