The Last Booth at Bitter Creek

The night began like any other Friday, with the promise of cheap drinks and louder music. My friends and I had driven forty minutes out of the city to Bitter Creek, a town that existed on the edge of the map and the edge of reason. The locals called it ‘The Last Stop’ because it was the final place you’d want to be stranded. The club, The Rusty Spur, was the only pulse in the town’s dead heart. We had heard stories, of course—whispers of missing travelers, of a stretch of highway that ate cars, of a diner that served meat that tasted like regret. But we were young, invincible, and aching for a story to tell.

By one in the morning, I was done. The whiskey had turned my stomach, and the bass was rattling my skull. I told Marcus and Lena I’d meet them in the car, that I needed air. They were too caught up in the strobe lights and the false promises of last call to notice the gray in my face. I stumbled out into the parking lot, the gravel crunching under my boots, and headed toward the half-block stretch of darkness where we’d parked.

The car was an old Chevy, a hand-me-down with a cracked dash and a smell of stale cigarettes. I slid into the driver’s seat, locked the doors, and rolled up the windows. The streetlights here were sparse, and the ones that worked flickered like dying fireflies. I checked my phone: 1:47 AM. I settled in, scrolling through my music, trying to calm the thrumming in my veins.

At 1:53, I heard it. Laughter. Not the carefree, boozy laughter of club-goers. This was high and thin, like the giggle of something that had just discovered amusement in a wound. I peered through the windshield, but the darkness was absolute. The laughter came again, closer, from my left, where a row of boarded-up shopfronts huddled together. I told myself it was a couple of women, drunk and lost, maybe heading to the 24-hour diner on the other side of town. I forced a smile and looked away.

But the laughter didn’t fade. It grew, multiplied, until it sounded like a dozen voices twined together, pressing against the glass. I looked again, and this time, I saw them. They were standing under the one working streetlight about thirty feet ahead. Three figures, all in dresses that seemed too bright for the grime—yellow, red, and blue—like candy wrappers left in the rain. Their heads were tilted at unnatural angles, and they were watching me. Not looking at me. Watching. The one in yellow raised a hand and waved, slow and deliberate.

My blood turned to ice. I fumbled for the ignition, but my fingers were clumsy, and the key slipped. I cursed, found it again, twisted. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. The figures took a synchronized step forward. The one in red began to hum a tune I didn’t recognize, but it felt like a lullaby I’d heard in a nightmare. The one in blue tilted her head further, so far I heard a crack, and her mouth opened too wide. ‘Come out,’ she said, and her voice was the same as the laughter, thin and sharp. ‘We saved you a seat.’

I slammed my palm on the horn. The sound blared, harsh and loud, but they didn’t flinch. They just kept coming. The streetlight above them flickered, and for a moment, I saw their faces. They had no eyes, just smooth skin where eyes should be, and their mouths were stitched shut with black thread. The laughter was coming from them, I realized, from behind the stitches. It was the sound of air escaping from somewhere not meant to hold it.

I looked away, praying to any god that might listen, and tried the ignition again. The engine roared to life. I threw the car into reverse, my hands shaking on the wheel. I didn’t care if I hit something. I just needed to move. The tires screeched, and the car lurched backward. The figures were still there, but now they were standing at the edge of the parking lot, watching me retreat. The one in yellow lifted a hand to her throat and made a slashing motion, and then they all vanished into the dark.

I didn’t stop until I was back on the main highway, the lights of Bitter Creek shrinking in the rearview. My hands were still trembling when I called Marcus. He answered, annoyed. ‘Where’d you go? We were about to call a cab.’ I told him to get out of there, to take the back roads if they had to, but not to go near the car. I didn’t explain. I couldn’t. I just kept driving, the sound of that thin laughter chasing me all the way home.

They found Marcus’s car the next morning, abandoned in the Rusty Spur’s lot, both doors open, engines running. Lena’s phone was on the passenger seat, a single text unsent: ‘Coming out.’ The police had no leads. They mentioned the recent disappearances, the ones the town never solved. They called it a ‘bad area’ thing. But I know what I saw. I know what I heard. And sometimes, when it’s late and the roads are empty, I still hear that laughter, and I see three figures in bright dresses, standing under a flickering light, waiting for me to come out and take my seat at their table in the dark.