Just don’t stop - By Nini Luiz

Written By: Nini Luiz

Category: Short story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In a compelling short story titled "Just don't stop," Nini Luiz takes readers on a gripping journey through a dystopian landscape. As part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this piece delves into themes of survival, rebellion, and the human spirit's quest for freedom. Set against a backdrop of a world where roads are fraught with peril and the underground offers a deceptive sense of safety, Luiz crafts a narrative that questions the boundaries of courage and choice.

About the Work

"Just don't stop" is a tense and atmospheric narrative that explores the dichotomy between confinement and the yearning for liberation. Through evocative imagery and a suspenseful plot, Nini Luiz captures the stark reality of a world where danger looms both within and outside the confines of society. The story's mood is one of urgency and defiance, reflecting the protagonist's inner conflict and determination to navigate a path fraught with unknown threats.

Just don’t stop

Original Submission by Nini Luiz

The mechanic shop is full of junk and spare bits. There’s scraps of metal that has been welded together and fleshed out onto broken skeletons of cars.

Cara is slotted in the mouth of one, fiddling with the engine and other mushed up pieces. Her white shirt is greased up, her jeans sooted with oil and dust. She hums to herself as she fiddles, a filthy cloth wiping away at her hands absentmindedly.

“You know the roads are dangerous.”

Cara jerks slightly, hitting her head on the roof of the cars mouth. She groans as she glances at the man who spoke. He is glaring at her. She sighs and pulls away from the car, rubbing the back of her head as she does so.

She appraises the mechanic. He’s a big guy. Big arms, big stomach and a big bushy moustache covering his lips with big bushy eyebrows staring her down with contempt and concern.

She looks at him, her eyes softening as she huffs out a disbelieving laugh. She pulls away from the car lazily, slamming the mouth shut with ease.

“Okay.” She says. “And?”

The mechanic, his name is Doyle even though his tattered overalls proudly displays “Bob’s motors” in stitched red and white thread, glares at her unamused.

“And you would be wise to stay off them.” He glowers, his blue eyes sparking. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

Cara dusts off her hands, turning her gaze to the car. Her car. A small car, slight in make. It would not draw too much attention, would not make too much noise. She is sure she will be fine.

She forces her gaze back to Doyle, a smirk on her face. “This you trying to squeeze more money out of me?”

Doyle’s face flushes red in indignation. “This ain’t about money. It’s about your damn life.” He breathes in deeply, the ice in his eyes hardening. “You should take the underground. It’s safer.”

“It’s also slower.” She mocks and laughs. “The road is quicker.”

“Yeah, a quicker way to hell.” He spits. “There’s nothing up there but hell.”

She rolls her eyes, focusing back on the car. “There’s nothing wrong with the road. People are just scared.”

She turns and plants herself on the closed hood, leaning back cockily. “Besides, it’s not like you haven’t sold cars to others before. They came back just fine didn’t they?”

Doyle looks down at the scuffed up floor. “That’s not the point.” He murmurs gruffly. “They shouldn’t have gone out. They made it back but-”

He stops, his eyebrows unclenching in despair. He whispers, almost to himself. “Not all of them do.”

Cara’s head lounges on her neck, her brown eyes curious and observant. Then she grins.

“Well then you shouldn’t have sold them those cars.”

She’s joking, sort of, but Doyle doesn’t react. His eyes are forlornly stuck to the floor. Cara cannot help but huff in irritation.

She plops herself off the hood of the car, her sneakers hitting the cement and snapping Doyle out of his daze. She languidly waltzes to the side of the car door, popping it open. She looks back to him and sighs.

“Ah, you worry too much you know. I’ll be fine.” She smiles softly. “Besides, it’s been years. How do we know that it hasn’t changed out there? Maybe it’s safe now.”

Doyle opens his mouth, his moustache bristling and settling. He does not say anything. Cara, bored and annoyed, decides it’s time to get in the car and drive away from this place.

She swings down and settles into the drivers seat, pulling on her seatbelt leisurely and turning the key with a sharp twist. The engine splutters to life, choking on the oil and gas that floods its system. She smiles to herself and is about to shift the gears to get out of there but Doyle stops her.

“Just -“ he hesitates and Cara tilts her head to look at him. He’s standing a bit away from her, watching her. His eyes are sad. “No matter what you do, just don’t stop.”

A pause, the words settling into her bones and for the first time feeling doubt creep in.

He repeats himself, voice strained and pleading. “Just don’t stop.”

Cara stiffens her back. The warning is sincere. He says it with conviction that Cara is almost compelled to say she can do that. Just don’t stop. She wants to promise Doyle she’ll be fine, tell him not to worry. The words don’t come out so instead she jams the gears and speeds out of there.

//

The city is far away from the above ground. It is buried with all of the people deep beneath the surface. The people who built it had hoped that they could hide forever and their sins would never be uncovered.

Cara snorts at the thought. It was a bit dramatic and probably not quite the truth. From what she remembered in history class, the whole world had been forced underground when the roads became unsafe to use. So, the cities were covered up and the people shoved into them.

It was always dark and cramped underground. People were packed into floor to ceiling apartment buildings. Literally floor to ceiling, with the penthouse roofs being the top of the underground tunnels. Smog choked the little life that managed to survive down in the depths of the city. There was no natural light. Only a harsh, dystopian glare that glimmered in off-coloured purples and golds. It wasn’t the same as the sun.

Which is what Cara realises as the car comes to the entrance of the underground. It had been a steep drive up, languid curves and detours to navigate. She thinks they designed it like that mostly to stop anything from coming in. However, it served a dual purpose in making it difficult to get out. She grinned to herself. Difficult but not impossible.

The tunnel entrance is small. It is narrow enough to fit but just barely. Small ribbons of sunlight dance along the edge. She stops to stare in awe. The thought crosses her mind that she should be frightened. She has never left the compound and for good reason. People were not supposed to leave. That is why it is so difficult, but not impossible.

You weren’t supposed to leave but she was definitely not the first to try.

For numerous reasons people would leave. It is too cramped in the underground, almost unbearable to live. So some people want to take their chances. Others want to cut the queue, however risky that might be. But most people are like her. They are sick of the underground and do not really believe in the so called dangers of the above ground. So, really, how bad can it be?

She thinks of Doyle warning her to not drive. He seemed to resent her for wanting to leave the compound yet his livelihood was selling cars. She scoffs. If he really believed it was dangerous, he should go into a different line of work. What a hypocrite.

She revs the motor, excitement pulsing in her veins. So what if people told her not to go? So what if people told her to keep quiet or better yet stay where it was safe? So what? They did not anything.

She jams the car into gear, feeling it rumble and jitter. She grins. What’s the worst that could happen?

With that thought her foot kicks down the accelerator and she floods out of the tunnel. She has her windows down and can feel the wind pull back at the skin on her arms. She is blinded by the sunlight before she feels it, blinking wildly as warmth encases her. It’s different to the warmth that smothers the compound. It is pleasant. Clean.

She keeps her hand on the wheel, knowing only so much that she must stick to the road. A laugh bubbles up her lips and her eyes light up. She is actually seeing the sun. She is alone, away from the mucks of people in the city. Outside of the compound. She has never been happier.

Her giddiness slowly settles and yet she cannot stop grinning. She looks around with wide eyes. There she is in a place she had only dreamed of. She remembers so vividly tracing along the images in her history textbook. She had touched the paper tentatively, imagining what it was like to be there. It had looked so green, so vibrant.

This place does not look like that.

It is flat mostly. Some wayward boulders or mountains where there should have been trees. It is painfully dry. The warmth of the sun is strong and potent, sucking all the colour away and leaving only a dust blown yellow. The wind is strong, bashing against the car as she somewhat battles to keep it straight. There are some dark coloured plants. At least she thinks they are plants.

And it is quiet. The wind wails but only as it rushes against her open window. The car is an outlier in the otherwise abandoned place. The engine hums loudly, almost obnoxiously.

She has travelled quite a distance from the entrance. In the past five minutes her only focus has been moving quickly and freely. If this was the olden days she would have to look for cars and other people using the road. Now she is alone. She can afford to look around, see how far she has come. She glances back. Just a quick peek.

She can barely see the entrance, it moves further away as she keeps her foot steadily on the gas. It is hidden quite cleverly from view and she wonders if she keeps going would she be able to find it again? Or any other entrance to the underground city?

She shakes the thought off. She can’t go back yet. Not when she had built the anticipation for months planning to leave and be out, be free. There’s no way she can already go back. But maybe she should? Is it even possible when she’s pretty sure she just saw something watching her?

Her foot lifts lightly from the gas, not enough so that she comes to a stop but enough that she slows. The realisation that she saw something, something watching her, hits her hard.

Most of the place is flat but in the distance there is some type of large elevated land formation. The movement is blurry but it’s there. It is hiding.

Her muscles tense, her heart picks up. Everything is deathly quiet. She squints blearily out of her window, trying to make out what exactly it is she is looking at. The road crumbles beneath as the tyres pick up gravel. Just don’t stop, she thinks.

But what is that thing?

There is a round disk that is obtrusively white with three slits, two vertical adjacent and one horizontal. The disc spins one way to the other, like the tilt of a head.

It is definitely watching her. She squints and copies the movement almost thoughtlessly. She cannot see much else except that face which looms high. She stares at it for a good minute, her foot completely off the pedal as the car judders forward slower and slower until she forgets and it stops. The second the car stops, the creature tilts its head and then, to her horror, it starts to rush towards her.

It is quick. Too quick, she can barely see it. There is a whurr of something as dust picks up and the creature becomes somewhat erratic, excited. Panic spikes her adrenaline. She yanks the gear to change and slams the accelerator.

The car puffs a little and doesn’t move. She glances behind her and sees the creature is gaining on her quickly. She yelps and turns the key off and then back on again, begging the car to turn on. It groans but then obliges and she manages to get the car moving well before the creature reaches her. She speeds away and feels the air ravage her lungs.

The relief is immediate. She’s moving, she is getting away. She turns around to see the creature, this time keeping her foot firmly on the gas. It has stopped. It looks unfeeling on at her and then tilts its head to the side. It’s too far to really see it but Cara gets the awful feeling that it’s smiling.

//

There is heavy internal debate as to whether Cara should turn round. For one, she is sufficiently freaked out and actually doesn’t want to continue her little “freedom” trip. It is almost comical how quickly she has begun to regret her decision. Two, she does not know where the next exit to civilisation, to home, would be.

However, it is not as simple as just “turn around” and go home. For one, that creature was in the way. It had been behind her and she did not know what it was or what it would do if she turned around. She remembers Doyle’s warning. “Just don’t stop.” It repeats in her head in a mocking plea.

The other thought is that whatever that thing was, it was watching her. So, if she turned back to the underground it could follow her. After all, the gap was big enough to fit a car. Sure, the paths were difficult to follow. But not impossible.

She bites her lip and looks around her. She has not seen the creature again but she can feel it. Her arms are raised with goosebumps and the animal part of her knows she is being hunted down. The next question that intrudes her mind is if it is the only creature.

She steps on the accelerator a little harder as the thought hits her deeply. Would it be easier to be with other people right now? Would they have been able to protect her or distract the creature? Or would it make them a bigger target? Would it attract more attention to them? If someone else was with her would they have distracted the creature so she wasn’t its sole focus?

There was something odd and fairly distressing about the way it had spotted her so quickly. She had barely been out in the sun for five minutes when she saw it. How long had it been watching before she realised? Did it see the tunnel entrance? Could it go through it?

“We don’t know what they are or even what they look like.” She remembers her history teacher, Miss Gia, explaining with sincere solemnity. “No one has ever survived an attack to tell us. But we do know they are fast. The minute you stop, they pounce.”

Right, she was not supposed to stop. That was the one rule. Doyle’s one non-negotiable and she had broken it within five minutes.

She laughs incredulously. It was starting to feel like she never had a chance. Something about the way the creature had been so close to the entrance didn’t sit right with her. It frightened her more than anything. Why had it been there? How could it have known?

Her grip on the steering wheel tightens. Maybe it was just unfortunate but if it had known, why didn’t it go into the compound? Why did it wait for people to leave?

In the distance there is a shadow. Compact and unmoving. Her shoulders tense as she approaches, wondering if it is the creature or something else. She peers tentatively out of her window and realises in shock that it is a car.

It is somewhat misshapen. Squat and oblique, lumpy in a way that seems unnatural. A complete wreck really. Covered in ash and soot, as if burnt and melted and banged up for fun, altogether smouldered down into nothing. She was not expecting it to look so deformed. Well, if she was honest, she had not been expecting to see anything at all out here.

There are pieces missing, like tender meat torn off the bone. Nothing else though. Not a stray bag or shoe that might have belonged to someone human. Nothing that would suggest that the car wreck was new or that it had been left here abandoned for years. It’s only tire tracks, not quite yet rubbed away from sand, that would suggest it had been quite recent and she wonders who had been as stupid she had been.

There is no hope that bubbles up at the thought that she might not be the only human out there because the thought cannot even cross her mind. Of course no one else would be here. Whoever that was, they are now dead.

She brings her eyes back to the road, slumping in her seat. Exhaustions hits hard as she does. She should turn back. She never should have left. What is she supposed to do now?

//

The sun is setting quickly and she is far, far away from home. In fact, she had not considered what she would do if she could not find some place to stay before the evening. She hits her palm against her head in anger and attempts to wake herself up. She really really is so stupid.

As the hours pass and her exhaustion gets heavier, she feels as if the creature is close. Close enough that she has adrenaline keeping her alert. Close enough that her agitation spikes and she spins the car inelegantly around. She needs to go home. Now.

Her eyes flicker every which way, wondering if the creature will come out to get her. She remembers Doyle’s words “just don’t stop” and it sounds different in her head now. Less like a warning and more like a promise. So long as she does not stop she can get home.

Her emotions are buzzing. It is something, at least, to get her through it and she swears she will never leave the compound again. She will take the underground. She will walk. She will jump across roofs if she has to. She will never, ever go on the roads again.

It’s a nice thought, comforting. It gets her through the dark of the night when she was expecting the creature’s obtrusively white face to pop up. It brings some solace when she is frightened something will slam hard into her car and send her lurching into a ditch or a rock or something.

She mentally calculates the time in her head. If she just follows the road, if she just keeps going and does not stop, she can be back in the compound by sunrise. She can do that. Even as her vision blurs and panic curdles in her throat, she can get home safe. And at the very least, she will have been able to see the sun. It is more than she ever thought she would see.

The thought is peaceful. Enough to lull her into some sense of security. That is a mistake.

Her attention is drawn to the road as she hears a clanging sound. She does not have time to swerve as she sees something in the road. She does not know what it is, she can barely see in the dark and with her exhaustion, but she knows it is dangerous. She knows as she drives over it and feels the tires burst that she is screwed.

The car skids along the road. She hits the break instinctively and immediately releases it like it like it burns her foot. She cannot stop, that is the one thing she refuses to do. She tries to manoeuvre the car, tries to speed up and get home without dying either from the crash or the creature by swinging the wheel this way and that.

It does not work. The car dances in a loop, she bites her lip and blood spurts out. She cannot see in the blur, cannot feel anything but the thump of the car as it hits something.

The car stops.

There’s a small wheeze of air released. She is stock still, every muscle tense. Her breath is fast. Her heart is fast. She fumbles for the keys, turning the ignition and hoping for some fire to light up under it so she can go home. She whimpers pathetically. She just wants to go home.

The car gurgles and chokes before dying completely. She begins to cry. Dark ugly sobs as she slams her hand on the steering wheel. It’s stupid, it’s useless. She never should have come out here.

Then the car makes a noise. Not a normal car noise and definitely not a hopeful noise. More like something scratching at metal. She ducks down into her seat, trying to hide.

It is the creature. It has to be. What else could it be?

The roof of the car is being torn off and without much thought Cara fumbles her seatbelt off and slams the door open. She falls out and scrambles to run away.

It’s on top of her car. A massive black arch, thick like oil and sludge. In the middle of the arch is a white face, almost like a porcelain mask. Two small vertical slits for eyes and one horizontal for the mouth. It’s looking at her. Holding the car roof in its strangely small hands.

It is disproportionate. Disfigured in someway. It’s not the same as the one she saw earlier. It is not alone either.

There are about five other creatures, all surrounding her. She is surprised at how slow they are. In the stories she had heard, before the compound had been established, the key take away was always how quick the creatures were. If someone stopped on the side of the highway, before anyone knew what was happening, they were gone. The car the closest thing to identify remains of the massacre.

Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she was imagining them, the large otherworldly things looking at her, trudging along closer to her.

She is watching them as she tries to move away. The tar is cold for the evening. The gravel sticks into her palms and pricks blood from her. The creatures watch as she twists her head every which way, trying to discern what to do, where to go.

She glances at the object in the road. The scrap metal that basically killed her. With a start she realises she recognises it. It’s the same as the car she saw earlier, the one with chunks missing.

The terrible, awful thought occurs to her that the creatures planned this. That wasn’t right. They were not supposed to be intelligent. They were not supposed to be deliberate. It was supposed to be bad luck if you stopped and they caught you. It was not supposed to be that they could hunt you down and kill you.

A disbelieving sob escapes her. Something still does not feel right. The creatures are moving slowly. Too slowly. Almost like they do not know what to do with her, like they ade stupid. She startles at that and whips her head around. Maybe they are stupid and she can get out of this. But that does not explain then how they were intelligent enough to trap her.

She glances up, to a distance away and her hope dissipates. Looking down on her is the creature she recognises only because it tilts its head. She recognises it from its behaviour and she knows there is some thought in its head. It planned this. It knew.

She wonders painfully if it would have left her alone if she hadn’t turned back to go home? Or would it have done the same thing?

It leans closer to her, observing her. Cara cannot help the glare that settles on her face. The creature tilts its head the other way, the others moving closer and making strange noises. Her heart is beating fast. She is going to die, she knows that. She just wants to go home. She never should have left. She never should have stopped.

The creature grins at her and with a final gurgle of its throat the others descend.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar celebrates the power of words and the artistry of storytelling. It provides a platform for writers around the world to share their unique voices and perspectives. The competition embraces diverse genres and themes, encouraging participants to push the boundaries of creativity and imagination.

We extend our gratitude to Nini Luiz for sharing "Just don't stop" with the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your narrative is a captivating exploration of courage and resilience. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to seeing more of your work. Thank you for being a part of this literary journey.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.