I was 17, and had also just gotten my driver's license after a year of practicing my driving on and off. I was stoked to finally be able to take myself places without my parents driving me everywhere.
Anyways, to celebrate me finally getting my license, I decided to take a long, quiet, and isolated ride through the outskirts of my city at night, which was pretty much all just dry brush and desert. (I live in Arizona, so we have plenty of wildlife that live in the deserts outside the cities, like coyotes and snakes and stuff.)
So, it's around 11:00pm and I take to the roads, playing music and just enjoying the night ride. My parents were staying at my grandmother's for a couple of days because she wasn't feeling well, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to drive my dad's jeep.
It's about midnight, and I'm driving through the desert, wind whipping through my hair. As I'm driving though, I start to notice that the Jeep is making these weird rumbling noises, and is starting to stutter and give out. I didn't know what caused the jeep to die, but soon after the stuttering and a dead Jeep, I was stranded alone in the desert. Dirt and dead brush as far as the eye can see.
At first, I think to myself, "No problem, I'll just call a tow truck or something." I grab my phone, only to find out there was no service.
"Fuck."
It's pitch black now, and I was becoming more and more worried by the thought that I was going to be stranded there for days, possibly even end up dead because of dehydration or being eaten alive by rabid coyotes. Then, one of my worst fears started coming into play.
I was sitting in the driver's seat of the Jeep, my head on the steering wheel, when all of a sudden I hear what sounds like a large pack of coyotes, not too far from where I was. My heart sank into my gut as I sat there, listening to these deep, terrifying howls these coyotes made as they roamed the empty desert. I was frozen. It was almost as if I was in a box that was getting smaller and smaller by the minute as the coyotes sounded like they were inching closer.
I tried looking around, trying to spot any movement, but the darkness swallowed me, and all I could see was dim moonlight and about 20 feet in front of me. The coyotes had suddenly gone quiet, which made me sink into the seat even more.
After about 10 minutes of sitting quietly, I noticed my phone had picked up some signal. 1 bar was all I needed, so I hurried and made a call to my friend to tell her to call a tow truck for me, and to tell her where I was. I didn't want to call my parents because I knew I would be deep trouble if they knew I had gone so far from home while they were away. I figured I would just tell them a towing company towed my car for illegal parking or something, which to me seemed less worse than what actually happened.
As I finished the call with my friend, I sat there, making sure I wasn't making any noise. I didn't know how long it would take the tow truck to get to me, so I continued to silently listen to my surroundings as I clutched a wrench that I had found in the glovebox.
It was about 3 hours later when the tow truck finally reached me. (They were all the way across town, and had to drive all the way through the desert.) I was so happy to finally be able to make it back to town. All the coyotes I had heard seemed to turn back the other way, which relieved me. I had told the tow truck driver about my situation the whole ride back, and he said he would have been a mess if he were in my shoes.
I made it back home, and the jeep was hauled away to the impound. I charged my phone and called my parents, confessing what had happened and where the jeep was. They weren't too angry with me, which I was happy about, but they revoked my license for a month as punishment.
I don't think I've ever been in a situation as scary as the one I was trapped in that day.
TL;DR: I was trapped in the middle of nowhere, in thick darkness, almost surrounded by wild coyotes.