My friend and I were hitchhiking from one ski hill to another. Naturally our topic of conversation, as we stood at the road side with our thumbs out, was whether or not we would survive a hostage like situation if we got picked up by a murderer….Rhi Evans writes for SnowsBest.
We hardly noticed when a white van pulled in silently behind us. The man that emerged from the vehicle was wearing a camo hunting hat. I’m not one for stereotypes but immediately I concluded that if we were to be abducted, kept in a basement and tortured, this man, in said camo hunting hat, would be the man do it.
My fears were accentuated when he opened the car boot for us to put our snowboards in, inside lay two black canvas bags. His previous victims, I assumed, as my palms started to sweat.
Our driver mumbled to us darkly to be extremely careful getting into his car as he was very car proud. Because naturally what I do when I enter a vehicle is key it and punch a window through during the process. The vehicle wasn’t in overly good nick so I was slightly baffled at his intense request to not touch anything, I suspected he just didn’t want us to leave our fingerprints anywhere; evidence.
Old hunting magazines scattered the car floor which he snapped at us not to step on. It was then that I noticed the fur chair cover he had on over his driver’s seat. Straight out of the “Murderers Interior Design Handbook”. I started checking for all available exits.
The car had an unpleasant smell to it, like a mixture of body odor and damp dog but I saw no possible signs to indicate that the chap owned a dog. I wondered if it was the dead bodies he had in the trunk that were causing the stench.
At one point we pulled over into a viewing point half way through our trip. “He’s going to kill us” was my initial thought as I racked my brain for what I had on my person that I could use as a weapon. Thankfully he just used the viewing point as a viewing point and not a murder point. Minus the crippling anxiety it was a glorious view.
The white van man was very softly spoken, I struggled and strained to hear him but in most cases resorted to the classic British response of laughing awkwardly and hoping for the best. Delicately, I tried to start conversations, choosing my topics carefully. I envisioned him suddenly snapping and spitting words like “cockadoodie” at me before smashing my ankles in with a sledgehammer like in Misery for asking him if he thought the weather would stay nice.
I feebly asked about his friends and family. He said he didn’t have any, there was only him. Probably because he’d used them for taxidermy.
I was just beginning to wonder what picture my parents would choose of me to put on the side of a milk carton if I went missing, and if people actually still put pictures on the side of milk cartons, when we pulled into our destination. Thank God because I have limited decent pictures of my face.
The driver muttered at us once again to be careful getting out of his car then drove off into the distance, running over a group of school children as he went.
This blog was originally published as Free Lifts and Suspicious Wiffs on itsalldownhillfromhereweb.wordpress Head on over and give Rhi a shout! She’s hilarious.
