so a long long looong time ago i was dating my shitty ex long distance. i went to go see him, and he had just gotten his first car and one night drove us out to go find a place in the mountains so we could look at the stars. we drove down miles and miles of highway, it was dark as pitch, we saw a passing semi maybe every ten minutes or so and hardly ever another car. the whole route was forest as far as the eye could see; either side of the highway was a wall of trees so tall, all perfectly straight and boughed evergreens and the line that made it look like you were driving through a labyrinth and werenāt allowed to look over the edge. i think he had NPR on, so probably soft, big band and oldies kind of stuff was playing quietly through the dashboard.
we passed through those little rest-stop barely-a-town places a few times. if youāve been on a long drive, itās the ones that take thirty seconds to drive through, and thereās only a gas station or two and some decrepit places to try and feed yourself and maybe a handful of old, old, worn-out houses. we were coming up on one. there was a big green road sign, i think saying the usual X towns are Y miles away, etc etc. something like that. and weāre driving up, coming out of the woods, and thereās something by the sign and itās big and kind of looming and dark and low to the ground. we were going over 70 so it only lasted a split second but the headlights kept illuminating more and more detail and suddenly, instantly, in one moment the light hit right and it was this unearthly black dog, hunched over the ground over something. it had long, skinny legs and its fur was kind of messy and it looked up, and stared at me right in the eye, and the headlights shone at it and it reflected in that lurid reddish-yellow flickering way and i think it might have been eating something, and the dog was so big, big with pointed ears, and then we blew right past it and that was all. that dog haunts me. i think about it all the time. i donāt know what it was. i donāt think it was a wolf. i had never seen a dog like that before.