Goblin Hitchhiker

Prompt: hitchhiker, goblin (10/26/20)

The trucker bobbed slightly alongside his music.  Hard rock to hit the spot—nothing else could keep him awake this late, after three miserly hours of sleep and more road construction than clear highway.

“One hundred forty-six miles left,” he reassured himself after a glance after a glance at the GPS.  “That’s hardly—what are you doing?”  With a sigh and a grumble, he eased the truck to a stop a dozen yards in front of the ped.  He didn’t bother pulling onto the shoulder, with no one else about.

The slight, hooded figure he’d spotted hurried forward.  A woman or a child, he figured, and prepared to jovially berate either one.  But when the hitchhiker clambered up, the trucker found himself looking at a wizened face, and a deformed one at that, with a tumescent nose, beady black eyes, and washboard chin.  Worse, he looked greenish under the cab lights.  Sick? the trucker guessed.  He’d better not be contagious!

“Hi, there,” the trucker said.  “Cold night for a walk.  Hope you don’t mind the music.  Driver’s choice.”

“You are much kind,” the fellow said, and the trucker mentally added "foreign" to his list of deformities. 

“Name’s Erik, by the way,” the trucker said, his foot reminding the accelerator who was boss.

“I am Fritch,” replied the ugly fellow with a movement like a seated bow.  “I saw much thanks to you.  Your truck,” he added earnestly, “is much pretty white.”

Erik laughed.  “Not my choice—company color.  I’d rather red and gold.”

“No, no,” Fritch said, shaking his head.  “White pretty.  White good.  Bad does not prefer white.”

“Is that so,” said Erik, and turned up the radio.

Fritch took the hint and did not speak again.  He sat and fidgeted and, after a time, took out a furry thing like a rabbit’s foot and rubbed it.  Erik thought he now and again mouthed a word, but that was foreign people for you.

One hundred forty-six miles came and passed, and Erik pulled into the parking lot of his cheap motel.  “End of the line,” he told his passenger.  Against his better judgement, he added, “You gonna be okay?”

“Many thanks,” the little fellow said, clambering down from the truck and giving Erik a proper bow.  “I remember this in my restore.  When you have much bad, I will make good.”

“Right, thanks,” Erik said with an awkward laugh.  He watched Fritch walk crookedly into town and then shook himself, laughed again, and went to check into his motel.

He forgot Fritch after that, except for when swapping tall tales of strange hitchhikers with his fellow truckers.  He didn’t recognize him a decade later, in the lobby of the hospital where his daughter lay on the edge of death, or think of him when the broken smoke alarm somehow came to life in the middle of the night, or in the heart-leaping moment when his truck hydroplaned on ice at the pinnacle of a bridge.  Why should he?

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Author's Note: what is it about me lately, that my protagonists are kind of jerks?  (Erik isn't that bad, mind; I'm also referencing some stories I haven't posted, but which you'll see eventually.)  I don't know.  But though as an author I am sometimes snide about it in my narration, I'm also sort of enjoying it.  I used to play Apples to Apples in a nursing home every week, and after months of that, it was a great relief to play Cards Against Humanity . . . for about four hours, after which my brain rebelled and I took on the challenge of making everything I played as nice as possible.  So you may be getting some sweetheart protagonists after a while.  Not the overly sticky sort, though.