Highway 29

Table of Contents

It was past midnight when Luka drove out of Belgrade, the hum of the old engine his only company. He had worked the late shift at the auto repair shop again, and all he wanted was to get home, shower, and sleep. The highway was nearly empty. A black ribbon twisting through the fog and forest. Then, in the beam of his headlights, he saw her. A woman. Standing in the middle of the road.

Her hair was wild, hanging like wet ropes over her face. She wore a torn white dress, stained at the hem. Luka slammed the brakes, the car screeching to a stop just inches from her. She didn’t move. Then, slowly, she began to dance. Not gracefully.  Not like a ballerina but jerky, unnatural, every movement too sharp, too quick. Her limbs bent in wrong directions, her feet twisting in impossible angles as she swayed to a rhythm Luka couldn’t hear.

He blinked. For a moment, it looked like her head snapped to face him  though her body kept moving, still spinning, still twitching.

“Are you okay?”

Luka called, stepping out of the car. The air was freezing, thick with fog.

“Do you need help?”

The woman stopped.

Silence. Then, in a whisper that carried farther than it should have, she said,

“Dance… with me.”

Luka froze. Her voice didn’t sound right. It was layered, like two or three people speaking at once. Then she lunged forward, arms twitching, feet tapping against the asphalt in a sick rhythm. Luka stumbled back, tripped, and scrambled into his car.

The woman was already at his window. Her face was inches from the glass, pale and grinning. Her eyes rolled white as she kept dancing and spinning. Spinning faster and faster. The sound of her feet pounding the pavement like a drumbeat.

Luka slammed the accelerator. The car jolted forward, swerving around her. He didn’t stop until he reached the next village. When he finally looked in the rearview mirror, he saw nothing but fog. He told the police, of course, but they didn’t believe him.

“You’ve heard the stories,”

One officer said.

“People see what they expect.”

But Luka knew what he saw. And sometimes, late at night, when the road is quiet and the music in his car cuts out for no reason, he swears he can still hear it. The faint shuffle of footsteps on asphalt. A dance that never ends. A rhythm that waits for someone new.