The Woman Who Burned Her Maps at Rest Stop 9

Late autumn, 2019. A woman sits alone at Rest Stop 9 near Deming, New Mexico, methodically feeding road maps into a rusted barrel fire. She doesn't look up when I pull in. She doesn't stop when the ash drifts across the picnic tables. I sit down across from her and ask if she needs help. She tells me she's been driving for three days straight, that she left everything behind in a town called Bitter Springs, Arizona, population forty-two. She tells me she's trying to erase every trace of where she's been. But the fire keeps catching on certain names — places that, when she says them aloud, make her voice go small and hollow. By the time the last map curls to black, we're both sitting in silence, watching the embers shift. And then she says something I cannot stop thinking about. Something about what she left in the desert. Something about what followed her to the rest stop. #RestStop9 #Deming #NewMexico #BitterSprings #RoadMaps #BarrelFire #LateAutumn #HighwayHorror #DesertDread #WomanAtTheFire #AshAndGasoline #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #SoloNarration #AnthologyHorror #RestStopHorror #AmericanGothic #LunaNarrates Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo