Anxiety

It’s 5:50 in the morning; far, far too early for anyone to be exercising, let alone biking seven miles, job or no job.

And yet there you are, pushing yourself up a massive hill (the only overpass that crosses the freeway for at least two miles) because the other route takes you an extra half an hour, and you really like that extra thirty minutes of sleep. Not that it makes a difference; because you’re still exhausted, half asleep despite your racing heart, all because you didn’t wake up early enough to make coffee. You remembered to pack your travel mug and K-cup, at least, so you’ll have coffee once you reach the school; but that’s still forty minutes off, providing you keep a consistent speed on your bike.

Or, you know, providing that no idiot driver accidentally hits you because they forgot their turn signal.

Honestly, you think to yourself as you near the top of the overpass, this whole thing could be avoided if your parents didn’t have the firm belief that you did not need a car in a major tourist city. If you had a car, you would still be in bed right now. You could leave by 6:30 and still tap your key to the magnetic wall clock with minutes to spare. You might actually flip all the computer lab lights on before the first student of the day even arrives at seven.

But you don’t have a car, or even a driver’s license (why bother?), so you are coasting down the overpass at six in the morning. On a Saturday. Your left brake squeals in protest as you squeeze it, trying to get your tires to stop rolling before you reach the end of the bike path and fly out onto the parkway. Dying was not on your agenda today.

The bike ride isn’t that terrible, honestly. The lack of sleep is the most unpleasant part of it. Except for the overpass, it’s a mostly flat route. It’s quiet, anyways. Most sane tourists were still in bed this early, or maybe just getting up to make it to a theme park opening. The sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon, and it leaves a nice view when combined with the neon lights of the giant copy of the Eye of London (because what this city needs is another tourist trap). Overall, you don’t entirely hate the ride.

Except for the next stretch. It’s a country road, if you can call an area jam-packed with tourists “country”. It’s mostly empty fields. You’ve seen cows a couple of times, and one side of the road clearly belongs to some farm. The side closest to the highway used to have crops as well, but the city has slowly infected the area, and apartment buildings were starting to crop up to make up for the ever-growing population of theme park employees and college graduates determined to make something out of their Hotel Management degrees.

The genius who planned this neighborhood clearly didn’t think anyone would bike past the overpass, so the bike lane abruptly cuts off at the intersection. As does the sidewalk, because the best way to get to the bus stops and apartment buildings is to walk through knee-high grass, of course. And since they clearly didn’t think people would be traveling down this road in anything but a car, it doesn’t have streetlights either.

Every time you reach that part of your journey to work, you’re filled with a feeling of dread. Probably because it’s so dark. Despite the rising sun, the back road you travel is still greatly lacking in the light department. There’s just enough light from the purple sky that you can see outlines of things, but nothing too detailed. The LED attached to the front of your bike lights up the road in front of you, so you can make sure you’re not running anything over, but the area of the light is limited. The bright light makes it hard to see anything beyond; everything just becomes dark shadows.

And that’s the heart of the problem. You don’t like what you can’t see.

You stop at the corner, rummaging in your bag for your ipod. You push the earbuds deep into your ear and hit play. Nothing. You’ve forgotten to charge it for the past week, so unless you feel like going over your data limit on your phone, you have to make the trek without music. Somehow, that makes you even less willing to take the road, like the music can somehow block out how uneasy this street makes you. You glance down at your watch- it’s too late to turn around and take the alternate route. You have to do this.

You wait for the light to change, check for cars coming, and push yourself off the curb. There aren’t too many cars out this early. During normal daylight hours, you’d desperately wish for that situation; but the lack of cars in the dark makes your trip seem desolate. If anything, the car’s headlights would shed some light on your surroundings, even if only for a little bit.

But it’s just you and the darkness. In the darkness, you can’t tell what’s out there, and that’s what scares you the most. The grass is tall enough to conceal any number of creatures. There could be anything, waiting in the darkness. A rabid possum, waiting to chew off your ankles because you wandered too close to it’s home. Never mind how fast it would have to move to get you while you’re pedaling your bike, it could totally happen if it was angry enough. Or hungry enough.

Or snakes! You read an article about some idiot losing his poisonous dangerous deadly snake in the area. This tall grass is probably a great hiding place for a deadly snake. Nobody would bother it, except for you, who has wandered too close to his home. Snakes are pretty fast, so you wouldn’t even see him coming until it was too late.

You drift away from the curb a little, just in case.

You decide the best course of action is to keep your eyes glued to the road. You’re trying so hard to only focus on what’s in front of you, ignoring all the dark things you can see out of the corner of your eye. In the darkness, the surroundings morph together into twisted, wicked shapes. Don’t look at them. Don’t think about them. There’s nothing there. Keep your eyes down and you’ll make it to the end.

You look up, and your heart nearly stops.

You can see it in the distance, the shape that terrifies you beyond all belief. It’s tall and very thin, with a large bulbous shape on top that could only be it’s head. It’s waiting for you to get closer, and then…well, you don’t know. You aren’t even sure what it is. It reminds you of Slender Man, maybe, but you’re sure it’s not; he isn’t real. It’s probably something much worse.

Like an alien, maybe. Your friend once told you about some movie about alien abductions where people saw owls and then were kidnapped. She was really freaked out by it, and seemed pretty sure it was based on a true story. You weren’t sure at the time, because you’ve seen other scary movies where they claimed to be true but really weren’t, but now that you’ve started thinking about aliens and alien abductions, you can’t stop. It’s dark out and there’s something waiting for you, and the only logical explanation is that it’s an alien waiting to abduct you. You can’t cross the road because there’s all sorts of broken things that would destroy your tires by the median, so you can’t do anything about it except ride right to where it sits. You pedal faster, hoping maybe you can speed by it, maybe it won’t catch you, but suddenly you notice that your headlight is growing brighter, you’re growing brighter, oh god it’s just like they say, where a beam of light lifts you up. You pedal even faster, but you’re completely illuminated now, like a sun beam is shining down on you, and there’s nothing you can do, you can’t even text your boss to let him know you’ll be missing work due to being aboard an alien craft and being dissected like a science class frog. The light is blinding, and all you can think about is how it’s the end of your life and your final thought is the realization that you forgot to feed your cats and maybe somehow this is punishment for it and-

Oh.

It’s just a passing car.

The headlights pass over you and wash over your tall alien, revealing it to be a heavy wood post with some overgrown plant wound around it and thrown over top. Or maybe it’s a clever shapeshifter. As you watch the tail lights shrink in the distance, part of you is relieved- you’re not going to be abducted after all- but your heart’s still racing, and the feeling of unease has doubled. You’re almost angry about your lack of abduction. You were so sure that you were done for. There’s no way you’re just magically going to be okay. There is something waiting for you in the dark. You can practically sense it’s presence, biding its time, waiting for you to pass by on your bike, unsuspecting. And look at you. Suspecting, but unprepared. There’s absolutely nothing that you can do, because you forgot to pack your pepper spray.

Not that pepper spray would help against a tractor beam from an alien ship.

Up ahead, you can see the lights of the intersection that bring you back to the real world. You’re reaching your home stretch now, and just in time because your lungs are starting to suck at taking in oxygen. Your breathing is shallow and gasping, but it’s not from fear- you’re pedaling really hard and your asthma is kicking in. It’s okay, though, because you have to stop at the traffic light anyway and wait to cross the parkway, so you can catch your breath. The end is literally in sight. You just need to make it down the last portion and not run into any cars merging into the turn lane-

What

is

THAT??

It’s almost as tall as a tree, but thin and skeletal. It’s the only visible thing in the clearing, reaching up towards the purpling sky, and you’re too stunned and afraid for your overly vivid imagination to even come up with a solution. Nothing, nada, none, you have no fucking clue what it could possibly be and you’re heading right for it at high speed. There is no time to even panic, all you can do is brace yourself for- what, an impact? It is tall enough to fall on you and maybe crush you. Your mind can’t even complete the gruesome images of your death because you’re flying right past it, watching it blur in the corner of your eye.

Nothing happens.

That’s it. You’re by the apartments now, illuminated by the buildings you can now see in the distance and the red and green of the stop light. You pull up onto the sidewalk that magically reappears (and leads to nowhere in the opposite direction) and catch your breath, fishing around in your bag for water. You survived uncertain death at the hands (arms?) of a god-only-knows-what. Somehow it didn’t even notice you at your incredible speed. You cheated death and now you can continue the rest of your bike ride bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights. The invisible dangers have passed.

Until tomorrow, that is.