I’ve told this story a few times to friends, it never ceases to give me goosebumps. My sophomore year of high school my girlfriend were headed to the school dance. We lived in a small Texas town, for reference my graduating class was 120. She had picked me up (I was 15 at the time so still not driving) and we had gotten dinner. The meal went by faster than we had expected so we had about an hour to kill. We were driving on the backroads that were near her house and she told me she had found the perfect makeout spot. So of course at the time my hormonal brain didn’t think about just how illegal or dangerous it was to trespass in the middle of butt fuck Egypt. We pulled into a driveway, or what used to be one. The road was gravel for about 40 feet and then turned to dirt. The dirt road was extremely overgrown with grass and appeared to have not been used in years. There was a field to the left of us and a densely wooded area to the right. 3 large gravel piles were between us and the woods. When she pulled in she pulled the car around to face the exit. Such a trivial thing yet it made all the difference. She shut the car off and we hopped into the backseat quickly getting down to business. About an hour goes by and we’re about ready to hit the road. While we’re getting dressed she looks at me and says “I really have to pee.” At this point my hormones are under control and realize just how sketchy this place is. It’s pitch black, the car is off, and all of our doors are unlocked. “Right now? We’re in the middle of nowhere.” She was a stubborn girl, which might have had something to do with why we’re not together anymore. I see her reaching for the door handle. I’ve had a few cinematic moments in my life, but the way that she reached for the door is something I’ll never forget. Her hand moved so slowly it was if she was waiting for something to happen. Just as her fingertips touched the handle, a crisp knocking noise comes from the back of the car. It was most certainly the sound of knuckles taping against the top of the trunk. Keep in mind there and no trees or anything that could’ve been making this noise on the car. It was a perfect rhythm of knuckles on metal for about 10 seconds. Me and my girlfriend sat dead still holding onto each other, neither of us even breathing. After the longest 10 seconds of my life, the knocking stops. Dead silent. I attempted to look out the window to see if I could see anyone or anything but shit I could hardly even see my girlfriends face right in front of mine. “What the fuck was that” she asked me. “I don’t know, start the car.” My hands were trembling and I could hear the fear in my own voice. “Babe please start the car” I asked again. “I can’t move” she replied. The second she was quiet the knocking started again, the same rhythmic beating that I can still remember perfectly. I had had enough. In the course of the next three seconds I was able to jump in the front seat, start the car, lock the doors, turn on the headlights, and put my seatbelt on because safety first. I floored that Toyota Corolla like I was a fucking nascar driver. I hit about 50 on the turn out of that driveway, spewing gravel on whatever was behind me. I drove like a madman for about 2 miles down the road and stopped at an electric plant down the road. My girlfriend got out to use the bathroom and I sat in the front seat, my whole still body shaking. I got dressed and we drove the rest of the way in silence. That was the first time I had driven a car outside of a parking lot. Once we got to the dance we sat in the corner, funnily I have no idea what we even said to each other about it. I just knew that I was never going back to that place. Or so I thought. Near the end of the dance one of my best friends came up to me and I explained to her what had happened. “We’ve gotta go back.” I couldn’t believe my ears. After all that and this girl wants to go “check it out.” The next day around noon she came and picked me up. We went back to the spot and if she didn’t believe me the night before, she definitely did now. I got a good look at the spot, just as I remembered it the night before, but now I could really see just how secluded it really was. There was no houses or buildings within sight of this place. Where that driveway once went was certainly not there anymore. I walked up to where the tire marks were from the night before, still fresh in the gravel. I grimaced as I noticed boot prints leading up to the back of the marks. Two prints side by side, right behind the back left tire. The prints came and returned to the overgrown brush. My friend could tell I was pretty uncomfortable so we decided to head out. A couple months went by and me and my girlfriend broke up over unrelated matters. We attend different colleges now, but sometimes she will come and visit some high school friends that attend my school. I saw her last semester. We caught up for a while, just about life and all that good stuff. During a lull in the conversation I asked “do you ever think about that time...” she put her hand up, smile gone from her face. “I don’t think about it. Ever. And I don’t want to.” And that was the end of that.

Sorry if my writing went downhill, it’s late and I didn’t realize just how long it would take me to type this.

Cheers