For one week, I was going to be “Florida Man.” I hoped, of course, that unlike the real ones, I wouldn’t find myself in some disreputable legal situation: apprehended for cruising the Suncoast Parkway, naked, on a riding mower, with an alligator strapped to the hood, and five cases of Coors Light and a pizza full of meth on the back. I was hoping for something much quieter. I’m an artist, and I’d been hired by a pediatrician to paint a mural for her office in Tampa. No lawn mowers involved.

I’d visited Florida plenty of times. Growing up, Fort Lauderdale was my family’s yearly vacation destination. I’d only experienced the Atlantic side, though. Never the Gulf. So I jumped at the chance to see the other coastline while working on a new gig. Often, my wife tags along on these Florida jobs so she can hit the beach while I’m working, but this time it was just me and Florida.

On the second day, I wrapped up work, cleaned my brushes, and decided to drive a stretch of the coast road until the condos and hotels no longer blocked the view of the Gulf. I’d catch the sunset, relax a bit, and see what was up there. A mile or two outside the city, I spotted a little roadside produce stand. It looked like it had survived a few more hurricanes than it should have. I went inside and all I could smell was citrus. This place delivered the quintessential Florida experience. I grabbed a small bag of tangelos and was heavily tempted by a display case of key lime pies. They looked delicious, but not a great idea. I passed them by.

An older woman in a dirty Buccaneers cap rang me up. She looked like a shriveled hermit crab peering from beneath its shell. “How far does this highway run before it hits the interstate?” I asked.

She gave me a look. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I’m visiting and exploring the area and I thought it would be fun to have a more hometown experience,” I said. “To get away from the billboards, tourist traps, and themed restaurants. Something more real.”

She shook her head and tugged the brim of her hat down. “If you want my advice, turn around and go back to Tampa. Ain’t nothing up that way worth seeing.” Weird. I watched her walk off to empty some fruit crates. I told her “thanks” and took my bag out to the car.

One of my friends used to joke that I could get lost driving in a parking lot, and it’s true. It’s actually happened. I admit that I have a terrible sense of direction. Interstate numbers and street names are like math to me, and I’m horrible at math. Without my GPS, I’m about as lost as a golf ball in beach grass. But I figured if I kept the beach on my left, I’m heading north. When I got ready to travel back south, all I had to do was turn around. If I made a wrong turn, my phone would show me the way. It sounded like a great plan. For five minutes. Right up until my phone dropped service and the GPS went dead.

I wasn’t worried, though. North ahead, south behind. Stay on the road, and there would be no problems. It was a beautiful evening with no traffic on the little highway. I had a bag of tangelos and nowhere else to be.

The drive was pleasant, but after a few minutes, it started to look like every other small-town backroad I’d seen. A few palm trees, but mostly cows and scrap cars. After about forty-five minutes, I figured I’d seen enough “small-town Florida” for one night and decided to head back. It was full dark now— “country dark” as we say in East Tennessee. My headlights found a short driveway, so I swung in, backed up, and started south again, hoping it wouldn’t be long before my phone and GPS would be restored.

Minutes later, headlights came up fast behind me. Too fast. The car’s beams shot up in my mirror and stayed there. Some jerk clearly wanted me to move. That was the exact way to make sure I didn’t. If he didn’t like my driving, he could go around. I was doing fifty-five in a forty-five zone, and this guy was riding my tail like he owned the road. He’d pull up within a few feet, back off for half a second, then he would close in again until his lights lit up the inside of my car.

I squinted in my rearview mirror, trying to make out who was driving or what type of car it was. Could be a cop. Hope not, I was speeding for sure. I didn’t see blue lights or a light bar. No cop markings at all. Just one person in the driver’s seat. That was all I could tell. After a few seconds, the car squealed and swerved around me, almost swiping me, then blew past like I was standing still. Its taillights weaved ahead, wild and erratic, like he had a death wish. It was a two-lane highway, and this dumbass stayed in the wrong lane way too long, even over hills and blind curves, not caring that he was putting lives in danger.

Now that he was off my ass, I eased off the gas to give him plenty of space. The second I did, his brake lights flared. His car slowed hard and dropped right in front of me, close enough that I could see the shape of his head through the rear window and smiling eyes framed in his mirror. He started tapping his brakes. Short bursts at first, then harder, trying to force me to rear-end him. I began to realize this wasn’t random. Whoever this was, and for whatever reason, he was screwing with me on purpose.

My little Toyota wasn’t built for road battles. The beast he was driving could have swallowed me alive if he’d wanted it to. He had to back off just to stay near me. That didn’t seem to matter, though. He drifted back into the left lane, pacing me. Speeding up, slowing down, edging forward, daring me to race. Did he really think I could race? Couldn’t he see what I was driving? He had to be insane. I kept both hands on the wheel and my eyes locked straight ahead. No sudden moves. No eye contact. I wasn’t giving him any excuse to think I was playing along.

They say if you ignore bullies, they’ll eventually go away. So I figured if I pretended he wasn’t there, he’d get bored and drive off. Didn’t work. He kept right beside me, inching up and falling back like he couldn’t decide whether to race me or run me off the road. He reached out his passenger window and threw a red plastic Solo cup. It smacked the side of my car and splattered across the windshield. If that wasn’t tobacco juice smeared across my windshield, I didn’t want to know what it was. Then came a beer can. He was going to unleash all the trash from his car on me. I could hear him laughing. I couldn’t figure out how—or why—I’d become his personal target.

I finally took a long look at him. Was this someone I knew? He was a bulky guy, sort of a young, muscle-head type. The kind of guy who was probably always bragging about his high school wrestling days. The most obvious thing about him was flaming red hair. Not “Conan O’Brien red hair”—I mean fire-engine red, like a demented clown. A big teardrop tattoo was inked on the left side of his face, and, I swear, he had a mouth full of sharp metal braces. Not normal ones, these were the weirdest braces I’d ever seen. In the dash lights, they looked like twisted wire—barbed wire, almost.

He leaned halfway out the window, screaming into the wind. I couldn’t understand what the hell he was saying, but it didn’t matter. Red Hair flipped me off, shouted something obscene, and laughed like this was the most fun he’d had all week.

I kept my eyes forward, hands tight on the wheel, waiting for another object to come flying out of his car. A bottle. A boot. A half-eaten bag of Purina Gorilla Chow? But then I glanced over and saw the gun. A real gun. A small black gun pointed right at me. Holy shit. Without thinking, I instinctually slammed the brakes. The front of his car dipped and swerved, and he howled with laughter. This was a glorious joke to him. Then, just as quickly, he jerked the wheel, shot across my lane, almost slammed into my fender, and peeled into an Exxon station.

I kept going. Fast. I wanted to get as far away from that lunatic as I could, as quick as I could. I started wishing I’d taken that old lady’s advice and turned around and gone back to Tampa. She obviously knew something I didn’t. Here I am, on a dark country road, trying to deal with an insane driver, dead set on making me roadkill. For the next minute, I steadied my breathing and glanced in the rearview mirror, waiting to see those headlights blaring around the bend. But it seemed to be just me and the road. I looked in the mirror again. A glow got stronger. Are those… headlights—maybe not. False alarm. Just my imagination.

For the first time in several minutes, everything was silent. Peaceful. No streetlights. Just the glimmer of a half moon giving everything a dusty radiance. A loud grinding noise under my tire cut the quiet. My car had drifted onto the shoulder. And there—right in front of me—someone was walking along the road! I spun the wheel and stomped the brakes. Tires squealed and I heard a girl scream. What the hell just happened? I threw the car in “Park” and jumped out.

“I’m so sorry! I couldn’t see you out here! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Who taught you how to drive?”

The hitchhiker slowly stepped closer into the beam of my right headlight. She was young and dressed head-to-toe in black. She was dragging a bulky, black canvas duffel bag with both hands. A bag almost as big as she was. She turned and started walking south again without another word.

I looked around at the pitch black landscape. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere dressed like that? I could have hit you. Anybody could hit you.”

She turned back and shouted through the darkness, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m hitchhiking. And if you’re not going to give me a ride, then leave me alone and let me get the hell on the road.”

I stood there shaking my head. What is going on in Florida? This is officially the craziest night I’ve ever had in my life. Red Hair was gone, but now I’d nearly mowed down this sassy, runaway kid who didn’t seem to care that she was one step away from getting flattened, kidnapped, or worse. She couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, and that duffel bag looked like it easily weighed more than she did. For a moment, I found myself feeling sorry for her.

“Where are you going?”

“The bridge,” she said.

The bridge? What bridge? This is Tampa; there had to be a thousand bridges around here. Still, if she was walking to it, it couldn’t be far away. “All right,” I said. “Get in.”

She turned, considered the offer for a second, then hauled the hulking duffel bag to the car. I tossed it in the back seat. She jerked it back out and dragged it to the floor of the front seat. We both climbed in. She took a deep breath and planted her feet on top of the bag, and I eased the car back onto the road.

Okay, let me stop a minute. I know what you’re thinking. Just to be clear, I don’t pick up hitchhikers. Or… I normally don’t. I’ve been tempted to a couple of times, like everybody, I guess. Usually when it’s blistering outside and the poor soul looks like they’re about to burst into flames if someone doesn’t give them a ride. But I’ve never gone through with it. Until now. This was different. She’s a young person. Alone. In the dark. There’s imminent danger, in my opinion. This isn’t Ted Bundy and neither am I.

Still, the gravity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. I was in an unfamiliar town with a stranger in my car. A young stranger, but a stranger all the same. She didn’t exactly look like an axe murderer—unless she had a very small axe. That would still do the trick. And she didn’t smell like a murderer, either. She smelled like oranges and cinnamon. With a faint sweetness underneath—maybe cherry. Or cheap dessert wine, hard to say. The way girls smell, not murderers. Okay, I don’t actually know what murderers smell like. Just focus on the road, I told myself.

“Have you ever met the devil?” she asked.

“Not formally, no,” I said. “I think he may have tried to run me off the road a few minutes ago.”

“That’s nothing. I used to live with the devil.”

As she spoke, I realized this girl was much younger than I’d originally thought—eighteen, maybe nineteen. Possibly twenty, I doubt it. “In that case, I can see why you would want to leave that situation. Speaking of, why are you out walking on a dark road this time of night?”

“Listen,” she said, “the last thing I’m looking for tonight is a daddy.”

“Ouch. Okay, fair enough. For the record, I don’t have kids, so I’m no one’s daddy. Even if I am old enough to be yours. Maybe even your granddaddy… No, let’s keep it at ‘daddy.’”

She stared out the passenger window. “My name’s Kami,” she said, as if she was trying to restart our whole introduction. “Don’t tell me yours. I don’t want to know. Once you know somebody’s name, you have to remember them your whole life. I don’t need to remember a guy who’s just giving me a ride to the bridge.”

Again with the bridge. I really hoped this bridge was close by. I was ready for dinner and bed.

I checked my phone. Still no service. “Forget about it,” she said. “No phones work around here. It’s like 1990 or something.” She brushed lint from her blouse and tucked her black hair behind her ears. She pulled down the visor like she’d been in my car and done it a thousand times before. She clicked on the mirror light and studied her face in it. She ran her thumb along the line of her lipstick, shaping it just right, then flipped the visor back into place.

“That bastard walks out on me—with someone I’m pretty sure I used to be friends with. Then he expects me to hold on to all his stuff until he can come pick it up? Seriously? Does that sound right? I have an idea: how about I put all your stupid shit in a big bag and throw it off the bridge? How about that?”

“Ah. I understand the bridge now.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ve been over him a long time. I moved on weeks ago, and I guarantee you he’ll be calling me before the year is up, what do you want to bet? Do you mind if I smoke?”

I did, but I didn’t want to seem like an uncool daddy. “No, go right ahead.”

She unzipped the black duffel bag and dug around inside. “You know, I don’t think boys know what love is until much later in life. Think about it. Little girls are holding and rocking baby dolls while little boys are crashing toy cars and trucks into the sidewalk. We’re trained to love from the time we’re born. Then we get a boyfriend and all we want to do is love, but all he knows how to do is crash you into the sidewalk. I guess I can’t blame him. He’s had no training.”

She pulled a ten-inch fillet knife from the duffle and laid it on the dashboard. My eyes widened, and my heart raced a bit while she continued digging. “From what I understand, things are improving in that area,” I said. “There are just as many boys playing with dolls and girls crashing trucks.”

“Just as many? No. I don’t think so. There are some, sure, but most of the time when a little boy picks up a doll, Mom or Dad takes it away and hands him a truck. It’s not his choice, it’s this world.”

She struck a match and lit her cigarette. In seconds, I knew she wasn’t smoking tobacco. Shit, if I got pulled over, I’m screwed. She inhaled deeply, held it in, then steadily blew the smoke out.

“Why is it so quiet in here? Don’t you have any good music?”

“I have lots of great music. I’ll bet your parents would love all of it,” I said. “I usually listen to podcasts, though. Not very exciting. I apologize.”

Headlights appeared in my rearview mirror and my heart jumped. They approached quickly until light illuminated the inside of my car. I watched them inch closer. They stayed steady behind me for a minute or two, then passed. A Subaru. Relief.

“If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Something where I could make lots of money, I suppose. Invisibility. I could go into a bank and take as much money as I wanted, and no one would ever see me.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she shot back. “Do you honestly think anyone’s going to sit there watching a pile of money float out the door and not do something about it? You’re invisible, but the money’s not. Jesus, you just wasted a superpower.”

“Then I choose the power to sleep for a week,” I said.

“How is that a superpower?” she asked.

“I’d do it in a cape.”

“You’re not even taking this seriously,” she said. “Ask me what I would want.”

“Okay. If you could have any superpower in the world, what would it be?”

“I’d like to fly,” she said quickly. “Don’t you think that would be amazing?”

“I do. Because you wouldn’t have to rely on complete strangers to take you to your bridge.”

She popped open the glove compartment, took a glance, then clicked it shut. “I believe most humans have superpowers they never use. And when I say superpower, I don’t mean power as in ‘strength.’ Men are always wanting the strength. Powerful cars, big guns, big talk—whatever.”

“Can I just say, you sound very anti-man right now,” I said.

She laughed. “I am right now, honestly. Not always, though. But to be fair, women do the same thing. We just use hearts instead of horsepower.”

“How much horsepower does that knife have?” I asked.

She picked it up and pointed it at me, sheath and all. “This… is strictly for protection. But ‘protection’ means different things to different people. Me? I need protection when I’m walking out there. Do I need protection when I’m riding in here? Maybe you do. Right now, the only thing between you and the point of this knife is a thin piece of leather. How do you feel about that?”

I knew she was kidding. But I also knew that I didn’t know she was kidding. I was pretty sure she was just trying to rattle me, so I played along. “I’ll have you know, my invisible cloak of protection would engage automatically if you ever unsheathed your weapon.”

She tilted her head the way guys like to see girls tilt their heads, and she smiled. I assumed that I’d won the banter. She held onto the knife, slid it in and out of the sheath a few times, then leaned back into the seat and stared out the window. She was quiet for a few seconds like she was pondering her next strategic move. “Would you like to make out?”

Whoa! I hit the brakes without meaning to. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? And yes! You might just be! How would I know? I just picked you up off the street after nearly running you over because some maniac was trying to shoot me off the road! What the hell is going on out here tonight? You’re… you’re a kid! Why on earth would you want to make out with an old dude like me? And why would you expect—”

“Don’t have a meltdown. I was just asking.” She sat quietly for a moment. “I would totally do it, though. What can I say? I like older men. I’m not bragging, but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have any complaints about me. I like to love.”

“Stop it!” I said. “Just shut up!” She shrugged and took another long drag of the cigarette.

I glanced at my rearview mirror while trying to make sense of the conversation. “First of all, I’m married, okay? And I don’t fool around. Ever. And even if I did, I wouldn’t with you, a complete stranger… who, I’m guessing, still plays with Barbies.”

“Why would you even tell anyone?” she asked. “It’s just me and you out here. Who else needs to know? That’s the best thing about strangers. If you don’t actually know them, you can do anything to them and it’s like it never happened.”

For a couple of minutes, I drove in silence, trying to focus and get a firmer grasp on reason. The secondhand smoke was starting to make my head swim. I ran through it all in my head. Everything that had happened that night felt like a dream, but it was no dream. It was really happening. As insane and outrageous as everything was, it was still real. Every person I’d encountered that night was a complete stranger, and I was a stranger to them, but that didn’t make any of it less real. Being strangers doesn’t excuse anything. You can’t run strangers off the road or poke knives at them and get away with it simply because they are strangers. It’s no different from anyone you actually know.

I realized I wasn’t afraid of being run off the road or stabbed with a fishing knife. I was afraid of something even worse. I was afraid that in the middle of nowhere, far away from everyone I knew, I could make a bad decision and screw up the real life I had. In a moment of ignoring consequences, I could trash the important things. The relationships that mattered most to me. It suddenly hit me how stupid I’d been to let this hitchhiker into my car, no matter how young or harmless she looked. This was a terrible idea. What was I thinking?

“I’m sorry, but I need to let you out here.” Kami looked straight ahead, shook her head, and smiled, like she knew this was coming. “We can’t be far from the city. It’ll be easy for you to get a ride the rest of the way. Someone will come along soon. You’ll be okay.”

“No problem,” she said. She rolled down the window, flicked out the remaining stump of her cigarette, and slid the knife back into the duffel bag.

I eased the car onto the shoulder and waited for her to grab her things. She hesitated a moment. Then, without warning, she reached over and took my head in both her hands. She turned me toward her until I was staring straight into her eyes. “We’re all strangers, you know? Even the people you think you know. The people you love are the same as the people you pick up from the side of the street. The ones you’re true to are the exact same as the ones who try to run you off the road. None of us ever know any of us.”

She kept her gaze locked on mine. She reached down and unbuttoned the three top buttons of her blouse, letting it fall open just enough. She watched my eyes. For me, not looking down was harder than passing up that key lime pie. “What do you want to do more than anything right now?” she asked.

I wasn’t going to say a fucking word.

She pulled my head toward hers and kissed me. It was a long, open-mouthed, deliberate kiss that felt much older than she was. Her tongue slid along the edges of my teeth. I probably could have resisted more than I did. I don’t know. I can’t remember and don’t want to. All I could think was that I hadn’t been kissed like that since college. Maybe high school. And I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if that was a bad thing or not.

“I need you to get out now,” I said in the most un-powerful voice I’d ever heard come out of my mouth.

She knew the ride was over, but wasn’t willing to give in yet. She detected weakness. She grinned a beautiful, perfect, young grin, leaned into me, and ran her tongue slowly up my face, from my chin to the tip of my nose.

“Goodbye, Daddy,” she said. “It would’ve been fun at the bridge. You’ll never know what you missed.” She giggled and hopped out, dragging the heavy duffel bag behind her. The car door slammed. She walked a few steps in front of my car, stuck out her thumb, and disappeared into the darkness. I adjusted my seatbelt and myself, then pulled away. She was gone, but her scent — orange, cinnamon, and cherries — hung around. It lingered in the car for the next five days.

It was difficult to think about much else over the next week. Not just those ridiculous events, but how I should process them. Would I tell anyone? Would anyone believe me if I did? Should I tell my wife? Of course, I should. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t. No. There was no sense in getting her upset. I definitely wouldn’t tell her. Come to think of it, no one else needed to know what happened. I’d keep it all to myself.

Toward the end of the Tampa job, I was putting the final touches on the mural when the Florida skies began turning stormy. I pulled up a local news site on my phone to check the weather. I scrolled for a couple of minutes, then—wow.

There was Kami.

The picture of her face, clear as day. No shadows, no dim car lights. Just a pretty, young smile, like the one I’d seen up close. Her black hair was tucked behind her ears, dark lipstick perfectly framing her mouth. I knew immediately it was her.

“Woman Charged With Death on Bridge,” the headline read.

What the hell? My eyes raced over the story. Police had found an abandoned car near a bridge just outside the city. In the water, they’d recovered a black duffel bag wrapped around the body of a man, stabbed several times. The man was described as being in his thirties, with braces, a teardrop tattoo, and bright, fire-engine-red hair.

I knew that description. They could have called me for that description. How that small girl managed to haul that piece of meat and that duffel bag over a bridge was beyond me. She must’ve had help.

My stomach twisted as it all sank in. I let Kami out on that same road. Red Hair must have come up behind me—he and that big, dumb grin. Maybe he was coming to finish what he started with me. Maybe it was just coincidence. But somehow, he found her and picked her up. He took her to the bridge, and ended up being tossed over the side, stabbed, with a duffel bag wrapped around him, sinking deep into the black water.

Was it simply because he was a stranger? Because he took her to the bridge? That could have been me. Probably was supposed to be me. I was this close to being the story behind that girl’s smiling photo. The knife had already been pointed in my direction. I just refused to go all the way to the bridge.

I don’t want to get too philosophical, but perhaps Kami was right. Maybe none of us really do know the rest of us. Not like we think. I didn’t know that girl sitting in my car, but when I saw her picture in that article, I couldn’t help feeling a mix of shock, pity, and disappointment. And in a strange way, I felt connected to her, even though she was a complete stranger.

A few nights later, driving home after finishing the mural job, I started getting drowsy. I was exhausted from work and had been on the road too long. I told myself some coffee and loud music would keep me awake, but at one point, my eyes must have closed for just a half-second too long because the rumble strip jolted me awake. My heart was hammering. I pulled off to the side of the road to clear my head and wake up.

The cool night air sobered me quickly. I walked around the car a few times to get my blood moving and stopped suddenly when I heard a pop and crunch under my foot. I looked down. I’d squashed a red Solo cup.

That’s when—I know it sounds weird—but I was sure I saw a young girl standing ahead of me in the glow of my headlights. Her thumb out and black hair catching the light. She turned toward me and smiled.

I blinked. She was gone. Only moonlight and moving pine shadows remained. I looked around. There were guardrails on both sides and a low trickle of water below. I walked to the edge and leaned over.

I had pulled over and was standing on an old highway bridge.

©2025 Rick Baldwin.

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE – This story is under the full copyright of the author who gives permission for royalty-free performance/readings of the story for non commercial purposes. This story must not be changed or altered in any way without permission of the author. Any performance of this story must credit the author, Rick Baldwin.  For commercial use, please contact the author. This story may not be reprinted without permission of the author.)