Wrong Turn

A driver gets lost in a strange dimension - 1,430 words horror.

A dull irritation buzzed in her throat every time she drove that road. Was it the speed demons who overtook several cars in a row, exceeding the limit, with no visibility? Or was it the hazy apathy that crept into her mind as soon as her destination approached? In any case, she invariably found something to annoy her on her route. That day, she noticed the first warning sign for a dangerous bend had been turned away. What kind of reckless punk would find that funny? And of course, the maintenance crews would not exactly be rushing to put it back in the right position. The bend had long since disappeared from her rearview mirror, yet she was still fuming behind the wheel. Until, as always, the fog rolled in over her day.

On the return journey, despite the convoys of cars on both lanes, she again noticed the sign, stubbornly turning its back on her. Was no one else worried about the danger this represented? Goddamnit. It was twisting her intestines more than it should have. Or was it...? Oh no. She had left her jacket on the chair, with her keys in her pocket. What a shitty day.

As soon as she found a shoulder stable enough to stop on, she slammed on the brakes, and with the clicking of the turn signal bouncing against her clenched temples, she waited for the road to empty. A golden aura called for a vesperal rest on the country road, but stress prevented her from surrendering to it. Her engine roared as she turned around, gravel crunching under the tires. Her foot deep on the accelerator, her conscience deep in rumination, she forgot about the bend and its sulky sign.

What caused the car to brake was a spasm in her leg, but a violent wave of nausea struck her at the same time. Something was wrong.

Leaning over the steering wheel, she studied the track that stretched perfectly straight ahead. No tree, a gleaming apple-green pasture under an azure sky. Hot air balloons with pop colors, hovering close to the ground. Static. Empty. A cutesy pink wooden house on a hill as perfectly curvy as a Windows wallpaper. And half a dozen cars dumped in the grass, doors and trunks open.

She quickly turned to look at the bend, with the danger sign now facing her. The path she was on opened up right between it and the next sign, which disappeared into the dusk of the forest that should have been there. Her bulging eyes itched so bad she had to blink. When she opened them again, the normal road was gone.

A squeak escaped her lips, and, her hands clammy, she pushed the gearshift into reverse, but the engine did not respond anymore. Trembling, she opened her door, and staggered outside. She felt no fresh air, no moisture on her cheeks. Not a single insect chirp in the fields. The clouds, as if drawn in chalk, did not budge an inch. The landscape imposed its uncanny tranquility, and yet, if she squinted, she could have sworn she could perceive an untamed undergrowth, with sticky shadows and tree trunks carved with symbols. On her retina, they left only emojis, and in her nostrils, the smell of corpses mingled with synthetic fragrances, cheap plastic.

Approaching a bright orange car, the face of a young man imposed itself upon her mind. His expression was closed off, his pupils dilated, his gaze listlessly fixed on a screen in his hand. The apparition vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Her mouth dry, she approached the little house. Its cotton-candy simplicity threatened to melt into less conventional forms with every beat of her heart, and she stopped short when snatches of incantations echoed from behind its sugary walls. A deep-throated, grainy, phlegmy voice, more reminiscent of a hag than of Noddy and his friends. The flashes before her eyes became insistent, tearing through the pop colors with a black-and-white knife, the sinister forest encroaching on the bucolic countryside. She could not decide which one inspired her more dread.

The hot air balloons chose this moment to strike. Arachnoid legs sprang from their baskets, and their burner produced a blood-curling bellow. They raced down the grassy slope at breakneck speed, barely giving her time to flee, and the first one managed to slice off her thigh. Screaming, she stumbled and fell into a muddy ditch. The forest reclaimed its space, bringing with it the scents of mycelium and decaying leaves. Disoriented, she pressed her pants, soaked in blood, and for a moment believed she had gotten rid of the creatures. One of them burst out from some shrubs, and, its envelope digging itself into a hungry maw, it took away a whole piece of her upper arm.

She fled, blood streaming down her torso, adrenaline multiplying her strength. Zigzagging between the trees, she managed to gain ground on her pursuers. Spotting a hiding place in a cavity concealed beneath dark roots, she plunged inside, holding her breath. A bird’s cluck echoed under the canopy, and the sound of its flight misled the monsters, whose clattering legs drifted away on the forest floor. She dug her fingers into the dry earth, trying to stifle the wails of terror rising from her chest.

Something hard and rectangular was digging into her spine. Using her good arm, she pulled it out and saw she was holding a cell phone. The screen lit up with a paused video. It was one of those computer-generated shorts young people called Dreamcore. The same lulling landscape that had welcomed her after her wrong turn.

It unlocked something inside of her. Her daily fog crackled in her neurons before evaporating. She emerged from her hiding place, and walked back cautiously towards the house. The abandoned cars had kept their position, but they had been claimed by the forest, hoods compressed against trunks, rust stripping them of their manmade colors, nettles sitting comfortably on their seats. Her rage reawakened when she observed them, but it was different from the one she had experienced on the road. More visceral, rooted in the soles of her feet, leaving a satisfying taste of iron on her gums. Turning away from the carcasses, she walked towards the pink house.

It had resumed its cabin shape, familiar; she welcomed it with a ping of longing in her heart. It belonged to her. As this realization permeated her, a bird landed on her shoulder. The mutants had followed it, but fear and pain no longer held sway over her. Her blood had stopped flowing, and she listened. She listened to the thing that lurked inside her cabin. A thing that had no business living there. Oh, she remembered now. The inattentive little jerk, who was driving while watching his stupid video, barely taking his eyes off it when... The thing had gotten out of that bloody video, and stole her forest, her house, her trap, and the memory of who she was. But she remembered now.

The symbols, that she had carefully engraved in the bark, they were now whispering, in a language far more powerful than that produced by a keyboard. Incantations rose from the depths of her throat, thundering, like shattered rocks, like mud reshaped into a Golem. She reclaimed her witch voice.

The hot air balloon viruses lost their 3D, and fell to the ground in a dust of dead pixels. In the cabin, she could hear the entity which had cursed her to become one of those idiotic drivers, in their death-producing vehicles, their gases and waves disrupting the environmental sanctuary, murdering insects and small animals, and turning vegetation into dust. Yes, she could perfectly hear her foe’s distorted howls. It clung to its last vestiges of enchantment, but its illusion of an artificial dreamscape had lost its power.

The witch raised the phone, its screen turned toward her home, and a mighty suction made her wrist wobble before the glass shattered. Enjoy your integrated circuit prison, bitch. She threw the object to the ground and gleefully crushed it under her heel. The bird, perched on its mistress’s shoulder, cackled.

The leaves of the trees shivered, warning her that the right time had returned. She turned toward the path just in time to see a car slow down. The driver, looking lost, pulled up beside her, rolled down the window, and chuckled uneasily. “I think I took the wrong turn...”

She smiled at him, with all her sharp teeth, before lunging at his carotid artery.

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Text all rights reserved © Saint-Lazare, 2026. Photos by Kavan Cardoza and Yifan Lai.