CREEPYPASTA

Something Weird In The Gas Station

One of the very few perks to living with a rare terminal illness is the way nothing ever seems important enough to get stressed about. I'm speaking from my own limited experience, and in no way would I recommend you go out and get your own rare terminal illness if you don't already have one, but in my case I was able to make peace with the reality of my impermanence early on. Before the diagnosis, when I was a teenager, sometimes I would worry about living up to my own expectations of adulthood, which is absurd when you consider that the town I grew up in is the capital of lowered expectations, whose only claim to fame is being the home of a famous bloody Civil War battle and the place where it rained frogs that one time. Don't ask; it's not as interesting as it sounds.

I work at the twenty-four hour gas station near the woods at the edge of town, and as far as jobs go, it’s not the best but not the worst either. Knowing that I won’t be here too much longer dulls any ambition to climb the corporate ladder.

Some days churn by without incident, moving the world one step closer to oblivion or whatever. Those are my favorites, when I can pass an entire shift reading a book and minding my own business. I don’t need to climb a mountain or visit the Grand Canyon to know what Zen feels like. Tranquility is a quiet, empty gas station at 4:00 in the morning.

Of course, some days aren’t as uneventful. I’ve experienced rude customers, drunkards, vicious raccoons that fall on the chaotic evil spectrum of the D&D alignment, a handful of armed robberies, and some other things that I can only describe as… weird.

I had one of the last type of days yesterday.

We had been busier than normal in the weeks leading up to this. Some of the wildlife and fisheries agents from neighboring towns had been patrolling the woods pretty heavily, and our gas station is the only place for miles to get fuel or fresh coffee. I don’t know what the hubbub was about, but I would guess everyone’s been on edge ever since those cows were mutilated.

Ok, I think that maybe “mutilated” is too strong of a word to use. Somebody has been sneaking onto cattle farms and shaving the cows bald. Who knows why? Small towns get bored.

I wasn’t paying attention to the time because I never do, but it was late in my shift and the middle of the night when the deer poked his head inside the gas station. I had just finished my book and was checking my phone for weather updates when it happened. The glass door was pushed slightly ajar, and a large deer with an eight-point rack of antlers was slowly inspecting the store, scanning its gaze from one corner to the other, nostrils flaring with each sniff. It stopped moving and pointed its giant black eyes right at me. I remained perfectly still, except to put my phone down because this was way more interesting than the possible snow storm headed our way in the next few days.

We stared at one another for just a moment longer until the deer pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped one foot inside.

Whatever you’re imagining right now, it’s wrong, and I know that’s my fault because I’m telling you this story, so I apologize. There were a few key details to this deer that I haven’t mentioned yet.

First, the deer’s head was about seven feet off the ground. And second, I could see through the glass of the front doors that this deer was standing upright. From antler tip to pelvis, the deer was just like any other ordinary white-tailed I had ever seen in the woods or the side of the interstate. Tan fur, long neck, confused expression. But at the legs, he turned into something else. If kangarooish were a word, I would call his legs kangarooish.

He stepped a kangarooish foot into the store and waited like he was making sure that the ground wasn’t going to fall out from below him. When it didn’t he put the next foot forward. The door shut behind him and the deer started walking down the gas station aisles, his antlers barely missing the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling by millimeters.