It was a pitch black night, with no light apart from the glow of a cellphone held by a shaking hand. A woman, fairly young, walked down a bleak highway shivering in the cold air of the autumn air. She could barely see where she was going, but she needed to keep walking.
She was going to her mother's house for Thanksgiving, however her car broke down, and with a cellphone with no reception, and she had decided to walk. However, the day turned to night and she found herself lost on a seemingly endless highway in the middle of nowhere.
Suddenly, the road lit up by a pair of headlights coming her way. She turned around, immediately sticking her thumb out. She needed a ride; there was no way she would be able keep walking. The car turned out to be a truck, and she was relieved to see that it started to slow down as it came toward her. The window rolled down and a middle aged man peered down at her.
She immediately thanked him for stopping, and asked if she was going to the town her mother lived. He said yes, smiling.
Her stomach clenched when he smiled. There was something off; she couldn't really place it, but she knew right then that she shouldn't get in the truck, or even be near the man. Rational thought came to her though, saying that she needed a ride and he was just a trucker; after all, it just seemed absurd that anything would happen to her.
She climbed in the car, forcing a smile. She put her hands on her knees, squeezing them slightly. There was nothing to fear.
Nothing to fear.
Her body was found three months later, only identified by the clothing she wore by her grieving mother. Through observation, it was showed she had been raped, then strangled to death and left in the forest by a highway. It was deemed a serial killer murder, like many other girls who had been hitchhiking in the same area. There had even been a warning billboard saying there was a killer on the loose and not to hitchhike in that area.
Pitch shook his head. He had sent that fear for her, but she had done nothing about it. If she had embraced her fear, she would have been living today.
But no one listened to him nowadays. Not his fearlings, not the Guardians, not even a normal girl unknowingly getting into a car with a serial killer.
Because after all, there was everything to fear.
I had heard of a book called "The Gift of Fear" and it kind of started with a situation like this. I was watching a show earlier today about this band of serial killers who would pick up girls hitchhiking on this highway then kill them in the wilderness.
Humans are the only species to ever ignore fear; so that's what made me think of Pitch when he forces fear on people.