Teo was bone-tired from the pour.
Not the sleepy kind of tired. The kind that sat in your shoulders and made your hands feel like they belonged to somebody older. Hours of watching slump, yelling over the pump, dragging hose, and fixing other people's "close enough" before it became a real problem.
His knuckles ached. His forearms buzzed with that leftover vibration you got after handling tools too long. Even after washing up at a gas station sink, there was still chalky grit tucked under his nails and a stubborn film of dust that made his hands feel dry no matter how much he scrubbed.
The cab smelled like sweat and old fabric. Diesel drifted in every time a truck passed, and somewhere under that was the thin metallic edge of cut wire and rust that never really washed off.
The dash clock read 5:12 a.m.
Garland was the ugly kind of dark right before dawn—streetlights making pale pools, empty lanes stretching out like quiet promises. A green highway sign floated ahead, too clean, too obedient.
Teo exhaled through his nose.
Home. Shower. Food. Collapse.
His phone buzzed once in the cup holder, screen flashing a message preview he didn't read. If it was work, it could wait. If it wasn't, he didn't have the brain.
He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and instantly regretted it when grit stung his lash line.
"Pinche polvo," he muttered, blinking hard until it eased.
The road was familiar enough that he drove half on muscle memory. A frontage road feeding into a wider stretch, a couple of turns, then the route that dumped him near his place.
He was already thinking about taking his boots off—about how good it would feel to peel his socks away from sweat-cold skin—when the fog hit.
Not gradually.
Not the thin haze that made headlights look pretty.
This fog rolled in like someone had dropped a sheet over the world.
Teo's first reaction was irritation. Of course. Of course it does this now.
Then his headlights punched forward and came back dead.
The beams didn't cut through. They sank. Swallowed.
He eased off the gas. The tires hummed softer. The world narrowed to the pale smear of his hood and a wall of gray beyond it.
He flicked his brights on.
Nothing improved.
He flicked them off again, jaw tight.
"Okay," he said, more to keep himself from speeding up than anything. "Easy."
The lane lines vanished. Reflectors disappeared. Even the edge of the road felt uncertain, like the fog had sanded reality smooth.
Teo turned on his hazards.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
The indicator sound was too loud inside the cab, sharp as a metronome in a quiet room. It made his skin itch.
He glanced at his speed. 19 mph.
Slow. Good.
He leaned forward, squinting. His eyes hunted for anything—grass line, curb, guardrail—anything that could tell him where "safe" was.
The fog pressed against the windshield, thick enough that it didn't feel like air anymore. It felt like something with weight.
Teo swallowed.
He cracked the window half an inch.
Cold air slid in and slapped him awake.
And the highway sound vanished.
No distant engines. No tire hiss. No wind. No night bugs.
Just the soft tick of his blinker and his own breathing.
Teo's stomach tightened.
"That's… weird," he said, then immediately wished he hadn't spoken. His voice felt muffled, like the fog was inside the cab too.
He shut the window and gripped the wheel harder.
No te paniques, he told himself. The Spanish came out automatically, private and sharp. No te paniques.
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
Fog.
Nothing else.
He checked his side mirrors.
Fog.
It was like he was driving through the inside of a cloud that had decided not to move.
He slowed more, almost crawling now. The hazard lights kept clicking, steady and wrong.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Then his headlights caught something ahead.
A shape.
Teo's breath snagged.
Not a car. Not a sign.
A person—standing in the road, pale as the fog itself.
His foot slammed the brake.
The truck slowed without squeal, without skid, like the tires had nothing solid to argue with.
"Hey!" Teo shouted before his brain could stop him. "Move!"
The figure didn't flinch.
No wave. No stumble. No panic.
Just stillness, like it had been waiting exactly there.
Teo's heart started hammering hard enough to hurt. His hands tightened on the wheel until his fingers cramped.
"Are you—" he began, then swallowed the rest. Talking felt pointless.
He reached for his phone in the cup holder with a trembling hand.
The screen lit.
No service.
Of course.
The figure lifted one arm.
Not waving.
Pointing.
Not at Teo.
At the space beside Teo's driver-side mirror.
Teo's gaze snapped where it indicated—
—and the fog opened.
Not like mist parting.
Like fabric tearing.
A vertical seam split the air, clean and impossible. Inside wasn't darkness. It was a black depth that made the cab shadows look friendly. A hole that didn't belong in the world.
Teo's throat closed.
"No," he whispered. "No, no—"
The truck rolled forward a few inches like it wanted to look.
Teo yanked the wheel hard, trying to swerve away, trying to put distance between himself and that impossible opening.
The road should've dropped away. He should've hit the shoulder. A curb. A signpost.
Instead, the fog grabbed the cab.
Not literally—there was no hand—but the sensation was the same. The front end dipped as if the world had tilted and turned into deep water.
His stomach rose into his throat.
The seatbelt bit into his chest.
Teo's hands clamped the wheel, knuckles white, and he tried to shout—
Nothing came out.
The fog swallowed sound first.
Then it swallowed direction.
The indicator kept clicking anyway, patient and steady, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to him.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
Teo's vision tunneled. The seam grew larger in the corner of his eye, not because the truck was turning toward it—because the seam was coming toward him.
The figure stayed perfectly still.
Teo caught one last detail, absurd and sharp:
The person's face was blank.
Not empty. Not faceless.
Just… hard to focus on, like his mind slid away from it every time he tried to see features.
His stomach dropped again, deeper this time, like the floor of the world had been removed.
His ears popped.
Cold rushed into his lungs.
Then the fog turned into weight, and the weight turned into falling.
And the last thing Teo heard—before even the blinker got eaten—was his own ragged thought, fierce and stupid with refusal:
No me lleves.
Don't take me.
Then the world tore loose.