MATTHEW BALKUM Wyrd Sister

lecting in her stomach, stabbing her from the inside. It told her to turn around and look in the backseat, but she couldn’t bear to. She gripped the steering wheel and pressed onto the gas harder, going so fast the rugged, cut edges of the dark forest became a black blanket around her, somehow trying to escape this feeling that someone- possibly the person she had hit- was sitting behind her, waiting for their gazes to meet. But now that someone must be inches from her, because something oddly warm caressed her neck- a breath. It leaked from a decaying mouth, smelling like rotting lungs, and fell down to her collarbones, where it coiled around the air. The nails of a painful scream embedded themselves into her throat as she fought the urge to turn around. Tears welled in her eyes, from the stench and from the fear consuming her. But it wasn’t enough. When the chorus of the haunted screams whispered into her ears, and the blazing hot brush of someone's fingertips grazed her shoulder, she found herself yanking the wheel to the right as hard as she could- mostly out of fright, and a last ditch effort to save herself- and her car ran off of the road, and was devoured by the trees instantly.

Art by Matthew Balkum