Fiction: "Visibility," by Kenneth Quinnell

Nobody should be out on a night like tonight. Nobody.

There's no moon and no stars. But it doesn't really matter. Even if there were, you couldn't see them. The fog is so thick that you'd have to have x-ray vision in order to see anything.

If I didn't know this mile-long stretch of road like the back of my hand, I wouldn't be out either. But you have to get home sometimes. Like when you have to get up at seven a.m. for work.

You can say that maybe I shouldn't have gone out tonight, what with the heavy fog. Or you could say that I shouldn't have walked. But how often foes FSU play on Thursday night? And should I really be attempting to drive a car on a foggy night after the beers I drank? I lost count around my seventh or eighth beer. I mean, when the game was that tight and we end up losing at the end, who still counts their beers?

So I'm being responsible. I didn't need to drive a mile on a night when its incredibly foggy, I've been drinking, Coach's is only a mile from my house and I know the way, even in my sleep. No, walking is the right choice. The visibility on the road is bad enough for a sober person, much less someone a little on the tipsy side.

That's why I ain't seen a single person on the road. Haven't heard a single engine or seen a single headlight. At least not since I turned off Main Street onto Route 19. But that ain't surprising a bit. There aren't any businesses on the Route between Main Street and my house and they're only a few houses. Nice respectable people who were in bed a long time ago, football game or no.

The only thing along this stretch of road of any interest -- except the dirt road to Carol Jones's old house. Well, her parents still lived there and she was named Carol Parker now and lived off in Tallahassee or something like that. Ironic, huh? Man I used to have a huge crush on her. I can't tell you how many drunken nights I walked by her house. Nothing on this stretch of road of any interest except Carol's old house and the edge of the Goethe State Forest. Man, they're ain't a place on earth I spent more time drinking than in the forest. I couldn't count the number of beer cans me and the boys lost out in them woods.

Walking on the edge of the forest thinking about having one of them beers was when I heard the engine. I turned and looked south, the only other way the road went, but I couldn't see nothing yet. It was only a few minutes before I could see the headlights -- certainly this guy had his brights on, otherwise how could I seem them in this fog.

Not surprisingly, he was swerving. He was probably drunk and he was certainly driving too fast for this road with this visibility. Hell, this was the most dangerous highway in America on regular occasions, much less nights like tonight. So I was wary.

I figured the best thing to do was to get far enough off the road to get out of his way. I figured I was safe anyway, but why mess with it? I stumbled a little bit since I could see the incline in the shoulder, but I made it pretty close to the tree line and continued looking south. I figured he'd stay on the road just fine -- drunk drivers tend to know what they're doing I always say. If you're drunk and you think you can drive on a night like this, you either can or your dead in the first few minutes. But my momma didn't raise me to be no fool, so I got out of his way and was going to watch him until he was safely past me.

Which was only about a minute later, since he was going so fast. He continued to swerve as he came at me, but, hell, whose to say he was even drunk? He could've been swerving just because of the thickness of the fog and the fact that the road was starting to turn west. Sober people have missed that turn before. More likely than not, if he didn't know where he was going, he'd miss the curve highway and veer off on my fork in the road.

But he made it. I watched him veer off to the northwest and after he was safely past me, I turned to continue northward towards my house. That's when I saw it.

About three feet away from me was the ugliest thing I had ever seen, except for maybe Carol Jones's momma -- how a girl that pretty could come from a woman that ugly was beyond me. At first I thought it might be a dog, but it was too big. It could've been a bear, but no, this wasn't a bear. Not by a long shot. This was something that came out of the forest. Something that didn't belong there or here or anywhere.

It had no eyes that I could see. It had an almost greenish skin that kinda glowed like those fish that you see that live at the bottom of the ocean on the nature channel. The kind that have never seen light until some geek in a submarine or something shines on it for the first time. This thing looked like one of them. And its skin must've kept some of the light from the car, since it was brightly lit when I first saw it, but it started to fade. Sort of like one of those glow-in-the-dark toys kids have. The kind where you bring it in a brightly-lit bathroom and then you turn off the light and it holds the light for a while before going black. That's what was happening here.

The thing that stood out about this thing, though, was the teeth. And it wasn't three feet away anymore, either. I hadn't seen it move, but it was certainly closer. Beneath where the eyes should've been and weren't was the biggest mouth area I think I've ever seen. The teeth were way too big for the mouth. They were so big that it couldn't possibly shut its mouth. The teeth were each at least a foot long -- top and bottom. The damn thing's mouth was two feet across! And the teeth were sharp, pointed and gnarled. And a ooze just kind of dripped off of them, running down it's non-chin and falling into a glowing green puddle in the dirt. And I’m certain that it was closer now. No more than two feet. And I still never saw it move.

I only saw it move once. When it leapt at me. I put up my arm to shield myself from those awful teeth, but that did nothing more than make sure that it bit my arm first. The teeth clamped into my arm right below my shoulder on both the top and bottom. I don't care what women say, some things are more painful than childbirth. Like when razor-sharp demon-teeth slice right through your skin and muscle and bone and rip your arm right off. I may have heard it growl or snarl or something like that, but I was starting to lose track of what was happening at that point.

I turned to run, but before I took two steps, I heard some kind of whistling sound and something knocked me right off my feet. I don't know if it were a tail or leg or arm or whatever, but the thing swept me off my feet -- and not in the good way -- making me crash to the ground. I'm pretty sure my nose broke when I landed, but I was kind've unsure since pain no longer had any definition at this point. That's when it ripped off my right leg below mid-calf. I'm sure I heard smacking sounds as it had a midnight snack.

I guess it had finished its appetizer at that point and was ready for the main course. There was an audible thud as it plopped down behind me. I tried to crawl away, but you'd be amazed and how tough it is to crawl with one arm and one leg missing. All of a sudden, it had grabbed ahold of my remaining leg and I jerked back.

It didn't rip this one off, though, although, it certainly began to swallow it. The teeth weren't being used anymore to tear me apart, they were being used to pull me bit by bit into the creature's mouth. I felt it on my knee, my thigh, my crotch. By then, it was using its claws to pull me into its mouth. Who knew it had claws? It certainly didn't need them, the teeth were more than enough, something I realized a bit more with they sunk into my waist and I felt the top ones touch the bottom ones somewhere in the middle of my stomach.

Needless to say, I didn't make it into work the next morning.