Traffic...

She definitely should have gone pee before she left the party. She had thought about it, but there had been a line that seemed long enough she would get home sooner than she would get in to the bathroom. Especially when the woman closest to the door looked at her watch and sighed. Whoever was in there was taking a long time. So she decided that she didn't have to go that badly and would just go home.

That was an hour ago. Traffic was stopped. There should have been no traffic at all this time of night, but yet, here it was. A traffic jam. And now she was really regretting not going pee before she left the party.

She kept leaning over trying to see around the cars ahead of her. What in the world was going on? She, of course, couldn't see anything but a long row of tail lights. She pulled out her phone to try and do a search. Normally she wouldn't use her phone when she was driving, but they were stopped so it's not like she was really using her phone and driving at all. She couldn't find anything on the local news feeds. She started up Waze to see if there was a reroute she could take. Nothing. All of the side streets were slow as well. Probably full of other people who had used Waze and were trying to get around this jam.

What in the world was going on?

The passenger's side door in the car ahead of her opened and a man got out to look. He started walking toward the front of the line. He got about two car lengths ahead when he was hit with a spot light from above and she heard, "Sir! Sir, get back in to your car."

She craned her neck to look and could see the beam of light coming down from the sky. A police helicopter? Well this wasn't good. There must be a bad accident ahead. Crap. They were good and stuck. But maybe if the police were there they would start turning cars around to go the other way? She's been in one traffic jam in California where that had happened. It had been so bad that the police had shut down the freeway and the cars in the back of the line backed up and turned around and exited from the on ramps. If you didn't think about the massive pileup with multiple fatalities that had caused it, it was actually kind of a cool thing to drive the wrong way on the freeway like that. It made you look the road a little differently.

She switched her radio from the satellite station she had been listening to to a local station trying to get any information about why there were stuck and if there was any estimate for how long it would be. She looked at the map on Waze trying to figure out how long the jam was. The map would show a red line and little three car emojis to show a traffic jam at the end it would go back to green. She kept following the line of the road further and further and it was red all the way. There were so many "stopped traffic" reports that the emojis filled the line all the way. The jam went past her exit so there was no relief in site. Great. She backed it up now to see how far behind her they were stopped, traffic was now stopped at least a mile behind her if not more. This was going to be a long night.

She really should have gone pee before leaving the party.

She started to fidget in her seat. She didn't even have anything in the car she could try and use to pee in to. And as the guy in the car ahead of her had shown she wasn't going to be able to leave her car and look for a bush. Maybe she could open the door and sort of slide halfway out and pee on the road? Not very lady like but better than wetting herself, right? Okay, she need to stop thinking about needing to pee, that wasn't going to help...

Now it was time to move on to the if onlys. If only she had left when she first thought about it she might have missed this entire jam. If only she hadn't gone at all she would be home right now watching TV in her jammies instead of caught in a jam. She laughed at her own play on words. She was hilarious. Or bored. It was one of those two things. If only she had heard about the traffic jam and tried to find a way around it earlier. And why wasn't there anything on the radio or online about it? This was a mess. Like when they got snow and people would just abandon their cars on the road and walk sort of mess. Though there would be no walking according to the police helicopter.

She switched radio stations still trying to catch news, "There's been a report of a massive traffic jam on the west...." and static. What the hell? She changed stations. Music. Changed back. Static. Well fuck. That's helpful.

She picked her phone back up and tried searching again. Nothing. Not nothing like no news but nothing as in she didn't have a signal anymore. Seriously? She turned her phone off and back on. She wasn't really hopeful that that would work but she didn't have anything else to try. And nope, nothing. Actually worse than before. Now she was getting an error message saying she could only make emergency phone calls. She didn't even have a normal phone signal. She turned the phone off again.

Back to the radio. The static had been replaced with music. But still no news. She checked everything. All music. As she reached the third station on her presets what she was really hearing filtered through her annoyance and she actually listened to the music. Then she switched back to the previous station, then forward through two more. Music. All music. All the same song. She switched back over to her satellite stations. The same song. Every station.

She craned her neck and looked up at the sky to catch a glimpse of the police helicopter again. She didn't see it. Then she thought, had she actually seen a helicopter before? She had seen a beam of light. She had heard the police through the loudspeaker. Wait, had they said they were the police? Now she couldn't remember. What the hell was going on up there?

The passenger's side door in the car ahead of her opened again, she could hear the guy shouting at the driver, "I know! But we need to find out what is going on. We can't just sit here all night with no information!" He started walking again, "Sir! Sir, we need you to get back in the car." The spot light was on him again. And no, they definitely didn't identify themselves as the police. She opened her sunroof to try and get a better view. The helicopter would have markings on the side if it was local law enforcement and she imagined that federal would as well. She tracked the beam of light up, up, up, what the hell? Where was it coming from? She couldn't see any helicopter at all. Just the light coming out of the sky. High above them. Like one of those beams clubs would shoot up to attract attention to a grand opening, just in reverse. Where did it end?

"Sir! This is your last warning! Get back in to your vehicle!" The guy shaded his eyes and looked up toward the sky. "Who are you? What is going on?" "Get back in your vehicle now!" He kept looking up at the sky. She heard the shots but had no idea where they came from. Just crack! And the man crumpled to the ground. She watched in horror as the shadows from the side of the road shifted and moved. Two figures peeled away from the darkness and enveloped the body. Moving it? Covering it? It was there and now it wasn't. The shadows bled back in to the side of the road.

She was too scared to scream.

She really should have gone pee before she left the party.