I used to work with an independent towing company in a Saint Cloud, Minnesota.
We mostly operated near Wilmot, South Center, Tomscog and glen Wood.
I usually did roadside assistance and recovery. Out in these parts you get a
surprisingly large share of vehicles that had just abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
I know it's a common side to see rusted out wrex by the side of
the road, but if it wasn't for guys like me, you'd see three
times as many. So I got this call about a ross bucket that had
smashed into a stop sign and been left by the roadside. I was called
in for the pickup. It's not fun heading out in the dark as the
rain clouds roll in, but that's even more reason to get it done.
Accidents happen in the dark, someone could get hurt. It took me a
while to get out, there a lot of cars on the road. I
turned on my warning lights and stepped out, keeping my earbut in while listening
to my work playlist. I was sort of conditionally training myself to only listen
to country on the job and rock on my spare time, thinking I could
power of off my way into some kind of work life recognition thing. Once
I got out of my truck, I could immediately tell something was off.
I'd gone down that road before, and I'd never seen a stop sign anywhere
near it. It was a straight road. Why would there be a stop
sign? The current question was this old beetle. The paint had peeled off
years ago, and half the interior was either rotten or torn out. There
was algae halfway up the wheels, with tufts of grass sticking out of the
suspension. This thing wouldn't run in a hundred years. Hell, you could
barely get it to roll at all. I was perplexed. There was no
way someone was driving this or crashing into anything. Someone had dragged it up
there for one reason or another. Turning my attention back to my truck,
I almost choked on spit. I counted no less than five people by the
roadside, staring up at the flashing warning lights. Five people, all different
ages, there this strange look of absolute adoration on their faces, slack jawed
and unblinking. They didn't seem to mind my presence. They were just there
for the lights. I looked at them for a moment. These were the
people that had dragged the car up, no question about it. Hell,
some of them had muddy hands and boots. Still, I thought about saying
something, but figured i'd just get my phone out in case someone wanted to
cause trouble. I locked my truck, not taking my eyes off these people,
and tried to get on with my job. They didn't seem to mind.
They just stood there, their eyes wide and black, staring at the
flashing morning lights. It was so eerie. I walked around that car,
constantly checking over my shoulder. I was waiting for one of them to burst
into a sprint or scream, but nothing happened. They just stood there,
not a sound or a word, heavy breathing in unison. I thought about
filming it, but honestly, I had to get out of there. I
scooched the fallen sign off the road and prepped the wreck. Through all of
it, I got this worried chill creeping up my spine. Whenever there was
a sharp noise a rattling chain might set them off, creak of metal.
I didn't know what these people's deal was, so I didn't know how unpredictable
they were. As I finished and got ready to move out, I threw
a final glance back at them. My heart skipped a beat when one of
their eyes, yes, a singular eye, turned to me. She was
probably in her forties, with the kind of face that just screamed exhaustion.
As a second eye slowly settled on me, there was this bubbling unease in
my stomach. Something about her was just inhumane. It didn't feel like meeting
the eyes of a fellow Minnesotan, or even a Homo sapien. This woman
was something else, something other. I was about to get back into my
truck when she opened her mouth and spoke. Look at me, she said,
I did. I could not do it if I like staring down a
predator, keeping it obey, I had to look at her. Of course,
there was a plan to it. I didn't notice the two men sneaking
up on me from the other side of the road. I have a hard
time retelling this part. It's burned into my thoughts, but it's not like
a good burn. It's like a scab, and I just hate poking at
it. The only word that I can use for it is that it frightens
me, not just because of the violent implications, but because I now know
firsthand just how frail I am as a person and living being. Hands grabbed
me and I was pushed up against the side of my truck. Some guy
in his fifties and what looked like a girl in her late teens, both
insanely strong, with the kind of grip you might expect in a wild animal.
They were clinging to me like their life depended on it. And yet
none of them said anything, no noise, no words, just huffs and
unblinking eyes. Even then, as my hands were pushed up against the cold
metal, they weren't even looking at me. They were still looking up at
the warning lights. The one who had spoken came around. She faced me
and held something up. It looked like one of those odd box cameras with
a crank on the side. She turned it on with a metallic clunk,
blinding me with a powerful and warm light. She slowly turned the crank on
the side, like a nightmare's jack in a box. With every click,
some thing would block the light for a split second, effectively making it flash.
She turned it faster and faster, blinking turned into a strobe light.
I can't explain what I felt. It was like something filling my stomach,
like my body was contracting into itself, trying to make me shrink. I
became so hyper focused on this one blinking light coming out of that awful black
box. I didn't even notice how they let go of my hands, or
how they all gathered around me, how they watched as I had this mental
seizure. I couldn't move, I couldn't look away. My mind was just
filled with this clicking noise, resetting every impulse that came across my mind.
I should run, Click, who are these people? Click? I'm in
danger. Click. I couldn't finish as seeing good train of thought. I
just stood there, as transfixed to that box as they'd been to my warning
lights. I don't know when I passed out. Could have been seconds,
could have been minutes. All I know is that I woke up by the
roadside hours later as a passerby tacked me on the shoulder. You're right there,
they asked, you hurt? I shook my head, trying to adjust
my eyes, they still burned from the light. I don't know, I
said, I honestly don't know. I called my boss, telling them what
had happened, explaining why I hadn't answered any calls. I also gave a
statement to the police, explaining what little I could to a very understanding man.
It didn't make sense to them, or me for that matter. Nothing
was stolen, nothing was vandal just people attacking people for seemingly no reason.
The officers seemed sorry to hear it, as if already apologizing for what they
wouldn't be able to do. I didn't see them until much later, under
very different circumstances. I was put on sickly for a couple of days to
get back on my feet, but at that point I didn't even know what
I was feeling anymore. Coming home, I couldn't concentrate. Everything just felt
off. I could barely keep myself focused on the most minute task. I
forgot my cooked rice on the stove. I put down my phone in the
middle of a phone call. I left the tap running. I kept getting
sidetracked, like there was something vital missing in the back of my mind.
This continued on and off for a couple of days. I vividly remember how
I tried to stream some stupid reality show, but I kept forgetting what I
was watching. I didn't dare use my car or go shopping. I walked
and even then I had to look down at my shopping list every few minutes.
I remember this one time when I tried to take a shower, I
left the water running forgetting to turn it off, just like with everything else.
As I finished up and stepped out, I flipped the light switch.
But that switch is this really sensitive thing, and I accidentally clicked it twice,
making the lights flash. That sent a wave of warmth through my body,
the kind of relieving warmth you get from stepping out of the blizzard and
into a living room. I always familiar and welcome, as if this was
what I was supposed to feel like. In a simple way, it fixed
me. For a moment, I felt like myself again. I ended up
standing there for about twenty minutes, just flipping the switch on and off,
on and off. I pressed it until the click of the switch started to
sound like the click of the black box, until time started to slow,
making every click seemed further away no matter how fast I went. And when
I looked up at myself in the mirror, I could see that my eyes
were completely black, as alien as those I'd seen that night. I could
picture myself as her exhausted, unblinking and lost to the world. It scared
the hell out of me. I shut my eyes and tried to keep them
closed, but every moment away from the flashes, the clicking, it just
it drained me, like being stuck in the middle of nowhere. As a
blizzard slowly picks up, I could feel myself growing distant, colder, slower,
and turned in my bed, trying to focus on something, anything,
Mississippy. I mumbled, spell Mississippi. I got all the way through it
the first time. By the second time, I made it about half way
through. By the third, I could start, but didn't really know what
I was doing anymore. By the fourth I was upset, and I didn't
even know why. At some point in the night, I heard sirens not
too distant either. Something in me tickled, it wanted me to get up.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe, on some level, I just
wanted to see the flashing lights. I walked up to my bedroom window and
put my hand on the blinders. I knew I shouldn't engage with it.
I kept trying to fight myself. The only thoughts that meant no interruption with
those aimed at the sole purpose of seeing those lights. I kept trying to
convince myself to step away, but it wasn't that easy. Just a peak,
I thought, to see if it works. There were three police cars
and a fire truck, all with their lights on. I was mesmerized.
I saw it in such great detail. It was as if time took a
step back just to allow me to bask in the excitement. I could see
every color shift, the intensity of moving back and forth between lights. It
was like an exploding mini cosmos, filling my head with warmth and excitement.
I stared blankly at it from my bedroom window. It was absolutely gorgeous.
Only there for a moment, but that was all I needed. I was
left breathless, my face burning hot and my eyes watery. It felt like
I'd run a marathon. Hell, even my knees were weak. I had
a short moment of clarity as the cloud to my mind parted. I had
to keep the momentum up. I had to stay sane. Running to the
kitchen, I got my flashlight and all the spare batteries I could find,
spilling an entire drawer of miscellaneous bits and bobs onto the floor. I had
to stop a few times. The flick lights, which a boost By the
end of the night, I found myself standing in the middle of a dark
kitchen with my flashlight followingly planted under my face, clicking it on and off,
on and off. I had to I stopped sleeping after that. Sleep
gave me nothing, but that constant flash kept me going. It allowed me
to keep my head clear enough to make some sort of plan to fight it.
Not that I really wanted to, but because I knew in my heart
of hearts that it wasn't normal. They'd done something terrible to me. But
for the moment, I had to find a way to live with it.
I dug out my Christmas lights and set them to blink intermittently. I taped
it all up along the walls of my bedroom, right next to my computer.
Staying reasonably lucid, I managed to search the web for whatever this could
be, but I couldn't find a thing. I kept trying to spell Mississippi
in my head, the sort of test whether I was thinking straight or not.
More often than not I could make it through, but even a short
lapse of flashes would make me drop a few letters. But yeah, I
didn't get very far in my searches. I've never heard of something like this
happening to anyone, and neither did anyone else. Seemingly soon, I was
just al typing between my dark desktop and a full screen white page, on
and off, on and off. I could tell I was getting weaker.
The lack of sleep betrayed me. My hands were shaking from a lack of
food. After a while, I realized I couldn't just have lights around me.
I needed to indulge to stare drowning them. I was getting desperate.
I wondered the streets, hoping to see or hear something they could give me
that rush back. I even thought about starting a fire, just to get
a fire truck to come by. That's when it hit me, that's probably
what those people had been doing all along. They set that rusted car up
and lured me there, maybe solely for the flash light. It's hard to
admit my low point. I was standing with my phone in my hand,
about to call nine one one to claim I was being attacked, anything to
get the flashing lights and sirens. There was that screaming voice inside of me
demanding that I do it, and a whisper telling me I was destroying myself.
I had a choice. Go down this path and find myself a slave
to impulses, or to surrender to the cloud in my head. I chose
the latter. I tossed my phone and wandered off slowly, forgetting where I
was going or what I was doing. I only vaguely remember the sky turning
dark and rain. There was a car honking as they raced past me,
and a worry driver asking me how I was doing. Without direction or purpose
or solution, I just kept going somewhere. It's a strange feeling, finding
yourself lost in your own darkness. It feels like viewing your life through a
keyhole, catching only bits and pieces with a barrier in between. And in
the end, my efforts were useless. There were others there on my side
of the keyhole, other people just as lost, wandering around. Some I
remembered from that awful night. Others weren't even human. It's not like I
saw them, more that I sensed them. Then it all came back to
me. I was standing in a clearing in a forest somewhere off in the
middle of nowhere. There were others there, but I didn't care to look
at them. All I could focus on was the middle aged woman standing in
front of me with a blinking black box and a crank that clicked. Out
Of all the lights I'd seen, this was the most beautiful. It was
like getting sucked into a deeper understanding. The clicks grew further apart, and
every moment was stretched in that bliss. Every blink of the light was like
days passing by in the heaven of my own making. There was a benevolence
there, someone caring for me, like a barm on my soul. Then
it stopped back in the darkness. A woman held out a phone as the
box stopped clicking. Ambulance, and that was all she needed to say.
We made it to the parking lot out of the old mall, the old
Dead Eye for those of you who live around here. There were six of
us, but none of us said a word. There was this young woman
who'd got a hold of the phone, and she didn't seem to know what
to do. She looked up as if coming out of a daze. Oh
he's doing this, she asked, Are we really doing this? There was
a solemn moment when none of us knew what to do. Finally, there
was an older man who stepped forward. He looked the young woman up and
down and turned to the rest of us. No one said anything. What
was there to say? He considered it, then leaned back, putting all
his weight behind it. He proceeded to strike her across the eye. She
dropped to the ground. The phone rolled out of her hands. The others
proceeded to beat her within an inch of a life. It was absolutely relentless.
It's like she stopped being human to them. I called the emergency services
hell. I told them exactly what I was seeing, a group of people
brutally beating someone. Meanwhile, the others kept attacking her. None of them
looked away or even frowned. I saw blood spatter hit one of their faces,
and they didn't even blink. Maybe they wanted to be convincing, or
maybe there was no space for a second guesser. Neither way, we would
have fulfilled our duty. She was barely breathing when they stepped away. The
man who initiated the beating held out a hand towards me, demanding the phone
back. I handed it to him. I was too new to be entrusted
with something of that value. I wanted to speak, but I didn't.
Looking down at the broken by gasping for air. It did something to me.
It put a suggestion in my head that maybe this wasn't okay. It
made me question myself and made me think. I remember standing there watching the
blood pooling, when I considered, can I spell Mississippi? I couldn't.
Despite following this path and succumbing to it all, it was still taking something
from me that was more apparent than ever. It was this subtle reminder that
yes, I was going down the wrong path, I was doing something wrong.
I wasn't fixing myself this way. There were sirens in the distance.
I could see the top of the tree line changing color. They were coming.
The others hid by the side of the road, their eyes going dark
with anticipation. I joined them, incidentally, trying to make up some sort
of plan. When the flashing lights came around the bend, it was like
drinking a glass of ice water on a hot summer's day. It was a
soothing breeze, nothing like what I'd experienced from that black box, but a
substitute, a damn decent one at that. The colors bathed us and we
just soaked it all in. Except now I had this feeling that it just
wasn't right, Like I was being used and manipulated, Like there was something
in those flashing lights looking back at me. Eh. Someone whispered eh.
The others joined a choir of hushed voices. At first it was just a
noise, but I could see what they were getting at. It was a
fitting name, the thing that drew us in, giving us a peek at
something else. Ao the end of the sea u Ao. There was an
ambulance and two patrol cars. By the time they got to the beaten woman.
We were all stepping out of the woods together. Someone was yelling at
us the stop. There were threads, demands, pistols drawn, then a
click. Looking to my left, the woman with the black box had returned.
At first, flashing light in their direction was all it took to distract
them. I couldn't see it properly from my angle. The others flocked to
it like moths, but I hadn't fallen under its spell yet. Instead,
I looked to the broken woman. She was barely conscious. The paramedics didn't
have the time to take her away. One of them was hiding in the
back of the ambulance, while the other just stood there, staring at the
woman with the black box. We all moved forward slowly, a few whispers,
a declaration of faith. No, not faith, just worship. It
isn't faith when you've seen it, when you know it's there. The others
joined into a circle, two police officers as well. All of them stared
blindly into this captivating light, this invitation to behold, to step outside yourself
and see this hidden blessing. I tried to look away. I tried so
hard. I tried holding my eyes shut, but I couldn't. I wanted
to look deeper and disappear into that light, to let it burn me hollow
inside and out, to be free home. I heard it calling. I
can't describe it, but I heard it, even with two hands covering my
eyes with a clicking noise from that box bore its way into my head and
forced an electrical impulse of light inside my eyelids. No matter, I thought,
maybe it would be wonderful in the end. Looking back at it,
it's so unreal. The thoughts are still there, but it's like they're not
even my own. I tried to recap a movie you saw twenty years ago,
and you know, hadn't it been for one stupid thing. I would
never have made it here. One of the officers, the one who drew
a pistol, had dropped it. I slipped on it. When I was
drawn in, I fell hard, tore so first, knocking the air out
of my lungs. There lying on the side, I noticed I was lying
parallel to the beaten woman, looking at one another from across the parking lot.
I was reminded that there was still time. Looking at her, I
didn't see Ao. I just saw the pain of what was the com if
I didn't tear myself away. So I did. In one quick swoop,
I picked up the gun at my feet, held it up, pointed forward,
and looked. I pulled the trigger. The moment I did, my
eyes fell upon the black box. I could see it before me, every
flash of light from that box, stretching into days weeks. I could see
the bullet travel across the sky in my mind, like a celestial body traveling
across the stars. I could drown my thoughts in this world of ale eternally
seen and loved, wanted needed. I gave up completely, just like the
others. I did. It scares the hell out of me to admit,
but experiencing that thing for the third time was the final snap. Luckily that
one bullet found its target. The box shattered into pieces. The inside of
it was nothing but a powerful bulb and a little hand cranked fan. That
was all there was to it. As the pieces spread across the asphalt,
there was a moment of realization, like something was torn out of my head.
The world started to spin, as if passing by a million miles per
hour. I got the worst case of vertigo i'd ever experienced, barely able
to breathe from the nausea. Others collapsed to the ground, exponging their empty
stomachs. I saw someone having a seizure, who'd beaten that girl half to
death, crawled up to me. Took my handgun and fired every single round
into the woman who held that black box. Maybe he too, saw his
chance to be free. It was absolute chaos. I was sick. I
was accused more flashing lights, but all they did was worse in my nausea.
I got my blood pressure checked. I had to spend a night in
jail. I think I could barely think straight. Most of my time was
past leaning over a toilet bowl, emptying my bows over and over. Some
of the stuff that came out just didn't make any sense. When the hell
did I eat a sunflower? And why the hell was it blue? The
beaten woman didn't accuse me. If anything, she cleared me. Maybe she
saw that last ditch effort for what it was. The man who shot down
a capt was charged, but I don't know for what. After many considerations,
I was eventually cleared. One of the officers on site was actually the
one I'd initially talked to when I was first assaulted. So maybe you felt
bad about not listening the first time. Maybe you've seen the articles. They
called it a prank gone wrong. I think it reached like page eight of
a national paper. This was a couple of years ago. I wanted to
put this the paper to remind myself that it actually happened, and that my
feelings and fears are still valid, because to this day I get this sort
of Halovian response whenever something flashes. It's like my body goes into shock immediately
trying to get something out of me. Hell, it made me throw up
once when I was photographed for work. I think the box was something called
a raskin. I've seen a few of them circling online, some sort of
replica of an art piece by some old turn of the century author. I
just wanted to put this out there. When I found myself looking for answers
and there was none to be found, I felt so goddamn alone. At
least now there is one of us talking about it.