# The Hitcher



## Jon Prosser (Feb 21, 2011)

(Language Warning)

This is a story I did for my creative writing coursework in uni. It's a bit too short for my liking because of the limited word count we were given and I feel this has affected the suspense a bit. Any suggestions/comments appreciated! 


The Hitcher

He found himself cruising the roads at night. Not intentionally, but always. In the flicker of the headlights, he would search for the figures that haunted the very edges of the fingers of light. Ever since the first, Michael had spent his time prowling the lonely stretches of road where all that existed was the illuminated patch of black tarmac and the never-ending, mesmerising lines of white; all, outside of the headlights, was a cascade of darkness. In the beginning, he had found himself driving at normal hours, but since picking up the first hitcher, he had found that without really noticing, every time he drove it was always at night. 
        It had happened two years previously, he had been scouring these roads ever since. Knowing that she would be here somewhere. And he found himself travelling these roads, whether it was the shortest route to his destination or not. One night whilst on the long drive home from his mother’s house, he had found himself unwittingly detouring the long way to the said road. As he drove, a hitchhiker seemed to flicker into existence at the edges of the rattling headlights. Clad in a long scraggy overcoat and a heavy woollen hat, the hitcher carried no sign, his thumb raised silently, his figure motionless and alone. Michael slowed the car to a halt and saw the hitcher moving slowly towards his car in his rear-view mirror, awash in the red glow from his taillights. The darkness looked cold. The hitcher approached the now open passenger window and hunched over. 
      “Where you headed?” Michael asked. Despite the dark, he saw the look of deep despondency in the eyes of the hitcher. 
        “Next town along the road, please, Mr. It isn’t too far. About eight miles.” The hitcher seemed cordial enough but there was something troubling about his voice. It was too… flat. 
         “Hop in,” Michael said, clicking the door open. As Michael moved off, the silence deepened intensely, the buzz of his own thought now diminished with the coming of this man. 
       “So, where you headed?” Michael asked after a stony silence. 
       “Watersgate, next town down.” 
       “Any particular reason?”
       “No.”
        The conversation was a dead end. Michael lapsed back into silence. He focused his eyes on the stretch of unchanging road: it seemed as endless as the horizon. Fiddling with his hands, he tapped the steering wheel a few times and blew a heavy breath from his cheeks. To this obvious insinuation of boredom, the hitcher failed to react for a moment. In his peripheral vision, Michael could make out the fuzzy chin and floppy hair protruding from under the hat; illuminated dimly from the lights on the dash. Cold from the blue light, warm from the red light, a contradiction of sorts. Suddenly he saw the chin incline his way.
       “What brings you down these ways, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Michael thought for a minute.
       “Just driving home from my mother's.” He wasn’t about to spill his desperate, unfounded hopes to this stranger.
       “But this is the long route to your home.” The hitchers answer was so unexpected that Michael almost didn’t register. Mouth ajar, he frowned in confusion, stumbling over possible replies. 
      “How do you know where I live?” 
       “Dealership sticker in the back window of your car.” 
The answer was rational enough but Michael was still thrown off balance. He went back onto the offensive. 
     “Where do you live?” he asked of the hitcher. 
      “I don’t, Mr. I just travel this road. Up and down. Up and down all the time.” There was a trace of weariness in his voice, not the kind of short term weariness, but a deep weariness, a life-long weariness. His voice was quiet. “I’ve seen you driving these roads before.”
Again Michael was thrown by this statement. 
     “There are a lots of silver Fords around this town…” 
      Michael became acutely aware of the hitchers eyes drilling into his skull from their darkened sockets. He didn’t move, his hands remained still on his lap, and motion ground to a halt in the car. A roaring in Michaels stomach turned his mouth dry and fluffy and his mind twisted thoughts around his head, evading the clutches of his logic.
       Before he could grab a hold of any one thought and speak it aloud, the hitcher spoke again.
      “You won’t find her you know.”
       Michaels grip tightened on the steering wheel and the car drifted slightly. The thud of the cat’s eyes in the middle of the road reverberated into his head and the fire in his stomach had spread to his heart, which in its turn was pounding into his ribs, his lungs, his head. He couldn’t understand. How did he know…? _Wha_t did he know?
      “I saw her, Mr. I’m sorry to say that they took her. A terrible tragedy.”
     The thud, Thud, THUD! of the cats eyes in the road broke into Michaels head, getting louder as the car accelerated. Suddenly he slammed on the brakes, the car sliding askew, the bonnet washed over with rubber smoke, the fingers of the headlights pointing in the direction of the flatland off the road. The car stalled. 
    “Where is she? What did you see, where is my daughter?!” the words tumbled from Michaels mouth shakily. The roaring was overtaking him. The hitcher smiled politely.
      “Such a shame. She was such a pretty girl. You really should have been driving with them, you should have protected them.” 
     “WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER, YOU SICK BASTARD?!” Michael screamed into his face. 
      “You shouldn’t have agreed to let them drive home alone, these roads are awfully dangerous. Been a fair few hijackings down these ends.”
       Michael hurled himself from the car, threw himself around the bonnet and opened the passenger door, his face wild, his mind red. The hitcher sat motionless, watching Michael approach with that same unnervingly polite smile upon his grizzled face. Even as Michael tore him from the vehicle, and lent him against the bonnet and began hitting him in the face repeatedly, demanding information. 
       That same smile remained etched on the grizzled enamel face until it began to crack under the desperate screams of Michael and the infliction of his fist until, finally, it gave way and shattered into shards and powder. Michael stood, holding the headless body, fist still raised, shocked into silence; and as his grip loosened, the body fell to the floor, cracking like enamel. He stared for a long while at the broken shards, into the hollow recess of the head he had pounded in; inside the hollow, bloodless cavity was a photo. Removing the photo, and staring intently, Michael let out a disturbing moan. For the photo showed a young body, a mutilated body, that of a little girl. His little girl.


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## MJ Preston (Feb 21, 2011)

You may want to consider another title.

*The Original*






*The Remake*


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## Jon Prosser (Feb 21, 2011)

oops. cheers for pointing that out!


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## mockingbird (Mar 8, 2011)

Hi again, Jon. Hooked me all the way in. Just 1 tiny thing - mothers house should be mother's house, I guess? As I've been told to cut down on commas but it should be in. Great ending. You've got a great style too. A sentence ot two came across a little too long?


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## Jon Prosser (Mar 8, 2011)

hi! thanks, I'm glad you like it! you are right, it should have an apostrophe, will correct that now. cheers for the compliments  i tend to use longer sentences when i want to convey a fast pace. i find on reading it back to myself that the confusion it causes can mimic adrenaline quite well, but in this piece i think you're right. 
thanks for your time 
Jon


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## mockingbird (Mar 10, 2011)

Hi again Jon from a fellow Welshman on the south coast, title could be Snap Shot or The Collector?


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## mockingbird (Mar 10, 2011)

Jon, what do you think - Keep the original start to Eternal and correct it by trimming down the descriptions commas etc or start the story in a linear way. As it is we don't get to the real story at the asylum until chapter 11 where revelations come thick and fast.


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## Jon Prosser (Mar 10, 2011)

i appreciate the suggestions, unfortunately the collector is also a title of a book or film, not sure which  i find it isn't very important as there are so many overlaps of titles to be found, as long as the content is different  i'll answer your second post on your thread


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## outoftheblue (Mar 21, 2011)

Hey Jon - you've commented on a piece for me, so thought I should return the favour! Overall, I really liked what you've written. The Hitcher is an interesting character and, as I was reading, I kept having this feeling that The Hitcher might've been a ghost - a kind of 'James Dean wandering the road he was killed' kind of character. But from the physical consequences of being punched, turning to dust etc etc, I'm guessing that he's not a spirit/ghost. I'm wondering actually whether The Hitcher is actually the person who killed his daughter?? And The Hitcher - killer of his daughter - himself, then died? And as a punishment he had to confront the father of the daughter and reveal his secret as a snap shot of his regret? Haha, maybe I'm forcing these meanings on to you! haha.

There was a sentence that I would revise. Not sure whether it sounds better or not, it's entirely up to the author at the end of the day, BUT, instead of:

"In his peripheral vision Michael could make out the fuzzy chin and floppy hair protruding from under the hat illuminated dimly from the lights on the dash."

Maybe change to:

"In his peripheral vision, Michael could make out the fuzzy chin and floppy hair sliding from under the dimly illuminated hat from the dash lights."

- to be fair you could use any version of that same sentence, I don't think either are wrong. I suppose it's just a writers preference/style.

But I thought it was great and it raised theories and possibilities as to who The Hitcher could be.


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## Jon Prosser (Mar 21, 2011)

hey thanks for the response  the hitcher is a actually a hallucination. Michael's wife and daughter had been hijacked and killed along that road and it had driven him mad because he should have been there to protect them - the hitcher is the embodiment of his guilt. That is how he knows everything about Michael, and why he says he should have been there. Michael has held onto a delusion that his daughter is still alive and drives up and down the same road hoping to find her. The photo of her body in the Hitchers skull is the truth that he can't face. the idea of the two fighting is the two sides of his mind conflicting, his self preservation and defense mechanism against his logic and knowledge. Of course, it is up to the reader what interpretation they would like to take from it  

thanks for the suggestion, i think i will break the sentence a bit more with comma's, as it's a bit long 
cheers!


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## outoftheblue (Mar 21, 2011)

Ah, that's cool - it's almost like the stark reality (the picture and the graphic nature of it), doing battle with the delusions of what happened (The Hitcher). And once the delusions have left (The Hitcher turning to dust), you're left with the truth, stark reality (the picture).

I think it's great. I've always considered writing as a kind of playground to voice theories. I love theories, conspiracy or otherwise, and I think writing kind of facilitates them. You're almost, as an author, weilding your plot around a deep-seated theorie or belief that you have and you have one character that shares your belief/opinion in that theory, and another that is against it - and I suppose that's where the conflict comes, and that's where the story comes from.

But anyway, great story!


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## fortysixandtwo (Mar 28, 2011)

Hi Jon,

Overall I really liked the theme and the plot twist near the end. I could certainly envision the atmosphere of the piece really well.



> In his peripheral vision, Michael could make out the fuzzy chin and floppy hair protruding from under the hat; illuminated dimly from the lights on the dash. Cold from the blue light, warm from the red light, a contradiction of sorts. Suddenly he saw the chin incline his way.



Maybe it was just me, but I had to read this paragraph a few times and still couldn't make sense of the cold/warm thing.

I think more snappy lines of dialogue would be good too, that is, just using 'he said'. Or nothing at all.

I really liked the cat's eyes and the thudding. I thought it built up the tension really well.

Regarding the ending, I laughed when you made the analogy to an Easter egg and all the eeriness, tension and atmosphere that was built up, dissolved. Maybe he just finds the picture in a coat pocket? Or maybe better explain that it was a hallucination or a figment of his crazed imagination? 

But yeah, good work!


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## Jon Prosser (Mar 29, 2011)

hey, thanks for the reply  
the cold/warm thing is the lights from the cars heater dial - on my car the blue merges into red lights to signify the temperature, and i adapted it here as a metaphor. the hichter is a projection of truth/logic, which contradicts michael's delusions. they conflict at the end, and michaels last act of insanity is to try and destroy it, only to find that he can't escape it, hence the photo. 
i will look over the dialogue again, there isn't a lot because originally i had a limit on my word count, but i'll see what i can do.
and i will definitely take out the reference to the easter egg if it made you laugh  hmm, i don't want to make it too plain that the hitcher is a a hallucination.
but thanks for the suggestions! much appreciated


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