The Shape Shifter

We were meant to be driving to Potchefstroom to pick up my brother. No, we were driving to Potchefstroom; I could see our movements as if on a road map moving away from Johannesburg. I was with the man. He has a grey beard, rather big boned, but slim in a slightly over-weight kind of way. And he was solemn underneath his game ranger style peak cap. We drove in silence along the highway, the Highveld stretching out on either side, not a soul. The world seemed empty, just the grey man and I. Driving. It seemed like hours before the girl in the road appeared. Lying, as if broken, on the left hand side of the road. There were trees to the right, dark in contrast to the sunlit plains. The girls black hair covers her face, she does not move as we approached her; and then as the nature of dreams provide, I am in the forest. The girl is not a girl but a shape shifter, a snake. She seems to surround me with multiple crackling holograms of herself. Her eyes glow a weird red, like you can’t really see them because you’re focused on her presence. It is not really there. The girl and the snake merged like one; but neither. She has me in her grip and I struggle to beat her, to drag myself free, but I do. And then she is in the car shifting, through non-entities in the back. Five other girls, ghostly, and I am in the backseat with them. I cannot stop her, she is too strong. She attacks rapidly, repeatedly slashing from through the floor. Darting in and out, snake mouth open, fangs ripping at the flesh of my flesh. But the man with the beard grabs her, just before the snake has me.  He breaks her, her halves sandwiched on top of each other. He carries her body back to the other side of the road, where we found her. I get into the car. The back seat is empty. The man with the grey beard is in the driver’s seat. We start driving. Calm at first, but then rapidly accelerating.  My belly rises like lead. As I brace myself I look to my right, she is there - the shape shifter, the body snatcher, in the driver’s seat. She flickers in the back, out of the corner of my eye, through the ghost girls. And she grins as she hits the breaks, and I fly.