Travel North up to the Alaska Highway, and you might see me. A few miles out of the way, I work the phones for the Alcan Beaver Creek border crossing as part of a rotating roster of... Let's just say wash outs.
It's cold. It's quiet. No one is around but for the wild life on occasion. See people think about liminal spaces based on a preconception of man's vast sculpted stroad and suburb laiden hell scape. But this? Man's presence is an anomaly. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is around. 'cept for Mittens.
Mittens is our favorite little horror story, a little spooky tale about a wolf, or cat, or bear, or even a mousse, but let's be clear... None of thems Mittens. Ya see, there's segments of this terrain where trucks shouldn't be driving. Ice sheets and permafrost and other cold forms of solid water crust over a little stretch of inner continental sea. We got fellas who talk about creature sightings in the Great Lakes who can back up what we know.
Y'see, Mittens is a little Trirassic anomaly. 48 meters long. Jaws the size of the tallest Mac that can make it up some of those Alaskan roadways. Y'all watch Ice Truckers and get a clean, studio shined version of what happens out here. She's hungry. We call her Mittens coz of her two forelimbs. 23 meters of double jointed, barbed, keratinous ice breaking, bone snapping, steel shredding claws. Mittens is like a Lobster from hell, someone must've seen her up close coz there's a Subnautica game that has something that looks similar to her. Blood red carapace, beady glowing yella eyes, and her beak, wew, not something you wanna get familiar with.
She haunts around during my favorite time of year, when the sun vanishes for a few weeks. I like to walk out on the ice and watch her, you can make out her beautiful bioluminescent sides beneath the ice. She has a voice like a siren, soft and sweet, the kind of gentle perversion that can make a man forget himself. You walk out there on the sheet of ice in your sleep half the time, waking up cold, but not dead. Not frost bitten. She seemingly can drag your soul out of your body, becon it over the ice, and then her phantasmal terror takes hold as she drags you under. But once you breathe in that first deadly gulp of salt water, you realize she's touching your mind for carnal purpose.
Most of the fellas who work out here are guys, but we all know that the kind of touch Mittens has is anything but picky. She's been alone for so long, and she is so aged, that the idea of male and female isn't really relevant to her. You won't leave her clutches the same. Nothing in the world feels this way. She beckons to you every night, and even when you're rotated out, the dream is the same. People work this job because of Mittens. If you find a vacancy, I'd recommend you look away and walk away. Coz that means one of us idiots has decided to jump in and join her, and she is hungry.
