Bogleech.com's 2016 Horror Write-off:

Iowa

Submitted by Zombard

We're driving through Iowa, a boring state let me tell you, and I'm entertaining myself by either playing the game of describing the road kill or just counting the seconds.

Something weird moves in the grass at one farm, like a cow's ass, if it were horizontal a few feet off the ground, instead of ass-level.

It turns, and I can't tell if there is another side. We're driving right up to it. "Hey, pull over." My groggy boyfriend does at my insistence. He takes the moment to drink the coffee we bought. "Look."

He cranes over me and watches the brown flesh move back and forth, almost like it was gliding across the soil. I can see now that it has five bumps across it's head, in a circular pattern. Maybe there are more.

Slowly, these open, revealing five moist eyes.

The eyes spin around and then the thing moves closer, hauling across the grass to reach us. My boyfriend tosses the coffee in my hands and hits the pedal, the car screeching off the shoulder. I turn back to watch this thing as it works it's way on to the road. It leaves no trace on the asphalt or the dirt, but it does move fast. We go at 70 mph and it seems like it's still about to reach us.

I have a thought, "What happens if it reaches us?"

"I don't know??"

"Oh shit."

Two more emerge from the side of the road, adding to the first. The further we go the more that pile on, and eventually I can hear them, like a dull thudding of muffled horse hooves.

"Are we going to need gas soon?" I whisper, trying not to jinx us.

"I hope not."

I start trying to count them, the glimmering eyes piling up one on one makes this seem like a mirage.

Then, they stop.

Piling and cascading on themselves, as if at a wall. As we keep speeding past, I can see the back side of the "NOW ENTERING IOWA" sign.

"They stopped."

We pull into a gas station and wait there for a few minutes.

"I guess they don't leave Iowa."

He drinks a warm coffee, "Well. That's good."

"Yeah."

"Don't we need to go back through Iowa to get home?"