ThreadBare

After sunset, well after the last glimmer of sunlight had vanished from the remote asphalt road, a lone vehicle appeared and slowed. Its headlights winked out before it stopped, but its engine continued to idle. It might have been a van or a large car. It was impossible to tell.

The driver reached over and turned off the switch to the interior lights, then rolled out of the vehicle and quietly closed the door until it touched the latch. The outer darkness absorbed the car's shape and even its color. It appeared that the vehicle was a large sedan, purring a steady stream of cloudy exhaust fumes, which drifted away lazily on a cold, moisture-laden breeze.

For several seconds, the driver stood facing the closed door, peering above the rooftop, as though cautiously casing the scene. The head and shoulders were silhouetted almost indistinguishably above the car.

Then the driver's shadowy figure moved swiftly around the back of the car and opened the rear door on the far side. No interior lights glowed. The furtive shape had made sure of that.

The driver leaned inside the dark door for a few moments then began pulling something heavy out of the car. The bulky object was long enough to force its mover to struggle backwards halfway into the frosty drainage ditch before two legs finally dropped clear of the car, revealing the semblance of a human form.

The driver readjusted the awkward load, grasping under the armpits of the unwieldy body and dragging the dead weight with its lanky legs, along the roadside of the ditch, to about ten yards beyond the front of the car. There the driver wrestled the lifeless form into place, rolling it face down and positioning its length directly across the path of the idling car.

The driver straightened, studied the dark scene for a brief moment, then charged to the car's open back door and slammed it shut with a thud. The inky figure continued swiftly on around the rear of the car en route to the driver's door, thus avoiding the choice of going back around the front and having to encounter the crumpled body one more time.

Jumping into the car and whipping the door shut, the driver gritted his teeth and shifted into forward, lurching over the inert form, then floored the accelerator, roaring away from the devastation left behind by the tires.