The Sunday Scaries
Volume I, Number 1
Microfiction by Pat Harrigan
Content Warning: Language and Horror

A Ride in the Snow

Looks like you need a lift, said Bert, rolling down the passenger window.
          The guy looked like Frosty the fucking Snowman. He must have been walking down this road for an hour, thought Bert. I wonder where he left his car.
          Oh, I won’t say no, the man said, climbing up and in. He didn’t dust himself off, even a little bit, and hunks of snow fell everywhere inside the cab. Bert could have been annoyed, that would have been justified, but that was something he was working on, calmness. Besides, he was in the wrong line of work to mind a little snow. He put the plow into gear and rumbled forward, increasing the wiper speed.
          How long were you stuck out there? he asked, to be agreeable.
          Let me tell you a story, the man said, dripping everywhere. I was born during a blizzard like this one. My mother told me. She’d never shut up about it actually. It was one of those stories she’d tell anyone who would listen. And now look at me, she’s twenty years dead and here I am telling you. Anyway, she’d tried to drive herself to the hospital, the stupid bitch, and jammed the car into a snowdrift. People die that way, especially out in the country where we were. Couldn’t get the car out, couldn’t even open the door, couldn’t barely move either, so big she was with me. I’m not a tall man now but I was a big baby, they tell me. So she’s sitting there for hours, dragged an old blanket over herself and in the end there was nothing for it but to pull her stinking panties off and start pushing. So she squirts me out her hole with all the blood and—and placenta, and all the other stuff and wraps us both up in this sticky blanket until a snowplow driver finally comes by and notices the car and hallelujah we are saved.
          Bert stared out the windshield at the road and the chaos of snow. I—I wonder if I know the guy, he said. The driver. I’ve been doing this job a long time. Bert headed down the exit ramp. How old are you, anyway? he asked the stranger. And where do you want me to drop you?
          The man said, Let me tell you another story.
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