You Know How the Story Goes: A Tor.com Original by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
My rating: 3/5 cats
You know how the story goes. One night, you pick up a hitchhiker on a country road. A young lady. It’s always a lady. This lady, she’s paler than the moonlight and doesn’t talk a lot. You see, there’s something about her that stops you from making your move, even though you’re single and she’s pretty. Instead you ask if she’s all right.
“No,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I’m not all right at all. Something very bad is going to happen. Something terrible.”
You ask her what and she says she’s cold. So cold. A single drop of blood is dripping from her nose.
You’ve got to admit at this stage you’re wondering what on earth possessed you to pick up a hitchhiker in the dead of night. We all know this is going to end badly for at least one or both parties. Abortion. Divorce. An autopsy. But you don’t want to be a jerk like that. This lady, she might need help, and it’s you she ran into.
i am a very big fan of urban legends, and i love it when authors take the familiar ones and give ’em a little twist of their own. that’s what this story is, where the twist on the “ghostly hitchhiker” tale is that this time, the narrator is the hitchhiker and he gets picked up by a creepy lady. which is not a completely unique spin on the story, and i am putting this visual securely behind spoiler tags because it caused me years of emotional scarring from childhood until the day connor made me watch the clip about 700 times in a row but i’m still pretty freaked out, so these spoiler tags are for everyone’s protection:
View Spoiler »
so, yeah—not the first of its kind, but still some mildly spooky fun. i only gave it three stars cats, but they are three stars cats making up a genuine “i liked it” reaction. and i did—i liked the story, but it was essentially just an urban legend. the narrator’s voice never sucked me in, and the rework didn’t add much to the reading experience. if you like urban legends, here’s an urban legend, but it doesn’t try to elevate itself into any higher literary plane.
and that’s all you get from me today, as per my resolution to not overthink the reviews for free tor shorts and the fact that i spent about 6 hours today writing a cover letter because i made ZERO resolutions about overthinking those. for all the good it’s done me.
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2018/02/21/you-kn…
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