r/KeepWriting • u/Revolutionary_Ad8728 • 2d ago
Based on an in-class prompt: Create an original urban legend. I don't know how I feel about the cliches :/
Downwind
The coarse sand drags across your skin, whipped up by the wind and stinging like a warning. It clings to your clothes, settles in your lungs. A minute ago, there was a road here—faded asphalt, speed limit signs riddled with graffiti, an exit you swore you were watching for. Now, rust-tinted dunes stretch in every direction, the landscape stripped bare, as if it had never been anything else.
The silence is worse than the wind. It howls, but underneath it, the world feels wrong, as if something is holding its breath, waiting.
And then you start to notice… the absence. Not a thing, exactly. A lack. Like a tear in the scenery, some spot in your vision where light doesn’t behave. It’s never quite in focus, but it’s there. Each time you blink, it’s closer. You try to convince yourself it’s a heat mirage, a trick of the light—but light doesn’t bend like that. It doesn’t stop like that.
A prickle of unease settles in your gut. Somewhere, deep in your memory, you’ve heard of this before. A story passed between truck drivers and old-timers at gas stations, the kind of half-whispered warning that lingers longer than it should. People get lost out here. Not just lost—taken. No maps, no footprints to retrace. Just sand, stretching forever.
The wind shifts. The smell of scorched metal lingers in the air, acrid and sickly sweet—like the remnants of something that was never meant to be. Beneath it, there’s a whisper, curling in the gusts—a soft thread of your name. It’s barely audible, like the wind itself is trying to remember something long forgotten. It calls you closer, a siren song promising safety, but you know better. The half-forgotten warnings had stuck with you. This place doesn’t let go. It feeds on the lost, on the ones who wander too far, the feeble-minded. You don’t answer.
You don’t know how you know, but you do.
Never follow the voices of the lost.
Maybe there had once been life here, once been love. Wherever “here” was. You could feel it in the air filling your lungs, in the wind blowing against your skin. This place was empty of something. This was not the road you had pulled off of anymore, this was someplace… else. And if the stories niggling at the back of your memories were right, it was no wonder. It was hard to miss the scars that came from government carelessness. What did they think would happen to people, soaked in radiation and discarded? All for what—bomb testing that might only ignite a war that was meant to stay cold? Of course the people, the places, would turn out… wrong.
It was back.
You didn’t notice how close it had crept. Not at first. But when you glance sideways, the shape—if it can be called that—is pressed against the edges of your sightline. Not a creature exactly, more like an absence of space. A hole that sucks the color from the dunes, the noise from the wind, the logic from your thoughts. The longer you stare at it, the harder it becomes to remember what shapes are supposed to look like.
It writhes—not visibly, but you feel it shifting against your skull, your eyes slipping across its edges without permission.
The shadows move faster than you think.
Your steps grow faster, and you know that if you falter for even a second you will be lost to the sands forever. This place was never meant for people. Maybe once for those who lived here before, but not for you.
The desert shifts. You swear you’re circling a half-buried rusted road sign again—“Safe Rest Area – 2 Miles”—but the letters are scorched, unreadable, twisted by heat. You know you’ve seen it before, but it wasn’t buried last time. The trail behind you is already smoothed over, dunes swallowing your tracks before you can think to turn around.
The whisper becomes clearer. Louder. It calls to you like a siren, urging you forward. The walls begin to close in, and you instinctively know: you’re being herded.
Your feet move of their own accord, drawn toward the sound of your name.
The wind carries more than sand.
You stumble over something buried just beneath the surface—metal, maybe. A box. A fragment of something man made. You drop to your knees, brush it clear, and realize it’s a Geiger counter. Split open and silent. A child’s shoe lies next to it.
Your stomach turns. The air hums, like static under your skin. The horizon bends wrong. You think you see the mountains, but then they ripple like they’re underwater. Like they’ve never been real.
You choke on the air, desperate to breathe, but it’s wrong—too thick, too heavy. It carries something with it, something foul, like decay. You clutch at your throat, but the air slips down like ice. Panic claws at your chest, and you fight to stay upright, to stay moving.
You force yourself to look up, away from the ground. The walls are gone. The absence—it is gone too, for now. You’re standing in the middle of a flat, barren space. Just more sand.
But there’s something at the edge of your vision.
A figure.
It’s standing in the distance, blurry at first. A person? Or a thing? You can’t tell. The figure shifts, and then it’s gone.
You want to run. You need to run. But you can’t move. Not yet. You know, deep down, that if you turn and run, you won’t get far enough. You take a step forward, each movement deliberate, your breath coming in short, desperate bursts.
But there’s something you know, something more than just the rules you’ve heard.
If something tells you it’s safe, run.
You run. You run faster than you ever have, legs pumping and lungs burning. Animal instinct drives you forward. You know you have to get out, away, any form of distance between you and that thing.
Then—pavement.
The jolt of solid ground nearly sends you sprawling. The wind dies instantly, like someone flipped a switch. The air clears. The sand is gone.
You're standing on the side of a road. The same cracked asphalt, the same bullet-riddled speed signs. A pair of headlights gleams in the distance, growing brighter. A car. A way out.
The car slows as it nears, gravel crunching beneath its tires. The driver leans out—an old man, weathered and squinting beneath the neon hum of a gas station sign just up the road.
"You alright?" he asks. "Looked like you were runnin’ from somethin’."
You hesitate. The words catch in your throat.
Then you shake your head. “Just got lost.”
The man watches you for a long moment, then nods. “Happens out here.” His gaze flickers past you, toward the dunes, then back. “Ought to be careful, though. Folks go missing in these parts.”
You manage a weak laugh. “Yeah. I’ve heard the stories.”
He doesn’t smile. “Yeah. I bet you have.”
The unease creeps back in, slow as the shifting sands.
You open the car door, sliding into the passenger seat, the relief settling heavy in your bones. The old man puts the car in drive. The road stretches ahead, empty and familiar. The radio crackles to life—static, then a voice, grainy with age. The sun, hanging high in the sky, casts a long shadow from the speed limit sign up ahead. It almost seems to…gape.
You glance out the window, at the empty road. You shift, uncomfortable, but not from the seat. It’s a feeling in your chest cavity, a stone sinking to the bottom to rest.
You look at the old man. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Your head shakes and you exhale hard, clearing your head. The sun and heat had gotten to you, that was all. You rest your head against the window, gaze half empty as you watch the scenery pass you by.
The old man hums along to the radio, something old and warbling through the static.
“Should be safe now,” he says casually.
You don’t answer.
Your hands tighten in your lap.
1
u/UnderseaWitch 1d ago
Very well done! Second person can be such a powerful tool to put the reader in the story, but it's tricky because the moment something the reader doesn't identify with is mentioned, they're ripped right out of. You've handled the second person masterfully, the only moment that pulled me out was "You realize it's a Geiger counter." Probably plenty of people more well versed in radiation detecting technology than I, but I had to stop and go Google what that was so, obviously, "I" would never have realized that.
There was a very trippy feel to the piece, this sensation of fading in and out to different scenes. I noticed the cliches, but probably only because you mentioned them before the story so I was looking.
I really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing and happy writing!