Retrospect

Arthur was not sure why he stopped to pick up the hitchhiker. It wasn't the sort of thing he normally did; he was always uncomfortable around strangers, and never very good at conversation, even with those who knew him. Maybe it was this particular stretch of road, the horribly familiar curves and bends with jagged rocky cliff thrusting up on the left, and falling away on the right down to the narrow beach and the hungry ocean surf below. Maybe it was the fact that being alone with his memories on that particular stretch of road was too much for him, so overwhelming that even the discomfort of a stranger's presence was preferable to the torment of his own thoughts.

The young man—probably only in his early twenties—slid into the back seat of the car, an easy grin on his open, handsome face. He shucked off his backpack onto the seat next to him and ran a hand through his tousled blond hair. "Thanks, Mister," he said. His voice was light and cheerful.

"Dangerous road to be hitchhiking," Arthur blurted, and then felt self-conscious. It was true, though. What few shoulders there were on the winding road were narrow, and it was full of blind curves where a car could easily hit an unnoticed pedestrian.

"All the better that you came to pick me up," said the young man with enthusiasm. "It's gorgeous here though, isn't it? The sun on the waves and all."

"Mm," said Arthur, deciding that he didn't really want to talk about this. A soft touch came to rest on his shoulder, and Arthur's entire body jerked. He glanced up at the rearview mirror, and saw his passenger's smiling eyes behind him.

"Relax, Man," said the hitchhiker. "You seem pretty jumpy."

"I don't like it here," said Arthur, the words stumbling over themselves in his rush to explain. But then he remembered that he shouldn't, couldn't explain, and his jaw shut with a snap.

"Seriously, Man, you need to relax," said the hitchhiker, and Arthur felt the young man's other hand come to rest on Arthur's other shoulder. With an easy touch, the hitchhiker started to massage Arthur's shoulders, his strong, graceful fingers kneading at the tension in Arthur's muscles.

But this only made Arthur more tense. He wanted to shout, "Stop! Don't touch me!" but couldn't. Those were terrible, terrible words that he'd gotten rid of. He'd sent those words away, forced them so deep down inside himself that the phrase could not even rise into his mind. Instead, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, the skin of his fingers blanching to the same pale, sickly whitish-yellow of the sand on the beaches far below.

"I-" Arthur's mouth was dry, his mumble a mere breath of dust into the air. He cleared his throat and tried again. "That's sort of distracting. Sorry. I'm trying to drive."

"I'm sorry." The man's voice was smooth, but the press of metal against Arthur's throat was not. Arthur swallowed, his mind full of panic, and felt the blade of the knife press against the skin of his neck as it moved.

"What-" Arthur muttered, trying to push himself further back against the driver's seat. His mind felt full of mist, a haze of unreality that stretched out into his fingertips, guided the turn of the wheel that kept the car safely and precisely swinging around the sharp curves of the road.

"I'm distracting you," said the young man, in answer to Arthur's unasked question. The hand not holding the knife slid down Arthur's shoulder and side, snaking around into his lap. Arthur felt the fingers undo the button of his khaki pants, lower the zip. Slide inside, draw Arthur's member from his boxers. The fingers were warm and dry as they gently nudged his penis, stroking almost playfully at the underside, tugging at the loose skin.

Arthur's hands flexed on the steering wheel, and the tip of the knife poked at the hollow of his throat, a sharp reminder.

"Keep your eyes on the road, Arthur," said the young man. Arthur did as he was told, his body shuddering as it began to react, even through Arthur's fear, to the soft, insistant pressure of the young man's fingers.

"There we go," the young man murmured in his ear. "You like that, don't you? Hmm? Isn't it nice? You'll feel good soon, I promise."

Arthur's mind was blind with panic. The words were escaping from inside him, slithering out of their dark crevices like horrors from Pandora's box. The more he tried to catch one, the more the others would elude him, wriggling their way into his mind and slamming him with images, horrible—blood, pain, sorrow, fear—imprisoning his conscious mind even as his body sat rigid, his fingers coaxing the wheel to sweep back and forth as he maintained the course of the car.

He was hard. He was painfully hard as the warm hand stroked at his shaft, fingers dipping down to tickle at his balls at the bottom of each motion, curling across the head at the top. Arthur didn't normally touch himself very often, and he knew the dry rasp of skin on skin should have been painful to him, but the burn was almost exquisite, setting his nerves on fire, making his toes curl inside their shoes where they rested below the dashboard.

"See?" came the soft murmur of the hitchhiker's voice. "It's good, isn't it? Yeah? I told you I'd make you feel good." And Arthur remembered another pleasure, a sicker pleasure, one that felt so good he'd thought his body might catch fire even as it overcame him, burning him down to ash and dragging him down to hell. The twisted memories coiled around the present, fueling his lust, making him groan. The hitchhiker hissed approval into his ear.

"Yesss. Yes, that's how it feels good. Mm. You're a lucky little boy, getting to feel so good."

Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, and Arthur wasn't sure what he was seeing anymore, wasn't sure if anything existed beyond the white streaks of pleasure that slashed across his vision. He felt it close, felt himself reaching for it, felt his hips straining forward into the warmth of the other man's hand, closing in, closing over him like a drowning wave, eclipsing everything.

The hand didn't have a knife anymore. Did it? No, it couldn't, because it was slipping up over his eyes, like a gentle mask, bringing darkness as the other hand brought light. "Shhh," came the soft voice in his ear. "Come on now. Come for me. It'll all be over soon, I promise. That's a good boy, Andy."

And Arthur came, with a force that shattered him in mind and body.


"Do we have an ID on the victim?" Officer Orlan asked his partner as the older man stumbled his way across the rocky shore to the wreck on the beach.

"We do, and you're not gonna believe it." Officer Madrea was breathing hard as he finally made his way up to the scene of the accident. "It was Arthur Evans!"

Orlan was nonplussed. "Who?"

Officer Madrea looked startled for a moment, and then shook his head. "Oh, right, right, of course. That would've been before you got here." He removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Beside them, the waves crashed against the twisted wreckage that had been Arthur Evans's car. The equally twisted body had already been removed. "Arthur Evans used to live around here, way back. About ten years ago now he kidnapped a young boy, Anthony Pedini. Raped and murdered the kid, right on this stretch of beach, a couple miles up the road. God, the kid was only thirteen at the time. Horrible. And then Arthur just up and disappeared. No one ever saw him again. I had no idea he was even back in the area."

"Maybe he was just traveling through," said Orlan, looking back at the spatter of blood that covered the car's headrest.

"Big coincidence if he was, going off the road here of all places," said Madrea. "Well, good riddance anyway, if you ask me."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Orlan, as a crimson trickle of blood dripped its way onto the sand, only to be quickly swallowed by the incoming tide.