 I suppose it goes without saying, but there will always be something to complain about no matter where you live. That being said, there certainly are places with significantly more things to complain about, areas with especially cold climates, for example. I grew up in one such place. While I in fact do miss the years I spent living there, there's one thing about living in a colder climate that I'll never miss. That thing being driving in the worst months of the year, weather-wise. It isn't exactly an uncommon complaint for sure, though for many people who live in such climates it's simply a fact of life that they've long grown used to and adapted to accordingly. I had done so as well, at least to the inherent danger of it. Something happened to me though that made driving in such weather difficult to stomach. Unnerving, really. While I wouldn't say it was my main reason for eventually moving away, I have to admit that it did come to mind when I made the decision. I was 17 at the time. It had been a year since I'd first gotten my license, and it was my second winter driving on my own. Some people might argue that brand new drivers are the most at risk of accidents, but I'd say they become even more potentially dangerous after about a year or two of driving. Most reasonable teens are especially cautious at first when it comes to driving. However, after a year or two of experience, they might allow themselves to relax a bit. Maybe even become a bit overconfident. I certainly did. To me, that accident for a year was irrefutable proof that I was a safe experienced and overall simply good driver, even though in actuality, a year was hardly any time at all, and certainly not enough time to be considered experienced. Looking back on it now, it was only a matter of time before I experienced some sort of lapse in judgment. The storm was not sudden, and it did not come on unexpectedly. It was by no one's fault, other than my own, that I found myself forced to drive through it, just as it was starting to get particularly bad. The storm came with an initial bout of freezing rain to coat the roads, followed by a raging blizzard to further blanket the world and obscure the site. Travel wasn't impossible when I set out, but it was most certainly risky. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter, though. Regardless of how I might feel about it, I had to manage a one to two hour drive home one way or another. That being said, I still felt confident that I'd be able to handle whatever the storm threw at me so long as I was careful. In a way, I suppose I was right, though it might be more accurate to say that I survived rather than handled what happened within the veil of the storm. I eventually made my way onto the highway at a snail's pace, though I was disheartened to find that the conditions there were hardly much better than the backcountry roads I just managed to traverse. There was evidence that a snow plow would come through at some point, and I was sure that there were quite a few more out there working through the storm. However, at the rate the snow was coming down, the cleaning crew's efforts were only able to keep a small section of the highway barely passable in regards to the snow and the salt and ash they'd spread had yet to make a discernible impact on the ice. The journey home was going to be a long, slow, and exceedingly tense struggle. My hands gripped the wheel so tightly that my fingers ached from the strain. Even so, I didn't dare loosen my grasp. I quickly lost any trace of the cockiness I'd felt. Left in its place was a lingering regret over having made the decision to go out in spite of all the warnings against doing so that had come from, frankly, just about everywhere. I could barely manage to keep the car going in a straight line. Even though I kept the vehicle speed at a slow crawl, every now and then I'd feel the car's tires begin to lose purchase and slip. With the almost complete lack of any reliable traction, it was almost more accurate to say that I was guiding the car through a controlled slide rather than driving. It wasn't long before I started to see vehicles that had gone off the road. I looked on, in silent pity at my unfortunate fellow travelers. With the weather like it was, emergency services were likely a long way away. They were stranded. I might have chosen to stop to check on them and see if they needed help. As it was, though, I wasn't confident that I wouldn't end up in a similar predicament myself if I attempted to pull over. They would have to fend for themselves. I quietly reassured myself that there was probably a residential area, a reasonable trek away where they could seek shelter if things got especially dire. I made the decision to favor my own well-being and averted my eyes from their plight. It wasn't long after that, though, that I noticed something odd and found my gaze drawn back to the side of the road. There was another car, a sedan, that had lost control and gone off the road. This vehicle was slightly closer to the road than the few others I'd seen at this point, having only veered off course just enough to find itself stuck in a snowbank at the edge of the highway. As such, I had a much clearer view of it through the veil of the snowstorm than I had of the others. Even so, I might have only offered it a cursory glance if it weren't for one thing. The car had been left idling with all of its doors wide open. My gaze snapped back towards the vehicle from where it had been slowly drifting towards the road ahead of me, and all the attention I could spare from driving focused on the stranded vehicle. There was no trace of the occupants anywhere, at least as far as I could see through the blizzard. Perhaps they had decided to try their luck at finding a nearby residence willing to shelter them. That much, I'd expected. However, I couldn't think of any reason why they would leave their car like that. It didn't make any sense to me. That being said, I didn't stop to investigate or even slow down. Neither was a safe option to choose anyway. I simply glanced once more into my rear view mirror as the sedan disappeared into the swirling snow behind me before refocusing my full attention on the road in front of me. I tried to put the odd vehicle out of my mind. I couldn't waste time worrying about the fate of some random strangers when my own was still very much so in question. I actually very nearly managed to put this odd occurrence out of my mind. That is, until I came upon another vehicle in a similar condition. This time, a semi truck. I might have missed the silhouette of the cab's open doors some distance away from the road and barely visible. If it weren't for the heavy wide open doors of the trailer swinging back and forth in the wild wind, it was too dark to tell what the trailer was filled with. But I could make out that it was very much so in disarray. These two were only the first of several more vehicles that I'd come across in the next half hour or so that were abandoned in the same strange way. A minivan, another sedan, a semi truck without a trailer, and a jeep that had somehow ended up on its side, its one free door standing straight up in the air in defiance of the wind. There were a couple of vehicles that had gone too far off the highway for me to be able to tell for sure, but the brief glimpses I'd managed to catch of red tail lights through the storm was enough to convince me that they were no different. My confusion was slowly giving way to a fear and dread that crept across my skin insidiously, like a lingering cold, dulling the feeling in my extremities and setting them to shaking. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this, right? My mind simply ran around in circles though, completely unable to find it. No matter unexplained abandoned cars be damned, all I had to do was just keep driving, ignore them, leave it all behind me and make it home safely. There was movement ahead of me, something was in the road. I drew closer, slowly lowering my speed slightly. It was a person, a man, I think, waving me down. He looked like a traffic cone in his bright orange coat, I suppose that was the point though. I could see the lit tail lights of his car some distance away, his front end half buried in a snowdrift. I didn't feel entirely comfortable stopping. There was the question of the conditions as well as the fact that this was a complete stranger. However, I surprisingly found that my worries and growing fear of the strange abandoned cars took precedence in my mind over those more rational concerns. That being said, it wasn't like the man was just wanting to change his mind about needing my help though, and I wasn't so callous as to ignore somebody in need, who was literally right in front of me. He was blocking my way forward either way, so I slowly began easing my brake pedal down. So long as I was sufficiently careful, I figured I'd be able to come to a safe stop. At least I hoped. Before I could come close to doing so though, something changed suddenly and the demeanor of the man, his waving arms fell to his sides, not in a natural sort of manner and more like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut. He went rigid, completely, lifelessly, still some anane part of my mind conjured up Neville from the first Harry Potter movie, but I found no amusement in that thought. I was still some distance away, still slowly easing my car to stop in spite of my unease. Before I even got close to the man though, his head slowly turned off to the left and his body soon followed it in one smooth singular motion. He began to take long, slow and measured strides off the road, not even bothering to give my car a glance. Where on earth was he going? There was nothing over there and his car was on the other side of the road. I was wrong. There was something there, or rather, someone. I could have sworn he wasn't there before. It was as if he'd materialized out of the snow in the space of a blink. That couldn't be true, right? They were some distance away now, partially obscured by the falling snow. Even so, it was hard to lose track of that bright orange coat that they were both wearing. In fact, it wasn't just the coat. It was hard to tell for sure, but it almost looked like they had the same pants, the same hat, the same build. The man who had been in the road reached the other man, halting and going still once more. They both just stood there for a few moments. It was impossible to tell from so far away if they were talking or doing anything other than simply staring at each other. I'd reached the point in the road where the man had been standing before, still inching forward slightly. Should I still stop? Did the man want my help or not? The whole thing had me completely weirded out. I wanted nothing more than to take off, but some measure of courteous obligation kept me from doing so. The second man pulled the first man into an embrace, if you could call it that. He was stiff, cold and rough, seemingly devoid of all the usual emotions that gesture held, any emotion really. I didn't dwell too much on that though, as it was then that I got my first full view of the second man's face, or more accurately, his eyes. All other thoughts fell free from my mind. His eyes, darker than eyes, should ever have any right to be, seemed to burn in a clearly contradictory manner, like twin solar eclipses or a pair of holes in the world itself leading into a luminescent dark void. He was looking at me. They were both yanked backwards as if by an invisible tether disappearing into the storm in an instant. I didn't think, didn't even try to process what I'd seen. I just drove, picking up speed, driving far faster than what was safe. I needed to get away, get home, get to safety. Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw far too many flickers of movement through the falling snow, shadows going the other way, rushing past, keeping pace with my vehicle. I didn't look, didn't care, if only it was so easy. A massive silhouette came out of nowhere, like a semi-truck emerging from the storm to t-bone me in a non-existent intersection. I couldn't help it. I looked. That singular shift in my gaze was all it took. There's a blank spot, an indeterminate amount of time scorched from my mind without a trace. Even now, looking back on my faded recollection of that day, I can feel it clearly, like a scar, the clear sensation of something missing, and the certainty that some amount of time had passed since I was last fully aware of it. I certainly didn't have the time to spend dwelling on the implications of that in the moment though, as my vehicle had already begun to fishtail before I was even fully aware of it. I wildly pumped my brakes, my mind racing to try and remember what way to turn my steering wheel. I came so very close to going off the road, mere inches from stranding myself in the middle of that storm along with whatever unnatural thing it was concealing. By some measure of dumb luck, I was just barely able to steady my vehicle's course. Before I could even manage to catch hold of my panicked breaths, I reached the edge of the storm. The snowfall died off, and I broke free into a clear, cloudless night. I breathed a deep sigh of relief slowing my vehicle to a more reasonable speed. Any illusion of prowess that I'd had were long gone. I had no doubt that I'd simply been lucky. My gaze drifted up to my rear view mirror for a brief moment, more out of habit rather than any expectation that there would be anything to see in its reflection. There was something there though. Just for a brief moment before I blinked, and it was gone, a figure standing in the middle of the road. I didn't exactly get the time to spend examining this figure, but I still have clear, vivid nightmares about it all the same. It wore a coat, just like the one that still hangs untouched in my closet since that day. A pair of pants, a hat, a figure, and even a face unmistakably similar to my own. But those eyes, oh, those eyes.