As a needle of my fuel gauge hovered over empty, I dropped my fingers against the steering wheel,

eyes searching the rain-soaked windscreen for any sign of a gas station.

I had foolishly overestimated that the amount I filled up with

just yesterday would be enough to get me home from work. But now I was just a few

seconds from breaking down in the middle of the road.

And following that pattern of great wisdom, I stayed through that meeting at work even though

every cell in me was screaming to return to the comfort of home.

Judging by the houses whose bordered up exteriors were scrawled over with crude graffiti and

the few figures that hovered, half hidden in the shadowy corners of the streets, just out of peripheral vision.

This was not the kind of place anyone wanted to break down in.

Just then, a familiar bright shell-shaped yellow and red neon logo smeared into my view and my heart leapt in relief.

As my eyes adjusted to the sudden glow, I saw that the filling stations there were occupied, just enough for me to fill up and leave

as quickly as possible.

As I disembarked from the car, the hairs on my forearms prickled upwards.

I tried to dismiss it as the night chill, as my own breath ghosted up as a vaporous cloud,

but the stiffness in my spine remained.

It was the kind you only got when you knew you were being watched.

A rapid series of patterning footsteps that rushed out from the surrounding shadows, shattered, the temporary

calm, and I whirled around.

My hand already clenched around my cell phone, ready to call 911 at any second. Instead of the glint of a pocket knife or any other threat that

I'd imagined.

There stood the friendliest looking golden retriever I'd ever seen.

...