"Oh please no, please please no, please don't do this to me!" John groaned.
His car rattled with the unmistakable sound of alloy against tarmac. A flat tire in the middle of fucking nowhere. John cursed his car and his luck, and punched his steering wheel. The sound of the horn was drowned out by the worsening rain storm.
Nursing his sore knuckles, John went to the trunk of his car to search for the spare tire. His heart sank; he still hadn't replaced the fucking tire after the last flat. John cursed himself this time and slammed the trunk shut. The howling wind was building around him, and by now the downpour was incessant.
John took out his phone to call for assistance. Suddenly, an eery wave of warm light-headedness came over him, and for a moment he almost felt drunk. Seemingly of its own accord his hand opened, and his phone dropped into a storm drain.
"FUCK!" John yelled. The warm wave now passed, and John cursed himself again. He wondered what the hell had just happened him. Was it low blood sugar? Was he getting sick? These questions could wait, because right now he was stuck on a road in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thick forrest, with no functioning car or phone.
Beginning to panic, John looked around and saw in the glow of the car headlamps that just up ahead a narrow lane turned off the road. With no other option, he approached the turn-off and saw an open gateway - could this be a driveway?
John rushed towards the gateway, the roaring wind blowing branches across his path. He passed through and started up the lane - in the distance, he saw lights!
He picked up his pace now, and as he got closer he started to see that the dim glow was coming though the windows of an old, tall house. As he got closer his panic started to lift, and he thanked God that his luck was starting to turn.
John noticed that the closer he got to this house, the feeling of that same strange, warm wave he had felt when he dropped his phone was starting to return. He felt a sense of calm start to grow in him, and he felt that going to this house would be his salvation. Going to this house would help him. He needed to go to this house. John felt his anger and tension ease the closer he got to the front door, and he enjoyed the feeling that all of his problems would soon be over.
Something troubled John, however. Somewhere, deep down beneath this feeling of calm, he felt something darker, something incidious - he felt terror.
John saw the front door of the house slowly creep open, and backlit in the dim glow he saw the silhouette of a woman.
"Hey there! Come in, come in, before you get blown away!" the woman laughed. She waved him closer, and his legs picked up the pace without him telling them to. She beckoned him into the house, and the door closed behind him.
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John found himself standing in a candle-lit hallway, in front of a tall, striking woman with long, black hair and pale, almost luminous skin. He was barely aware of the strange decorations adorning the walls, and the strange sounds eminating from the rooms in the house. He saw a black cat slink along the floor, and heard the screeches of birds in cages, but his focus was only on the woman.
"You must be soaked through!" she said, with a smile that somehow both comforted him and reminded him of the terror he had felt. "Please come into the living room and sit down by the fire, you must tell me how you have ended up at my front door!"
For a moment John wondered why this woman was so relaxed, happy in fact, about a strange man showing up at her door in the middle of the night. This thought passed quickly, and John gladly sat himself down by the fireplace.
The woman stood in the doorway, and John could not take his eyes off her. He felt embarassed about staring at her, and tried to look away but he just could not. The woman gave him another deep smile that let him know that he did not need to look away.
She was wearing a long, black dress which flowed down past her knees, and around her neck she wore a necklace which hung down over her bosom. John found himself staring at this necklace, and at the strange talisman which rested on her cleavage.