I work for roadside assistance, which basically means I’m the Uber of car problems, sort of like a mobile mechanic. If you have a flat tire or dead battery and call your insurance for help, we’re the guys they send out to assist you.

It’s not a bad gig really, as I basically just cruise around the city all day listening to music and podcasts and waiting for a driver to get in a pickle. I have no coworkers or boss breathing down my neck, and I just get to kinda do my own thing.

Now as you can imagine, there are some dumb and strange people out there. I’m not knocking our customers, as 99% of the time they are wonderful and appreciative, and I’ve never actually had an overtly negative interaction with a customer. It’s usually the other people hanging around that cause an issue.

I’ve had a few interesting events, but honestly, most of them are more hilarious than anything. This obviously isn’t exactly the place for that, but other than a few slightly uncomfortable situations; I’ve only ever had one incident which I would classify as downright terrifying. It happened to me a few months ago, and ironically it had nothing to do with a customer.

I haven’t told anyone about it until now. It’s just very difficult to understand.

Just to clarify, I am not currently diagnosed with any mental illness aside from mild depression. Never had any hallucinations or bouts of psychosis in my entire life, nor do I use illicit drugs of any kind. As far as I know I’m healthy. The reason it’s necessary to emphasize this is twofold. 1: this event is something I don’t know how the hell to explain and 2: I’m honestly terrified of what the implications could be.

It started like any other day; I mark up on the app I use to let dispatch know I’m available, and prepare myself for the day. I got flooded with like 5 calls right off the bat, and was basically hoping from one call to the next without any downtime in between. I prefer when it’s that busy, because I make more money and the day goes by faster.

Around 9pm that night and things finally start to slow down a bit. After changing a woman’s tire in a Costco parking lot, I realized I didn’t have any other waiting calls. There was a Walgreens across the street, and I decided to just park and wait for another call. I browsed through YouTube and Reddit for maybe half an hour before realizing I was hungry, and deciding to do something about it.

The area I was in was basically at the furthest point in my patrol, and I wasn’t really familiar with the area. After googling what restaurants were nearby, I found a Taco Bell and punched it into the GPS. Much to my dismay, after about three minutes of driving towards it, I saw an odd sight in the road. Multiple police cars had sectioned off the area past the intersection. It must’ve been a car wreck or some kind of crime investigation, but either way I couldn’t go forward and follow the GPS.

With an annoyed groan I turned right and waited for the GPS to reroute. Apparently, that road that was blocked by the cops was the only real direct route to the Taco Bell, because the ETA on my screen switched from 7 minutes to about 12. The road on the screen winded and twisted into a forested area.

In a few seconds I was outside the small town and onto the backroads that ran parallel to it. Thick walls of trees lined both sides of the road, and the sparse light from the town soon diminished in the rearview. A steady torrent of rain was dripping down on my windshield, kept at bay by the rhythmic swipe of my wipers. Before long, the only source of light was that beaming from my headlights.

I kept driving, and saw no other cars along the road. A few minutes later, and a sudden annoying yellow light popped up on my dash just as a road came into view on my left. My eyes drifted down already anticipating the oil level light that routinely flicks on. I drive a Subaru which has an annoying tendency to burn oil, and every once in a while I have to top it off.

I try to do it as soon as possible to avoid unnecessary engine wear, so when I saw that light come on, I pulled my car to the side of the road, flicked on the hazards and popped the hood. I stepped out, oil jug in hand onto the side of the road at night, in a place I wasn’t familiar with on a rainy, ominous evening. Nothing bad has ever happened to anyone under those circumstances, right?

To the chagrin of some, no serial killer attacked me, and no evil cryptid dashed out from the woods to try and eat me. My .44 magnum is kept on me at all times when I’m on the road, so if anything would’ve done that I would’ve fired without hesitation. I had no reason to do that though, and the night was quiet, filled only by the gentle pitter-patter of falling rain.

I twisted the oil cap off, added half a quart, and shut the hood without incident. The GPS was squawking orders at me as I got back inside my car and shut the door. The clock on my dash read 10:36PM, which was actually an hour fast because I don’t bother changing it for daylight savings. I usually just go off the time on my phone anyways, and that little detail may not seem relevant, and in the moment, I didn’t think it was either. I’m 100% certain it was the case though, just so we’re clear.

The GPS painted a trail which continued straight on the road. To my left was a single road, and a couple hundred yards down it was a row of houses. The strange thing was, my GPS didn’t show anything there, and gave no indication that the road existed.

That struck me as odd, but I figured my GPS just wasn’t loading right. After closing and reopening the app however, I found it unchanged, and my phone had full bars. I thought maybe the road was a new development that hadn’t been updated on google maps yet, but the houses had clearly been there for quite some time, so that didn’t really make sense.

I don’t even know why I was suddenly interested by it. My stomach was still growling, and bowels quivering under the prospect of digesting a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Yet for some reason, I was transfixed on that road which according to the almighty google, did not exist.

I turned down the road, and watched my headlights swivel towards the cluster of houses. The rainfall had increased in volume, and I kicked my wipers into overdrive. My GPS lost it’s shit and began nagging me to ‘make a U-turn’, before I shut it off.

I drove forward seeing the looming houses come closer. The rain that had bellowed a moment earlier then suddenly halted dead in it’s tracks. My wiper blades continued to scrape across the clear windshield for a few seconds, making an annoying whining noise because they should’ve been replaced like two years ago but I still haven’t got around to it.

I shut them off, and it confirmed the rain had stopped falling entirely. That struck me as odd; and I suppose rain can stop suddenly like that, but I’d never seen it stop that abruptly.

An odd feeling struck me then, and a few things happened at once. The first was a nervous feeling trickling in my gut, followed by my ears popping as though I had just gone through an altitude change despite the road being almost entirely flat. A random zap then slithered through my brain, as if struck by electricity but disappeared before as suddenly as it had appeared.

The foreboding feeling of dread seemed to grow deeper the further I went, but my curiosity was still stronger. I realize ignoring your gut is like the biggest mistake everyone makes in horror movies, and I know I’m a dumbass for it, but I didn’t feel I was in danger. It was just an insatiable curiosity.

I reached the houses a few seconds later, and saw no lights coming from within them. Upon closer inspection, I realized the houses were unlike any I’d ever seen. The architecture was ornate and altogether foreign, with spiraling columns and odd, wavy groves around the base. The walls were slanted and smooth, looking like whoever built them was either severely drunk the entire time, or aimed to build something entirely different to anything ever seen.

I wish I’d taken pictures, but I was too enamored with what I was seeing at the time to consider it. The houses all seemed built in a similar style to that first one; and they looked like things that would’ve been more at home in the Star Wars universe or something.

I could’ve almost written them off as some eccentric architect who just wanted to build something unique, but that wasn’t the only odd feature. The numerous cars that lined the neighborhood were also different. They all had four wheels like any other car, but I couldn’t identify any of the makes or models. I’m usually pretty good at that too, because it makes my job a lot easier when searching for a customer, but I didn’t recognize a single one; or even the logos on the back of them.

My plausible explanations further dwindled at that point, and it first occurred to me that I was witnessing something truly weird. The road eventually curved, and rounded to continue deeper into the neighborhood. Those odd homes stood silent as templars along the way, and they seemed to go on for quite some distance. Around the corner the road forked in three separate directions. The ones on the left and right led to more clusters of houses, and the one straight ahead led out into another desolate road.

I then noticed the few trees in some of the yards and sidewalks. They were tall and skinny, almost like palm trees but with skeleton branches lined with small yellowish leaves that dangled down like a willow tree. I don’t know what species they were, but I’d never seen them.

The houses on the left and right were similar in design to the first street, but with a few worrying caveats. Several of the doors were cracked open. Two of the houses had a bunch of random debris scattered in the front yard, and one house looked like it had been struck by vandals with a broken front window and damaged door.

It looked almost like the houses had been ransacked or struck by a mini tornado. I turned right, simultaneously enthralled and nervous about what I was seeing. Not sure what to expect next, but with a nervous tremble I pulled my 44 from underneath my seat and rested it on my lap.

My GPS still had no clue where I was, and according to the app, I was aimlessly driving around in the middle of a forest. As I entered the new street, my headlights illuminated something up ahead which made me freeze. I hit the brakes, and saw something bipedal standing on the sidewalk maybe one hundred yards away.

It was sort of twitching in this odd, rhythmic pattern that seemed to repeat every few seconds. I was struck all at once by a feeling of thick dread, and also a desire to get closer. I thought maybe it was someone in trouble, and that they could use help, but I also desperately wanted to turn back.

I drove onward, creeping closer and closer to the unnerving scene. My headlights finally revealed the images they’d hinted at earlier, and my jaw hit the floor.

It looked like a person; two arms, two legs and a humanoid head. But it was fuzzy, undefined like I was viewing it through water. It seemed almost stuck in what I can only describe as a looping animation. It stood upright, and it’s head tilted back to what had to have been a very uncomfortable angle, before twitching for a moment and resetting at it’s original position.

It didn’t react at all to my presence, and I couldn’t make out the details of it’s face. The way it moved was indescribably unsettling; and I had this subliminal feeling that I was seeing something that was never meant to be witnessed. Whatever that thing was, it was moving in a manner that was impossible for any ordinary human.

I’d seen enough, and put the car in reverse to turn around and leave. I kept my eye on that thing as I turned around, but it didn’t alter it’s behavior in any way. As I flipped my car around, my heart sunk deep in my chest as my eyes beheld something I had missed earlier. There was another one.

It was on the driveway, hidden behind some odd vehicle from my original vantage point. It was humanoid like the other one, but it had no lower half, no legs. It was just a torso with arms and a head. It was crawling down the driveway, before reaching a certain spot, twitching and transporting back to it’s original position and repeating it all over. Just like the first, it didn’t seem to notice me, or maybe it wasn’t even capable of it.

The red flags in my mind sprung higher than ever before, and I realized I had no explanation for what was going on. I just wanted to leave, and hit the gas pedal, bound for the same exit which I had entered through.

As I retraced my route, I saw more of them. Dozens of them lining the houses I had previously passed through and behaving in similar fashion to the first two. Twitching and moving around in a plethora of ways before resetting into their original positions. I was in full panic mode by then, and just wanted to get out.

By that point I was speeding through the neighborhood, and I heard something crash behind me. In my rearview, I saw something enormous rise in the trees. It was shrouded in darkness, and consisted only of a shadow.

The thing rose several dozen feet taller than the trees around it, and it’s head slowly split open in an ocular shape; like one giant eye. An immense blue light beamed out from the opening socket, and it swiveled towards me. I heard the ground quaking behind me as the thing lumbered towards me, it’s eldritch gaze glaring and effervescent.

I held my breath and slammed my foot down, causing my engine to roar loudly and my car to rapidly accelerate. I reached the end of the houses where I had entered, and the rain suddenly returned to pelt my car. I slammed my foot on the brake as my car came dangerously close to flying into the ditch. It groaned and screeched as my car slid to a stop in the middle of the road, the scent of smoldering rubber filling my nostrils.

I took a moment to level out my breaths, and mustered the courage to look in the rearview. There was nothing there, no sign of anything that I’d seen earlier. I was back in the same spot I had pulled over to refill my oil, without a clue as to what I had just witnessed. It got even weirder than that though.

My eyes caught a glance of the dash, and the green, LED light shown the time on the screen. 10:36 PM. I know for a fact I was in there for at least ten minutes, and yet time hadn’t passed at all. I thought maybe it was broken, but the clock on my phone confirmed the same time.

I thought I was really and truly screwed, trapped in some time-devoid dimension for eternity without any hope of returning home. When the clock finally turned and read 10:37, my heart breathed an indescribable sigh of relief. I drove away from there, having lost my appetite entirely. I just drove home, despite my shift lasting another two hours. I was just so rattled by what had happened, I didn’t care about anything but getting home.

This was months ago, and I still have no logical explanation. At first, I thought the whole thing was some incredibly vivid nightmare or bout of psychosis, but that doesn’t explain why the time didn’t pass. I guess maybe I’d subconsciously imagined the clock in my sleep, but the more I go along this route of thinking, the more unlikely it all seems. It all just seemed way too real to have been a dream.

Which of course leads to the outlandish explanation that it actually happened, and I didn’t hallucinate any of it. I’ve been back to that same location where this happened numerous times, but the neighborhood and road aren’t there. Nothing is, it’s just a grove of trees alongside the road, with no indication there was ever anything else.

The whole event has left with me this overwhelming sense of existential dread. Like maybe I was transported to a separate dimension, or experienced a glitch in the matrix. I both wish I had more answers, and also that I could forget it ever happened.

I really don’t even know how to end this post, or even what to think anymore. If anyone has experienced anything like this before, then please tell me. I still work the same job, and can’t really afford to leave it right now. I don’t really expect to understand what happened to be honest, but one thing is clear to me. Reality itself is more convoluted than I think anyone is ready to understand.