“You are royal stupid.”

Bob puffed out a cloud of smoke and squinted at the wind shield. In front of the car visibility was five feet, tops. Fog everywhere, white as milk and heavy as sand dunes.

“Driving by yourself at midnight, in the Rocky’s damned fog, no cellphone reception, and your shit night vision…” he counted with his fingers.

“They ought to induct you into some kind of Hall of Fame for Stupidity. Seriously.” He took another hard drag on his Marlboro, pleased with his joke.

I slowed the car way down, five miles per hour, and put hazard lights on. Immediately the dense fog lit up in orange fire everywhere, pulsating, engulfing. Never seen anything like this.

“He is right behind you.”

Knowing it was useless, I nevertheless checked the rear view mirror. Hell’s strobe-light disco still ongoing behind me, unlimited dry ice. And behind that veil of mountain fog, it could be anyone, anything.

“Anyone or anything can fuck us up right now.” But even Bob sounded a little scared. After all, he is only a figment of my subconscious, the chain-smoking shit talker that lives inside me. And Bob is a coward. If something happens to me, he’s out too. So at least we are aligned on basis of my safety.

He jabbed at the sign with two cigarette-holding fingers, “Deer Crossing!”

Then about a minute later at another sign, “Falling Rocks!”

My heart jumped as he shouted.

Several minutes of silence because there was no more roadside signs, then, “how do you know he is not coming after you?”

I checked the mirror again. Even if Godzilla itself was behind me, if more than ten feet away, I wouldn’t have known. I smothered what threatened to come up in my head like pushing down a jumping flame with a book.

He is not coming after me. He’s cruel but smart. He wouldn’t drive in this condition.

“Hey do you remember that Tom Ford movie? Nocturnal Animal. Yeah. That could totally happen to you right now.

“Someone pulls up from the left? A total stranger, or several even? Run you off the shoulder? A tire gets punctured? They have a gun and you have… let’s see… a folding fan?

“Fuuuuuuhhh…” Bob started to pull on his hair.

You can’t tell a Bob to “shut up!” Never worked for me. Only revs him up. So I turned the music on and up, it even syncopated with the panic light. If anyone was to see from afar, it was a slow-moving version of hell’s own strobe light disco.