“Oh dear, we've got to get more gas for the car.” I regretted ever making this sentence that very night, despite having little gas that could get us home without meeting the face of death in the odd hours of Wednesday at exactly 12:03 PM.

A soon-to-be mother, who is my wife was startled when I diverted to a freeway in search of gas. She kicked against it and pleaded with me to get us home with the little gas, but I was so foolish not to listen. Luckily, we came by an old rusty fuel station that has a restaurant on the opposite.

I stopped the engine and assured her to remain calm as the place gave an unsettling gust of spooks. When I tried to transfer fuel from the pump to my engine, it showed signs of blockage, which is likely impossible. I looked at the restaurant. I saw blazing lights from every corner with no one in them, but when I got to the entrance to have a look inside, a sharp ringing erupted from nowhere that made me get on my knees with my hands covering my ears.

My wife shouted from behind, “Are you alright, Sam?” I ignored her and pushed the door wide open, only to find the place dark, empty, covered with dust and overturned tables, so I ran out speedily and left the door open.

“What’s the matter?” my wife said to me with a panicked look. I told her that we had to get ourselves out of there instantly, and still ignored her questions. I bolted for the car door and slammed it shut, but an unknown masculine figure stroked the car window gently with his right hand.

“Am I the man around here? What seems to be the problem?” said a crackly old voice with several missing teeth from his mouth and a disfigured face. I carefully examined him as I came down from the vehicle and found his looks disturbing as flies kept buzzing around.

“I tried to get gas from your machine, but it didn’t respond, so my wife and I were just leaving,” I said with a still cold voice and looked at my scared wife.

“Not to worry, I got it under control,” said the weird-looking man. He moved down and did some work on the pump while I stared in fear. We got our tank filled and ready to go home, but before that, I thanked the man for his assistance, but he gave no response rather stared insanely at us.

“I don’t render such services at this hour, but I find something about you interesting,” the man said as I gave the car a start, and I wondered what he meant by that.

“What do you mean?”

“I find your unborn baby interesting,” he said with a maniacal smile.

“You’re an animal!” my wife shouted right in his face. I slowly moved the vehicle and tried to give him a fake warm smile.

My wife and I had a heated argument about the whole incident, and wondered why I acted irresponsibly and didn’t take immediate action on the strange fellow.

“I told you not to get gas during these hours at dark, but you kept insisting you had to and see where it got us,” said my wife rudely.

I kept my eyes glued on the road and tried to ignore every bit of her words.

We arrived home as quickly as expected, and my wife went straight upstairs and slammed the door to our room, so I sat on the couch in the living room, going through my phone and discovered I had 20 missed calls from an unknown number. Suddenly, my phone chimed with a message from my friend, Peter, asking if I'm alright.

Before I could respond, I heard rustling at the kitchen entrance and got up to have a look and found nothing there when I switched on the lights.

I was about to move back to the couch when I heard a horrifying voice of an old woman that whispered my name. I turned right, facing the entrance to find a bewildering shadow of someone standing close to the entrance of my house, and it was 12:59 PM by this time.

I walked very closely to the door and opened it.

“Hello! Is anyone there?” I got nothing but silence from the town. Unknowingly to me, a dark figure has made its way into my apartment.

What I heard might be a result of my insomnia, but that isn’t what it is. I got to bed and lay beside my wife while my eyes began scanning the ceiling.

While in bed, I stretched out my left hand towards my wife for comfort, only to feel a thick liquid. I jumped out of bed and pulled the bed sheet apart to find the body of my wife decapitated. Her stomach was vigorously torn open, with her internal parts missing, and her head rolled out to the floor.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but within seconds I was slammed to the ground by a heavy blow to my face. I screamed in pain.

While on the ground, I saw a man standing close to me with a hatchet. He got closer to the spot where I lay with my infant child on his hands as he murmured words strange to me.

As he got closer, I could smell a decaying corpse with flies buzzing around.

“Who is the one mad now?” said the man in a deep, evil voice.

He lifted the hatchet and dismembered my two arms and legs. I screamed for someone around to hear, but it felt as if no one was in town.

I lay on the pool of my blood, waiting to be finished off. He finally and ultimately chopped my head off.

There was no one, no clue, no brute force to guess that something was wrong; everybody moved their normal business, and no one around noticed a single thing. The last notification chime on my phone dripped with blood was from Peter saying, “Whatever you do, stay away from your house.”