I tried doing a paper route in a small town back when I was a fresh from high school teen. It was the early aughts when all those teen horror movies were coming out. Early, early in the morning enough to be considered late at night from the previous day, I was driving down a dirt road all alone. My music was blasting so as to stave off the loneliness of being one of maybe (If I’m being generous) 3 people awake in the surrounding 50 miles of small-town nothingness. As I was driving down this dirt road to the next part of my route, the road went from clear to a dense fog that rivaled the comical bits in tv shows where the stoners are hot boxing & you don’t know they are in the car until they open the door and get out.

That was when I saw it.

The longest redlight ever at the entrance to a single-lane covered bridge that ended somewhere in the fog. I couldn’t just ignore the red light and drive across the bridge because I couldn’t see if there was a car at the other end. There was no other end to be seen. But I also didn’t want to sit there at the red light in the middle of nowhere feeling unseen eyes peering menacingly at me through the fog.