AN Imaginary Story

 The dash-mounted terminal buzzed, pulling Officer Mark Miller’s gaze away from the rainy windshield of cruiser 412. He was parked in the gravel turnaround of an abandoned quarry, routine perimeter check, engine idling in the dead silence of 3:00 AM. A high-priority system prompt flickered on the console: LIVE AUXILIARY LINK ESTABLISHED.

His unit was rigged with experimental 360-degree night-vision feeds, capable of relaying external cameras from municipal infrastructure and nearby cruisers. Thinking dispatch had pinged a nearby pursuit, Miller tapped the touchscreen.

The screen blinked black, then resolved into a stark, infrared wide-angle view. It wasn’t a street corner or an intersection. The angle was elevated, looking down through thick pine branches onto a familiar stretch of gravel. In the center of the frame sat a single white cruiser, lightbar dark, exhaust pluming softly in the freezing drizzle. Cruiser 412.

Miller’s pulse spiked. Someone was perched twenty feet up in the tree line directly behind his bumper, pointing a high-definition optic straight at him.

He reached for the door handle, but froze as a movement flickered on the monitor. On screen, a tall, impossibly emaciated figure stepped out from behind a cedar trunk. It didn’t look like an ordinary suspect; its limbs were elongated, moving with a jerky, disjointed rhythm, completely unbothered by the jagged rocks. It walked up to the rear of the patrol car.

Miller snapped his head around to check the rearview mirror.

Nothing. The mirror showed only the empty, pitch-black gravel road stretching back into the mist.

He looked back at the monitor. The figure was standing right at the driver’s side door, its face pressed against the tinted glass, staring directly down into the cabin. On the screen, Miller could clearly see the top of his own head, his hand resting beside the steering wheel, and the creature hovering inches away from him.

He turned toward his driver’s window. Empty glass, reflecting only his own pale, wide-eyed expression.

Then the monitor showed the figure raise a pale, five-jointed hand, tapping a long nail against the window.

A sharp, physical tap-tap-tap rang out against the real glass right beside Miller’s left ear.

Miller slammed his elbow against the gearshift, yanking it into drive, and floored the accelerator. The cruiser’s tires shrieked, kicking up a hail of wet quarry stone. The vehicle lurched forward ten yards before the engine gave a violent, metallic shudder and died completely. Every instrument light on the dash went dead, plunging the cabin into absolute darkness.

Except for the auxiliary monitor.

The screen glowed with an electric, pale-green hue, humming at a pitch that set Miller’s teeth on edge. The camera feed hadn't cut out. The angle had shifted again, now pointing from somewhere inside the cruiser’s trunk partition, aimed directly forward at the back of Miller’s cage.

Miller ripped his service weapon from its holster, the slide clicking back with slick, oiled precision. He pressed his back flat against the driver’s door, leveling the gun toward the dark back seat.

"Step out!" Miller shouted, his voice cracking against the claustrophobic air. "Step out now!"

There was no sound in the car except his own ragged breathing and the soft, steady rain hitting the roof. The back seat was physically empty. The black vinyl bench caught only the faint reflections of the storm outside.

He glanced down at the screen.

On the display, the back seat was occupied. The thing was folded into the rear cage like a broken umbrella, knees pressed against its sunken chest, long fingers wrapped around the reinforced steel mesh dividing the cabin. Its face—pale, featureless skin stretched drum-tight over bone, with two sunken, lidless pits for eyes—was tilted sideways, staring directly at the back of Miller's neck.

On the screen, its jaw dropped open in an unnatural, hinge-snapping yawn, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth.

Miller squeezed the trigger twice.

The gunshots in the enclosed cabin were deafening, blowing out the rear windshield and perforating the headrest and the partition behind him. Gunpowder smoke choked the air. Miller frantically reached for the door handle, kicking the door wide open, and stumbled out into the freezing rain and mud.

He didn't run. Trained instinct anchored him to the rear bumper, weapon raised, scanning the blown-out rear glass. The cruiser sat lifeless in the drizzle, smoke drifting lazily from the shattered back window. There was no blood on the upholstery, no movement in the brush, nothing in the trees. The quarry was dead quiet.

Trembling, rain running down his collar, Miller stepped toward the open driver's door to grab the radio handset.

The monitor was still glowing on the console.

The perspective had changed one final time. It was a close-up, ground-level angle, looking up from the mud right beside Miller’s boots. On the screen, two elongated, gray hands were reaching out from beneath the undercarriage of Cruiser 412, their fingers wrapping silently around Miller’s ankles.

Miller looked down at his boots. Nothing was there.

Then he felt the ice-cold grip seize his shins, and the ground ripped away from under him.

The impact drove the air from Miller’s lungs as his back slammed against the wet gravel. He was dragged backward beneath the cruiser with sickening speed, jagged stones tearing through his duty uniform and carving into his skin.

He clawed desperately at the mud, his fingers locking onto the cruiser’s rear tailpipe. The metal groaned under the sudden strain. Below his waist, the invisible grip tightened with bone-crushing force, pulling him into the impossible hollow beneath the chassis—a space far deeper than the car's six-inch clearance should have allowed. It felt like dangling over an open mineshaft cut directly into the dirt.

With his free hand, Miller raised his sidearm, wedged the barrel beneath the car's frame into the pitch-black void wrapping around his legs, and dumped the remaining rounds into the dark.

Muzzle flashes strobed against the damp underbelly of Cruiser 412. The deafening cracks kicked up smoke, but on the fifth shot, the mechanical clatter of a hollow shriek tore through the silence—a sound like grinding gears and static feedback.

The grip vanished.

Miller scrambled backward on his elbows and knees, hauling himself out into the rain. He hit the driver’s side door, lunged inside, and grabbed the radio mic from the dash.

"Dispatch, 412, officer needs immediate assistance! Quarry turnaround off Old Route 9, shots fired, I need—"

Static hissed through the speaker, followed by a voice that wasn't dispatch. It was his own voice, playing back with a stuttering, tape-delayed delay: “—shots fired, I need—step out now—tap-tap-tap—”

Miller dropped the mic. On the dashboard console, the auxiliary feed flickered violently, cycling through dozens of cameras at once.

It showed the quarry entrance. A traffic camera two miles down the highway. A doorbell cam on a suburban porch nearby. Every single screen displayed the same tall, contorted silhouette standing under the streetlamps, perfectly still, heads cocked toward the direction of the quarry. They were listening to the gunfire.

Then the auxiliary screen snapped to an internal view of the county dispatch center, twenty miles away.

Behind the glass console where the night-shift dispatcher sat with her back turned, another set of pale, elongated limbs was slowly uncoiling from the ceiling tiles.

The radio click-clicked twice, and a quiet, flat whisper came through the dash:

"No units available, 412. Signal received."