2:04 AM. That's when the memories always come to haunt you. Your cold clammy hands tap impatiently at the desk, eyelids drooping heavily.  Every night is the same. Your life feels miserable, pointless. The gas station has practically become home by now. On a flickering, melting neon sign outside, barely legible read, “Everyone welcome day or night!” The sign was oozing some sort of liquid, dripping down the window in globs. When everyone else sleeps you stay up. Working the night shift at a gas station in the middle of rural Texas didn't get you many friends. Midnight ’till 7 AM every night. Stale bags of chips and piles of dust are your only company. Sitting on a rickety desk chair you found in the dump, shivering. It is frigid. No heaters inside the gas station. Cold night air drifts through the gunshot holes in the windows. The walls are cracked and broken. A section of the roof has caved in by the drink aisle. It is musty and dank inside. Scorch marks cover the insides of the walls. No clue how they got there. The smell of burning gas stings your nostrils and eyes. Broken pipes are full of mold. Red stains are splattered against the wall. Broken down vehicles are scattered next to the store. Flickering dim lights above the gas pumps outside hum faintly. A dead snake lays under the corner of your desk. It was your only friend. You talk to it, sing to it, and sometimes even caress it. All sanity is slowly slipping away, drop by drop, just like the melting sign outside. 

A movement outside the glass doors. A flickering light. A sudden sense of panic creeps into your body. Through your every muscle and bone. Your back stiffens and becomes rigid. Your skin begins to tingle. Every single hair on your neck stands up straight. A tear appears in your eye. You begin to tremble. The always cold room becomes frigid. All the lights begin to flicker and dim. A heavy feeling in the bottom of your stomach weighs you down. You feel like running but you can't move a muscle. Stuck as if strapped to your chair. 

A quick bark of laughter from just behind the doors. Too dark to see a thing. A hand grips your throat. You panic before realizing it is your own. Your heartbeat speeds up and you can hear it growing louder by the second. Time seems to stop. Everything is in slow motion. It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s fine. Just a shadow. Oh god. Run. But you can't seem to move. Petrified with terror. And then it happens. A dark shadowy hand grasps at the door. Long fingernails scrape against the glass, making a sound worse than nails on a chalkboard. Another burst of laughter. Malicious, cold, and horrifying. All the flickering lights go dark, replaced with a red glow barely bright enough to see the doors. You see no body attached to that hand. It grasps the handle and you see the metal begin to freeze over. It pulls the handle and the door is ripped from its hinges. It makes not a sound as it falls into the shop. 

A gust of wind blows through the now open door. The red glow fades into a cool green. The wind is warm against your face. The scent of the earth after rain floats in the breeze. A bird flies through the door. Feathers that seem to be made of silk, long and graceful. Some purple, green, and blue, and a few stray strands of silver. Bigger than any bird you have seen before. 6 feet long and the wings nearly 5 feet wide. It glows with an eerie aura. The world stops spinning for a moment. You can breath again. Tilting your head you look into its eyes. They seem endless, like a pool of golden sunlight. It floats, gliding through the air like a cloud floating through the sky. As it gets closer to you, you begin to feel as though you are floating. It is intoxicating. You can't remember a thing about your life. The air smells of honey and mist.  A feeling of divine serenity intoxicates your entire body. It seems to beckon you forward. You are drawn to it. There is no resisting the urge. You need it. It has consumed you entirely. 

You reach out to touch it, embrace it. Your hand nears its beak and you can feel a warm halo surrounding it. You are standing now reaching as far as you can, And finally you touch it. Everything jolts.  It has become you. Hands begin grabbing at you. You are frozen again. The magical glow is gone and the cold returns, shocking you. It is indescribably painful. The hands are cold and boney, like the one at the door. Sharp nails dig into your arm and pull you down to your knees. A strong wind begins to blow, bags of chips and pieces of paper fly around the room. You scream. Hands coming from nowhere are dragging you down, pressing you against the floor. You want to die, anything to get free of this pain. Your voice echoes around the shop, ringing in your ears. The hands begin pulling at your hair, forcing your head to the ground. Your face is pressed against the cold concrete floor. They push harder until you can't breath. You feel as though your skull is crushing. Fire rushes through your veins burning your flesh. The world is spinning around you. A hand clamps down over your mouth stopping your screaming. The hand smells of rotting flesh and smoke. Your vision starts to blur but you can see the bird. It doesn't look as beautiful now, almost ugly. Not at all what it seemed.  Its eyes glare down at you, mocking you, tempting you. Its once beautiful feathers wither and smolder. It begins to grow, larger by the second. It consumes the room. Its colors fade to a grey. A low humming starts to buzz in your ears and the laughter is back. Sharp, like daggers piercing your skin. It grows louder and louder. The hands seem to laugh too, more of them emerging from the cracks in the walls. They are covering your whole body, their grip getting tighter every second. You choke and sputter against the hands closing against your throat. The hands are freezing and the smell makes you gag. 

A bag of chips that had blown off the shelf landed in front of your face. It bursts open with a squelching noise, sending the stale pungent odor into your nose. Then fingers begin crawling their way out. And toes too. They crawl towards you. Wiggling and squirming. Crawling over each other like worms. The toes roll on the floor, severed hairy digits with crusty nails and peeling skin. The fingers move at the joint, inching blindly around the now empty bag. The bird, now huge, circles around your head. It gives you one last revolting look and flies through the door. As soon as it passes through the store it begins to fade to dust and ash. It is quickly caught up by the wind and carried far away into the brisk night. 

And so you are left there. Suffering in pain. Until one hand squeezes a bit tighter around your neck, and the world goes dark.