Trapped

Victoria Wittenbrock

S tilence. The best word to describe that day. Not a tranquilizing, calming, peaceful silence. An eerie, sinister, disconcerting silence. Not in the way that one might venture outside on a Sunday morning to find that the usual noises of the hustle and bustle of the city are calmer, and there is a sense of serenity set in place by the sound of running water in the nearby creek or crickets chirping in the distance. Silence that occurs in the scene of a horror movie to generate suspense before the long-anticipated jump-scare flashes across the screen as the speakers emit a high-pitched shriek or deafening boom. Little did I know, things in my own life were about to go boom as well. My father and I sat in the living room of our condo together, just the two of us. A father-daughter fishing trip my senior year of high school. Likely our last one before I abandoned my family to travel across the country the next year to pursue my college career. I laid on one side of the couch, my father on the other, my feet stretched across his lap. I was reading a book and he was on his laptop catching up on some work. I took a brief intermission from my novel to stare aimlessly out of the window. The sky was menacingly grey with clouds. I realized to my dismay that it was still lightly raining. Not quite hard enough to elicit the typical pitter-patter sound of rain cascading onto the roof, but just hard enough to be an inconvenience. Typical mid-October weather, I thought. It was at this moment I began to ponder the peculiarity of how not even the fire was crackling like it normally seemed to. Even the monotonous clicks on my dad’s keyboard seemed gentler than usual as he typed away. Another hour or so wasted away and although the storm clouds continued to loom overhead, the rain dissipated, and the forecast seemed promising. My father and I had gotten restless; we had succumbed to the unrelenting, inescapable cabin fever. We loaded up the fishing gear and clamored into the truck, preparing to head out for a few hours of fishing in one of the streams just outside of town. We journeyed about 30 minutes or so beyond the confines of the little mountain town. We turned off the main highway onto a little mountain backroad that one of the town locals my father had become recently acquainted with told us about. The car lurched back and forth as we trudged along. In retrospect, I am in awe of how strong the suspension must have been. The sage brush along the sides of the narrow path occasionally scraped against the sides of the vehicle. Of course, my dad was more than willing to sac-

trifice his truck for the opportunity to snag an impressive trout. The path gradually got hairier. It started as we came across small puddles that he took extra care

tto maneuver around. The farther we ventured out from the highway, however, the more viscous and treacherous the mud became. I could feel it squishing out from underneath the tires. Eventually, we reached the creek. The fishing was decent, but I most enjoyed the bonding time with my dad. As time moved along, we decided that our misery from our frostbitten hands and stiff backs outweighed the thrill of reeling in a fish. The fish must have had the same experience because just as our apparent zeal began to diminish, they became less than compelled to bite. Before we began our departure, I asked my dad if I could drive back to the condo. I had recently obtained my driver’s permit and felt I had become very confident behind the wheel, a feat I was eager to display. He reluctantly agreed. I snatched the keys and turned them in the ignition. The series of events that was about to unfold would have an effect on me so prevalent that they would change my perspective on the world forever. I stepped on the gas and instantly knew something wasn’t right. The tires spun and the engine revved, but the car failed to do the one thing it was built to do—move. My dad advised me to stop, and he got out of the car to investigate. The wheels had been digging into the mud and we were stuck. He instructed me to roll down my window so I could hear him yell. When he began to push, I was supposed to step on the gas. Nothing worked. After about 30 minutes of trying in vain to jerk the car free, we came to the gut-wrenching conclusion: we were stranded. Darkness began to envelop the surrounding areas. I glanced through the frost-covered windshield and realized that I could visibly see the fog moving steadily towards us from the field of sage ahead of us. Within minutes, the car and everything as far as the eye could see would be veiled by a dense layer of fog and impenetrable darkness. At this point, my father called his friend who lived in the area to ask for much-needed help. Predictably, he was away on a camping trip two or so hours out of town. In the meantime, I sat patiently in the passenger seat, but as time wore on, I began to grow worrisome. Having nothing to entertain me allowed my mind to wander. To conclude our series of comically unfortunate events, it began to snow. At this point I had come to accept our fate and while my father was frantically searching for a solution, I began to devour the bag of beef jerky I had scrounged up from the center console. I had hoped we wouldn’t be there much longer because that had meant I only left my dad with two sticks of gum to survive. As this trivial thought crossed my mind, my heart stopped. My fingers tapping on byline 94 the dash stopped. I stared straight ahead into the distance. I look over to realize that my dad had frozen too. tdidn’t even have to

tThere, about 100 or so yards in the distance, was a light. My initial hope was that it was the headlights of my dad’s friend coming to our rescue. In my heart, I knew it was too early for him to have made it back. The light had been radiating out of a flashlight. As it grew closer, a figure appeared. My dad and I sat in silence, fixated on the dark shadow of a man sauntering ominously straight towards us with an awkward gait. Once he broke 25 yards, a tall, dark figure dressed in all black emerged from the fog line into the stream of our headlights. I could just make out his heavy rain-slicker and obnoxious rubber boots. Beside him he was dragging a heavy-duty metal chain. This moment made the scenes from cheesy teenage horror movies seem far less cheesy. As he approached the car, I reached for my dad’s hand, and he said, “I see him.” He began to roll up the window. I said in an attempt to lighten the mood but with an air of genuine panic, “He’s gonna kill us.” His reply was, “I know.” I looked at him with utter horror and squeezed his hand harder than I ever thought possible. I was not expecting to hear those words come out of his mouth. I had turned to my father, as every little girl does at some point in her life, seeking comfort and solace. I looked to him to reassure me that everything would be alright. That was not the case. He was as equally terrified as I had been. The man slunk to the window with one hand in his pocket, the other holding the large metal chain. We had nothing to defend ourselves with besides a couple of fishing poles, some dead trout, and an empty beef jerky package, none of which would place us at an advantage to a clearly experienced, psychotic, serial killer. He knocked on the glass. My heart dropped. My father rolled down the window about an inch. To our relief, the man slid a business card through the crack and explained that he was a tow truck driver that patrolled the area at night looking for people to pull out of the mud. He saw our headlights from the road and figured we needed help because, who else would be crazy enough to be outside under those conditions. To our utter embarrassment, we discovered that we clearly were not the only ones to be caught in this situation before. Turns out, the chain would come in handy towing us out of the huge hole we dug ourselves. Ten minutes and $600 later, we were out of the mud and on our way back to town, my dad behind the wheel this time.