It happened on a dark and stormy night, isn't that always the way? On a long and desolate highway. We were hitchhiking. And as with the best horror stories, the scariest ones, we survived to tell the tale. Around campfires, to our kids, we'd tell it. At pumpkin lit Halloween gatherings, and at drunken, upper-crust dinner engagements, we'd tell it. No, we'd miss not one opportunity to tell our story, we'd spare no expense. We would spill our guts at the first tongue loosening sip of brandy, at the first chance to top our guests’ contrived, ill-construed, twilight zone memoirs, with our own. Even as our wives would look on in disgusted embarrassment, 'He's not telling that one again, is he?' We would relish any and every opportunity to tell the tale of that dark and stormy night. It was that kind of story.

Only, this one is true. Aren't they all?

We'd left the car twelve miles back, at the Sunshine Diner. It was broken, that much we could tell, if not by looking under the hood, then by listening to the silence as we turned the key in the ignition. It was broken, and it was broken good. It was out of gas, sure. It had run out of gas about a mile before the diner, and that was when Fernando had made a startling discovery. He'd discovered that if you turned the key in the ignition while the shift was in first, and simultaneously lifted your foot from the clutch, that the battery's electricity would propel the car several feet forward. This, at first, seemed to be a slow but sure method of travel, at least until we could find a gas station. We moved slowly and steadily, along the shoulder of the highway, anxiously peering through the beads of rain that drizzled down the windows, all around us.

We continued like this for upwards of an hour, before the battery finally gave out. Actually, I suspected, and was later proven correct, that it was much more than the battery that had given out. But I saw no reason to pile any more aggravation upon Fernando's already weighty temper.

Yes, Fernando had, and still has, quite an impatience, quite a temper. And it was his short fuse that saved us that night. Saved us from what, I don't know, but I'm sure that he would agree that it was his ugly disposition, his peevishness, that got us out of a very sticky situation. A situation that could only have gotten stickier, could only have ended badly.

As fate would have it, Fernando's automotive remedy did not prevail. The car died about half a mile from the Sunshine Diner, and to Fern's dismay, we were forced to leave it. We pushed it off the side of the road, out of sight, to a spot where we could be relatively assured of its safety.

As it was, there was no one to help us at the Sunshine Diner. That is to say, help us any more than by providing enough coffee to warm us and envigor us for the long walk ahead. "Sixteen miles to the next gas station," said the waitress of the otherwise empty diner. "Good luck," she had smirked.

The pay phone had been broken, but the coffee had been on the house. What, to the waitress had seemed like a fair exchange of amenities, had to us been just another facet of a perfect evening. Just a hint of the way things were going.

We'd been walking for over an hour, and hitchhiking for almost fifty minutes. The rain was beating down, and it was windy. Thunder and lightning, the works. Whenever the occasional car would cruise by, we would stick our thumbs out onto the highway. And as the car passed, we'd be drenched with its muddy spray. But no more drenched than by the torrential downpour that constantly rained throughout the entirety of our adventure. I began to doubt whether any of the drivers even saw us.

And then it happened. Dramatic pause. This is where I usually sit back and sip my wine. Where I look at my watch and announce that it's much later than I thought, and that I have an early appointment in the morning. Then, for as long as I can, I pretend to ignore the cries of ‘Then what happened, Daddy?’ or the cries of ‘Please, do go on, Robert.’ It's all that I can do not to smile at the attention being heaped upon my every motion, my every perceptible facial contortion. So eventually, I frown and concede.

"And then a car pulled over," I would say. A beat up old Chevy Nova. What color? I couldn't say, the dark and the rain ravenously devoured any semblance of color that it might once have bragged, and the occasional lightning that punctuated the evening imbued the car with a preternatural quicksilver glow. If forced to guess a hue, I would have to say rust.

The driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. With a gruff, "Need a ride?" she popped up the lock.

The woman, if that's even fair, was the scruffiest, most square-jawed, grease stained specimen of humanity that it has ever been my fortune to encounter. She seemed more suited to the cab of a truck than behind the wheel of her Nova. She opened the door, and smiled at us.

As luck would have it, I got the front seat. Actually it was more Fernando's persistence than luck. He dove into the back, and with one sharp look, communicated to me that it would be both rude and impractical for us both to take the rear. Then he smirked at his own strategic deftitude, and I checkmated myself into the front.

The first thing that assaulted me was the smell. Stale cigarettes, over what smelled vaguely of rotten McDonald's food. I noticed the open ashtray was full of lipstick covered cigarette butts. This struck me as odd, as the woman, at first glance, did not appear to be the type to wear makeup. I pulled the door closed, and fixed my stare on the windshield wipers, they seemed to be swinging with far too much force, more akin to hammers than strips of rubber, scraping the glass in their upside down pendulum motion, and slamming down on the hood of the car with an audible metallic rap.

Otherwise all was silent. After a moment I realized that Fernando was not into being a conversationalist this evening, and so I offered, "Our car broke down." No response. "We need to get to a gas station."

"All right, honey," she finally answered, and pulled slowly out onto the highway. I glanced into the back seat, and noticed that Fernando was entirely engrossed in trying to dry himself with the damp handkerchief that he always carried. I turned back to the woman, but could find nothing to say. "Thanks for the lift," I finally offered, rather weakly.

It was then that I noticed the blood. My first thought was that I had somehow cut myself. As I lifted my hand to wipe the last clinging beads of rain from my face, I noticed that my hand was covered in blood. I thought that I must have cut it on her car door, and this assumption was confirmed, when I noticed that the inside handle of the door was bloody, as well. "Shit," I muttered.

"What's-a-matter honey?" she asked. And when she glanced over and saw my hand, "Oooh, d'you cut yerseff?" She fumbled through a tremendous pile of garbage on the seat between us, and came up with a filthy, grease stained rag, which she offered to me. I took it out of politeness, but I was more afraid of infection than anything else. The rag was a mess, and stained with what I suspected might have been the blood from some previous injury. I found the cleanest corner that I could and began to gingerly wipe my hand. But I must admit, I touched that rag to my skin as little as possible, I wiped most of the blood on my jeans, and licked clean what remained. But when I had nearly finished, I began to worry, I felt no pain. I could find no wound.

And then I heard, or rather sensed, for I felt it more than I heard it, a rustling on the seat between us. And looking over, I could see that the pile of papers and garbage, mostly McDonald's wrappers, was stirring. I could make out what appeared to be a baby's car seat, beneath the trash. And for one horrific instant, I thought I could make out blood, staining the paper, but it was indistinguishable from the reflections of the raindrops on the windshield that moved across the paper as we passed each halogen street lamp. There was suddenly a renewed bustle of activity from beneath the paper, and as I stared in morbid fascination, the trash began to slowly fall away.

She might have caught me staring, or perhaps she just felt compelled to speak, as if the mere sound of her voice could provide sufficient explanation. "He's awake," she said.

And then I saw it, in all its gory splendor. A baby, as far as I could tell, but it was the word monster that forced and slammed its way into my consciousness. If I had been standing, I would surely have collapsed, and it was only out of hysterical reflex that I reached out and gripped the dashboard. I almost didn't notice the slimy stickiness that my fingers encountered there. This too, I wiped on my jeans, but I'm positive that it was blood. The car, I began to realize, was covered in gore. But this was only a sideline to the horror show on the seat between us.

"He was born that way," she explained, as if that could possibly diffuse the situation.

'The baby has no head! my mind screamed.

It is here that I usually pause again, and observe my audience. I like to see whether the disgust outweighs the disbelief. It's usually about even, give or take.

"The baby had no head," I continue, slowly.

It had no head. Just a bloody gaping hole in the neck. There was a fine membrane that separated the hole into two semi-circular holes, and I could hear a faint wheezing sound coming from the thing. Behind this traceated tube, which stood maybe a half inch up from the neck, was the closest approximation of a head that could be allowed the thing. The size of a tennis ball, and oval shaped, the brainstem hung limply to the side of the neck. It was covered with almost transparent skin, and a mucousy film of blood. As I watched, I could see the raised edges of the neck hole pucker and purse, almost but not quite, like lips. And occasionally, the brainstem would raise and flop, as if some weaker, undeveloped muscle were exercising its authority. A bubble of blood formed and popped on one side of the neck hole, and my spell was broken. I turned and saw Fernando, transfixed in horror, pale and staring at the thing in the front seat. He seemed to be on the verge of hysteria, if not on the threshold of fainting away like a little girl in a Victorian romance. Though I'm sure that in his version of things, he would attribute the same description to myself.

And then the thing went wild. Flailing and shrieking. Not screaming, so much as a hoarse, whistling hiss, like the air being let out of a balloon as the nozzle is pinched. It sprayed the car with thin droplets of blood and venom. The thing was waving its arms excitedly, and I was somehow repulsed by the tiny, perfect baby's hands, and even more horrified to see that it was dressed in a pink, furry, one piece pajama suit. I could see the white rubber foot bottoms, as the baby kicked its feet.

The woman pulled the car over, along the shoulder. "He's hungry," she said. I noticed a half empty baby bottle sporting a bloody nipple lying on the seat, and then we were gone. Leaving the door open and running through the rain, never looking back. Fernando was the first one out, pulling me, dragging me along, unstoppable in his terrified determination, his unquestioning tendency towards flight.

"You know it's not easy for me, either!" we heard the woman call after us, before the entire peepshow was lost to the bad weather.

And that's it, I address the room.

It is the looks of disgust that I relish. The unbelieving awe of, ‘You saw that? Surely you must be exaggerating,’ that I thrive upon. The fact that I did see that. And what's more, that you didn't. Whereas my voyeuristic needs have long been fulfilled, you are left to wonder, to disbelieve. To laugh, to forget, to throw up. Whatever. That's your business.

But sometimes, late at night, I do find myself alone and wondering. Just what the fuck did I see out there? Was it really some horrible deformity? Could a person actually live without a head? Not for long, I'm sure. Could it have been an obscure illness? Or was it some horrific new form of child abuse? Mutation? Mutilation? Could it even have been something supernatural? A monster?

Whatever it was, I’ve resigned myself to never knowing for certain, because rather than stick around and ask the awkward questions, Fernando and I panicked and ran.