Old Man Perkins

Out of nowhere two bright headlights suddenly turn on, a black truck comes out the driveway, full speed, driving straight for us. We all look at each other, terrified, wondering if this is the end.

It was March of my junior year, so that means it was prom season. At our highschool we had senior homecoming, and junior prom, so it was my grade’s time to shine. I had already been asked to prom, but my friends wanted help asking so of course I went to help them. It was my friends Kade and Carver but my other two friends Jenna and Allie were coming too.

Kade, a blonde boy who loves soccer, and a little awkward, Carver, the funniest person you’ll ever meet, who doesn’t care about anything. He has floppy dirty blonde hair that hangs off the side of his head. My two girlfriends went with us as well. Jenna, my best friend for 5 years, has blonde curly hair, loves to sing, and is one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, and Allie, the most beautiful girl you’ll ever meet, funny, and she has the purest soul. And then there’s me Sarah, a dancer who quit to get a job, does photography and tries to be artistic. This is the group that I hung out with, we are all very different, but we got along very well. We all hopped in Kade’s car, ready to go help Kade and Carver ask to prom.

We get everyone together and drive to the nearest Walmart to pick up a few things for the boys to ask to prom. Carver picks up a bunch of solo cups, and Kade picks out a cake. We then proceeded to drive to Kade’s house to make the posters, or poster because Carver decided he didn’t want to buy one, so we made Kade’s poster and put it on Trinity, the girl Kade was asking, doorstep. Once we finish asking her we then go to Corinne’s house, the girl Carver was asking, and we start to set up all these stupid solo cups everywhere and lighting the cheap candles we had bought from the dollar store. Jenna, Carver, and I are struggling so much and we’re making so much noise trying to ask this girl. We finally get everything perfect and Carver knocks on the door. Once that happens we all book it to the car where Kade is ready to drive off. We all wait for Corinne to text Carver and of course she says yes, because who wouldn't?

After we finished asking the girls to prom, I asked “now what?”. Carver goes “why don’t we go to old man perkins?”. Kade agrees enthusiastically. Jenna, Allie, and I are puzzled and continue to ask them what they mean. The boys then continue to tell us that it’s this house that when you play the song “Crazy Train,” a man will come out of his house yell and chase you. We were confused still but agreed, because why not. Kade starts to drive and it’s about 30 minutes later when we reach this normal neighborhood, but he keeps driving through it and we reach the end, or so we thought. There were these huge twisted trees on this dirt path, Kade decides to drive through this creepy, dark dirt path, we drive through this for about 5 minutes when we reach the end of the dirt path and the start of a road. On this road there are three houses farther apart than normal. Kade stops at the first one.

We sit there confused but Kade and Carver are so excited, they roll down the windows, and Kade plugs in his phone and loads Crazy Train. We turn it on full blast for not even 20 seconds when all of a sudden headlights turn on from the house and a truck comes full blast down the driveway. I look at Kade terrified, telling him to “drive Kade drive!”. The truck almost T-bones us but Kade started driving, Crazy train still playing. Jenna yelling “TURN THE SONG OFF”. Allie is quiet, Carver is thinking this is so fun, Kade focusing on the road, and I am sitting in the passenger seat terrified.

Kade is weaving through both lanes trying to get rid of this truck following us speeding, flashing his brights on and off at us, we almost hit 4 cars. There’s a stop sign ahead and I’m thinking this can not be good, Kade runs the stop sign and we almost hit a white sedan. The truck is still keeping up with us somehow. Kade decides to get on the freeway, we’re all terrified except for Carver who is screaming, but secretly we all think he was scared too. Kade is weaving throughout the lanes trying to lose him. We’re on the freeway for a couple exits, when Kade decides to get off. We drive off the freeway until we reach a neighborhood, Kade pulls over and we are all relieved to not see the truck. From where we are parked we can see the freeway and we see the truck pass by. We all get out of the car. Kade's hands were shaking and we were all shell shocked at what had just happened. This was the moment where we realized how easily we could’ve died and we all just embraced because of what had just happened. Carver is still hyped because who does that? Like this would happen to us. This experience really brought us closer together. We took a moment to gather our thoughts and decide to drive back and go to our separate houses. After a couple weeks we would tell people this story and no one would believe it because of how crazy it sounds, people question us but the five of us know what really went down on that one night in March.