YOU CHECK THE BACKSEAT

Against every survival instinct screaming in your head, you twist around to peer into the backseat. Better to know what you’re dealing with, right?

Wrong.

Two sets of black, marble eyes stare back at you from the darkness behind your seat. The squirrels are crouched low, their fur bristling, tiny claws gripping the upholstery. For one frozen moment, you lock eyes with them—and then they explode into motion.

“AAAHHH!” you screech as needle-sharp claws rake across your shoulder and neck. One squirrel launches itself at your face while the other scrambles over the seat, chittering with murderous intent.

Panic takes over. You slam the car into reverse and stomp the accelerator, but in your terror, you can’t control the wheel. The car rockets backward out of the garage and WHAM—you slam directly into the old oak tree with a bone-jarring impact that throws you back against your seat.

The rear windshield spiderwebs with fractures but holds. The trunk crumples like an accordion, leaving gaps and tears in the metal, now folded against itself.

Through your ringing ears, you hear it: the unified shriek of hundreds of tiny voices. The horde has found you.

Gray fur pours through your side gate like a living flood, covering your front lawn in seconds. They swarm over your mangled car, their claws tapping against the windows like deadly rain. But your door is still closed, the windows still up.

Inside the car, however, your problems are far from over. The two squirrels are in full attack mode—one clinging to your hair, the other trying to climb down your shirt. In the mayhem, you faintly hear dozens of tiny claws scrambling over the crumpled trunk, finding the gaps in the twisted metal.

They’re inside the car.

Your foot is still pressed to the accelerator in panic, and the engine roars uselessly, the RPMs screaming as your wheels spin against nothing. The sound is deafening—a mechanical scream that seems to excite the squirrels even more.

Inside the car, the two original squirrels continue their relentless attack, clawing at your face and arms. You can hear scratching and clawing from behind you now—the sound of the horde working their way into the cabin, the muffled tearing and shredding as they claw through the fabric and foam of your back seats.

Your sanctuary has become a death trap.

The first gray snout pokes through the upholstery behind your headrest. Then another.

They’re coming.

The car rocks as more and more squirrels pour in through the back. You can feel tiny claws on your seat, on your shoulders, in your hair. Their collective chattering becomes a deafening roar that drowns out your own screams.

The last thing you see before the gray tide overwhelms you completely is your garage door, still standing open, the light glowing warmly like a beacon you’ll never reach. The engine’s roar drowns out your final screams as dozens of tiny claws and teeth find their mark.

Sometimes the worst decision was the most careful.

THE END

Like Lot’s wife, you looked back when you should have kept moving forward. In the squirrel apocalypse, curiosity doesn’t just kill the cat—it kills everyone.