Part 1
Late last night on Bolsa Avenue in Westminster, California, the stereo display flickered and locked onto a dead frequency: 00.0 MHz.
The moment the static hissed through the speakers, the streetlights turned blood-orange, the modern signs vanished, and the car veered onto a six-lane asphalt boulevard that does not exist on any map of Orange County.
Along the sidewalks, hundreds of silent pedestrians wearing mid-century traditional Vietnamese garments stopped in their tracks, turned slowly, and began clapping in eerie, synchronized unison.
Now my speedometer is climbing past 50 mph on its own, and I have to decide before the dead end at the end of the fog swallows me whole.
My hands clenched the steering wheel, knuckles white, but it offered no resistance. The Toyota Camry, usually so sluggish, now surged forward with an unnatural, hungry growl.
The speedometer needle swept past 55 mph, then 60. I pressed the brake pedal.
It felt like pressing against solid concrete. The car ignored me completely.
The blood-orange light cast long, dancing shadows from the figures on the sidewalks. Hundreds of them. Their faces were smooth, almost featureless, reflecting the strange, dim glow of this phantom street.
They clapped in unison, a dry, papery sound, like leaves rustling in a forgotten wind. Their movements were slow, deliberate, each hand meeting the other with perfect timing.
It wasn’t a cheer. It was something else. A welcome? A summons?
I tried to turn the wheel, to jerk the car back onto what I knew was Bolsa Avenue. Nothing. The steering wheel was stiff, unmoving, fixed on a trajectory straight ahead.
The six-lane asphalt boulevard stretched endlessly, wider than any road in Little Saigon. The storefronts were old, painted with faded Vietnamese characters advertising long-gone businesses: “Phở Ông Bà,” “Chợ Việt Cổ.” They didn’t reflect the modern neon of Westminster.
The static from the 00.0 MHz frequency continued to hiss, a low, constant drone beneath the rhythmic clapping. It vibrated through the floorboards, up the seat, into my bones.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum against the hum of the engine. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
Was this what happened when you were too tired, too stressed, too broken by debt? Was my mind finally giving way?
I looked down, desperate for something familiar, something concrete. My eyes fell on the dashboard, on the numbers I knew better than my own reflection.
The odometer.
It usually showed 287,543 miles, a testament to its long life as a taxi or a family hauler. Now, it was changing.
The numbers were spinning. Not forward, but backward.
The static pulsed, a low thrumming sound, and the odometer clicked, not a single digit, but whole numbers.
287,542.8.
Another pulse, another click.
287,542.1.
With every beat of that eerie, synchronized clapping, with every hiss of the dead radio frequency, the odometer on my $1,200 used Camry ticked backward by exactly 14.2 miles.
Part 2
My hands locked onto the steering wheel. The speedometer needle pushed past 55 mph, then 60, without my foot ever touching the gas. The Camry pulled me forward, an invisible force guiding it through the deepening fog that swallowed the horizon.
Outside, the clapping figures along the sidewalk moved in perfect unison, their arms rising and falling with unnerving precision. I strained to see their faces, searching for any flicker of human emotion, but there was none. Each head was smooth, featureless, like a mannequin’s, an empty canvas beneath their conical hats.
All I could see were two small points of reflective silver where eyes should have been, mirroring the glow from my dashboard lights. They looked like blank coins, staring back at me from the hollow spaces, their silent applause building a pressure in my chest.
A wave of static from the 00.0 MHz frequency surged through the speakers again, a raw, hissing sound that felt like it was scraping against my nerves. The odometer on the dash clicked, numbers spinning in reverse. Another 14.2 miles vanished from the total. My life savings, my restaurant, all of it had been consumed so fast. Now the car was taking my past, literally winding back the distance I’d traveled, erasing history with every pulse.
The clapping grew louder, a slow, relentless rhythm that pulsed through the chassis, vibrating up through my feet. The six-lane asphalt stretched endlessly into the gray, thickening mist ahead. I could make out a faint line where the road simply ended, a churning, colorless void waiting to swallow everything. The Camry was accelerating still, its engine a low, hungry growl.
I was Liem Nguyen. This cheap car, bought with Kevin’s kind intention, was supposed to be my second chance at dignity. Instead, it was stealing my history, mile by mile, driving me toward an unknown end beyond that suffocating fog.
You are Liem Nguyen. This car is taking you to a place that shouldn’t exist, erasing your past as it goes. What do you do?
A) Press the gas pedal down to force the car through the fog end of the road. 👉 Read Chapter 2
B) Slam on the brakes, turn off the radio knob, and jerk the wheel sharply to the right. 👉 Read Chapter 4
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