The Night Rider

The beating of the hooves grows faster as the object approaches. Quickening your pace, you make for the path on the road’s edge.

The scream catches you off guard, causing you to stumble as you glance over your shoulder. Fear crushes you in its grip as you struggle to move off the road.

As the approaching hoofbeats grow more rapid—terror slides down your spine, cementing your feet to the earth.

“Run, you FOOL!” screams the mind. Instead, you turn and face that which has taken your sanity. Straining your eyes in the moonlight, you glimpse the horror that rushes toward you.

Hot glowing embers for eyes, with a skeletal frame, and a top a rider whose head resembles the gruesome visage of the Jack-o-Lantern.

You try to scream, but a vacuum has replaced the air in your lungs. Sweat rolls down your face to form ice droplets in the frozen wind.

The beast vaults high into the sky, arching over your head, then touches down behind you and speeds away into the blackness, its hoofbeats fading as it goes.

The terror that moments ago threatened to drag you into the depths of Hell has been replaced with the euphoria of being alive.

With sanity restored, you rush down the path and offer prayers that you have been spared a trip to the underworld atop the Night Rider’s steed.