We were driving- my mother and I- to visit an ailing grandparent. I was in the passenger seat of her white Ford Windstar, halfway to sleep as we approached the halfway point of the trip. It was only the middle of the day, but highway fatigue sets in quickly for me these days. In my sleepstate I imagined a man, or the shadow of a man, running along the road, dodging the occasional power box or pulled over vehicle. Then the most curious thing happened, snapping me back to the waking world- the shadow stopped just ahead of us. It stopped because it was no longer a shadow. It was a man, in full-sprint position but standing perfectly still. He was bald and wore a long-sleeved blue track shirt with black shorts. I almost tricked myself into thinking it was just a coincidentally placed cardboard cutout but in the instant we passed I could tell the form was three-dimensional. I tracked him until he was out of view, a distant speck, and my mother questioned my aggressively craned neck, asking if there was a hurt animal.
"No- no it was a man"
"Oh my God a man was hurt?"
"No he was just standing like he was running but wasn't running."
"What?"
I stuttered trying to figure out how to tell her without sounding crazy. "I- I was thinking about a man running along the higheay and then there was a man just standing there like he was running, like what I was imagining!"
My mother's lips pursed. She was mulling over my words, and went with the logical choice- it was all my imagination. She knew I was half-asleep, after all.
"I see" as she narrowed her focus back to the highway.
I figured she was probably right- it was just a man standing in that space, a coincidence, and he was not running. We were going 70 on I-95 North, and I just didn't get a good look at him. My mind filled in the blanks.
I stared forward for a good ten minutes before my boredom caught back up to me, and the shadowy figure in my head tumbled back into frame from the rearview, running once more. He hopped atop the guard rails, grinding on them with his shoes and doing tricks with his jumps. It was easy to convince myself it was nothing at this point. I thought about how every imagined thing is an amalgamation of things we've seen before as he grabbed a light pole and swung around it, landing cleanly on a rail, keeping equal pace with our car while Glen Campbell's cover of "Good Riddance" played on the radio.
Eventually, I drifted off. Despite my inability to stay awake as a passenger on the highway, I tend to be a light sleeper. What awoke me about a half hour later was the chorus of "Come and Get Your Love". And as I shook the sleep from my eyes, I saw him again. The man on the side of the interstate. Not a specter of imagination, but a man, flesh and blood, sprinting 70 miles per hour, keeping pace with our car, deftly dodging any obstacle in his path. I shrieked, and my mom swerved- thankfully only slightly, never leaving the lane, before angrily exclaiming "What!" at me, a threat more than a question. I told her the truth.
"Theres a man keeping up with us running on the curb."
"What?" More confused than mad, this time.
I asked if she could look away just for a second to see it, she said no. Obviously, she's driving.
"I swear there is a man running there."
"Okay."
It donned on me then, that it didnt really matter to her. We were driving. He was running 70 or more, parallel to us, but on the curb. I decided to take a video of the man, but as soon as I started to record, it began artifacting horribly, as if the resolution on my iPhone 15's camera were lower quality than a 2008 youtube upload. I was dumbfounded. I pulled the camera away slowly, and slowly the pixels gave way to a clear picture. I quickly turned it back and the picture was incomprehensible once again. I decided to restart my phone, turning my attention back to the running man while it booted. He was looking at me. From two lanes away, running on the curb, the man running 70 or more miles per hour was making eye contact with me. My phone dropped from my shaking hands and I asked my mother to speed up a bit.
"What? Why?"
"The man, mom, the guy that's running is looking at me!"
With concern, she turned her attention to the right. I followed her gaze, and so did the man, locking eyes with her now. It was only a second, but I knew she saw him too. She didn't need any further evidence, and pushed down on the gas. She was now going 80, so she merged into the leftmost lane.
As she did, I came to realize that I-95 didnt feel all too crowded. The cars were spread out, and seemed to get further and further away all while the radio became less clear- not static but some jarbled sound. I checked the speedometer and it read 84 mph. We were losing the man, who grew smaller as I turned my head, and smaller still in the rearview mirror, until he was just a speck. A speck that stayed. A speck that grew, and became clearer with each passing second. Our speed hovered just above 80, yet he was running faster, exponentially faster and now on the road because all the cars are gone and I tell my mom that he- he's gaining on us and I feel the car jerk as she accelerates even faster to the point of almost losing control of the van.
But it was in vain.
Within seconds, the man was next to us, taking powerful, quick but bounding strides with his black running shoes pounding the pavement. A deep, wet slapping sound from the impact of the melted rubber soles on the ground could be heard even through the rising noise of the radio. Sweat flew from his head while he sprinted, drenching his body and his square, inexpressive face and massive green eyes were deadlocked on me. My mother slammed the off button to the radio but the garbled non-language continued playing.
This close, it was easy to tell something was off about his appearance- his veins were all engorged and pulsed slowly while his chest never rose nor fell. His eyes were bright, as if there was an actual light behind them. He never blinked and his mouth never opened. He was not breathing, or at least not showing signs of doing so. I was afraid and said as much to my mother, who was fighting back tears of her own as she focused on keeping control of the van. I wept openly as his stride veered slowly closer to our vehicle. I could focus only on him and his luminous emerald eyes, as the rest of the interstate and the surrounding landscaped forest devolved into shades of red and brown. It was as if his eyes were stealing all the green from the world, leaving a forest on fire behind him.
As he got closer everything felt so heavy. The car was slow, my breathing was slow, his hand was slow as it reached for my door. My thoughts were slow, crawling to nothing as my mouth opened and no sound came out. But the man's hand was fast as it reached out and gripped the door handle, facing no drag as if we weren't moving in a windy space anymore. And slowly, taking an eternity, vitriol in his green eyes, he pulled on it. I could feel the heat eminating from him through the door as it opened and the whole car filled with hot, hot air. Helplessly I watched as he pulled the door open.
The red, sweaty face of the man peered into me and his jaw fell, as if suddenly unlatched. It was no longer a man. It had skin made of melting plastic and eyes like a green star. I couldn't move- I could barely form a thought. It's wet, veiny arms reached into the van, latching on the doorframe as it pulled itself in, pulled right up to me as my eyes closed and I smelled tar and charcoal and rubber and.. and heard a car horn. The fire surrounding me dissipated and I chanced my eyes open, finding the car dood closed and the sun long since set. We were in the middle of the highway, at night, in a van turned off. I turned to find my mother asleeping with her head against the wheel and shook her awake. She screamed until she gained composure and saw it was me. As she calmed, she hugged me and held me there, until another honk broke the scene.
We looked around and realized it was a car behind us. My mother stepped out and talked to the driver, it was just a good samaritan who was wondering if we needed a jump. After testing the car and finding the battery light on, we took the man up on his offer and within minutes the car was started again. "Hot Rod Hearts" played on the radio as we thanked the man and he drove off. Then we did the same. We visited my grandparents- they are doing fine, but a local forest caught fire so they can't be outside much. My mother and I have never talked about what happened that day. I think shes too old to try and make sense of it. But we've both stopped driving on the interstate since then.