The Passanger

Short story about a taxi driver on a foggy day.

The Passenger

          “Listen brotha you’re either gonna get in the car or keep staring down the street and getting soaked.”

It was raining.  The sun was half out.  The street was a field of grey cobble and looked out of place compared to the buildings around it.  The closest thing to the street was a lone car; a green uber cab. 

The driver had almost reached his two minute waiting limit.  His glasses were blurry from the Californian humidity.  The passenger had been standing there for almost two minutes staring into the distance.

“What the hell is he doing, there’s nothing down there but fog and litter.”

The driver thought annoyed.  He could see a fly off the corner of his eye resting on the mirror and another one buzzing around a crusty bagel on the leftist end of the dashboard.  Every part of the driver’s body started to become annoyed. The driver had been making long distance runs.  Which evidentially was slower yet always yielded more cash.  Working in California as what was now known as a “professional taxi” according to CNN.  Calling him professional was a joke and he knew it.

“I came from downtown LA and the news treats me like a limousine driver.  Half of the day I just drive rich to strip clubs and kids in distance relationships.  Professional driver my a*s”

            The driver’s thoughts often wandered even with his impatience.  It had been six minutes.  Suddenly the strong British voice of the statute passenger was heard by the driver.

“I apologize good sir, I was simply watching the fog, it looks quite think this morning, oh I do hope you can see when we drive to the city, I know for sure I’d get lost in this hellish mist”

The fog had started to intensify as it always did at this time of day.  The driver turned on his radio and began flipping through it for weather/traffic news.  Being a Uber driver was the right job for the driver.  He loved the long rides, the conversations the distractions.  It was perfect for him he thought silently distracted.  After driving forty minutes to get to the passenger’s house one would think the driver might be more in a hurry to get along with his job but unfortunately for him sitting there left alone to his thoughts had made him wait ten minutes so far. 

“Where ya going bubby?” Asked the now lethargic driver as he looked through his wallet to find his GPS.

While his mind wandered through his wallet looking through pictures of his mother and his rather large but beautiful wife the driver glanced at his watch.  Sudden realization gripped the mind.  Turning to yell at the odd passenger the driver noticed his body was lying limp in the back of the car and looked oddly pale.  His pasty mouth was hung open exposing very clean white teeth.  Just as the thoughtless angry words started coming out of his lip his breath was taken from his lungs.  The driver began rapidly coughing and attempted to grope the handle to the door.  In his frantic wandering eyes behind paled glasses the reflection of the car air condition vents was visible.  The fog had begun slowly going through the vents four minutes ago.  Coughing even faster, blinded by the dense condensation formed on the lenses of this glasses the driver opening the door stumbled unto the pavement which felt oddly soft and smooth. 

Merely gasping for breath he crawled over to rest on the now creamy curb.  The air was so dense and heavy it felt like he was moving against a current.  The lone driver’s glasses soon fell down into a nearby rain grate.  Crawling over feeling so helplessly heavy as if with each movement he was lifting his whole body. The driver began trying to reach through the bars of the grate.  The rusted metal and corrosive fog burned away all skin left on his arm leaving his watch to also fall down.  As the rest of his head began to melt his eyes leaving his sockets could just barely see the time on his watch which he had been twenty minutes past since he started waiting for the now melted passenger.   The moisture in the air swarmed around what remained in his body.  Like a thick human soup he began to fester and melt as all that remained was carried into the watery sewer through the filter that was the grate.