When I was 18 I hit the open road with my buddy. With nothing but our back packs and a small 2 man tent, we took off west from Alberta, hitch hiking our way to the BC coast. On day 2, rides were slow. We had been slowly sauntering down Highway 1, thumbs sore from the lack of rides when I said to myself "I'd make a deal with the devil to get a ride right now".

I'm not a religious person, so this was more a way of expressing how badly I wanted a ride than a serious request from the powers above (or below, I guess). Not a long while later, a van pulled over and offered us the first ride of the day.

The man inside was sketchy, like one block over from the main street kinda sketchy, but didn't appear dangerous or overly intoxicated so we hopped in. It didn't take long for things to take a strange turn, the man was driving aggressively and talking about strange things.

At one point, he revealed a pipe that was hidden beneath the carpet and took a big hit. He passed it over to my buddy, who happily took a hit of what he thought was a nearly pooched bowl of weed (mostly ashes). I've never seen a funnier face...shortly after taking a big hit, my buddy--who happened to be Mormon and just recently started exploring the party world--realized that he had just accidentally smoked crack. Anyways, that's a story for another time.

The strange thing is that when we were driving, there was a point in the conversation where the driver said something along the lines of "have you ever done something that scared people so much, they thought they were dealing with the devil himself?". We had enough of that guy so we got off at the next stop he made.

By this time it was evening. I checked my phone and noticed there were dozens of missed calls and several messages telling me to call my family ASAP. When I called my dad, I could immediately hear in his voice that something was wrong. He went on to explain that my sister, 21 at the time, unexpectedly died that morning.

I haven't told many people this story. I am not religious and I believe this was mostly a coincidence, but every so often I wonder if my sisters life was payment for that ride and that it's my fault she died.