An unlucky driver is taken for a wild ride by otherworldy forces...
It was a chilly, dreary day, and my 'check engine' light was on.
I frowned. Since I'd walked out of that fast food place along with the rest of my shift, driving had become my only source of income. If it broke down, I was screwed.
Not that I was getting much work. The miserable rain was keeping people indoors, away from all the bars and restaurants that were my usual source of drunks and cheating spouses in need of a ride.
My phone pinged. A job? I checked the location. Whoever this was, they needed a ride into town from the middle of nowhere. I must've passed by that spot a million times; there was nothing out there but leafless trees and abandoned factories. My frown deepened.
I looked in the mirror. Between the weather and the month-long abstinence challenge I'd accepted--mostly to forget about my precarious work situation--my expression was turning into a permanent scowl. I sighed and turned out of the parking lot, on my way to a random spot on the side of a state route.
As expected, there was no one waiting for me: just an empty black road, a rainy gray sky, and dead brown leaves as far as the eye could see. Parked in a gravel pulloff, I checked my phone again. There had to be some mistake.
Nothing moved outside my foggy windows. I was starting to get a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'd seen plenty of videos of drivers being lured out to remote locations and robbed--just what I needed, I thought. I sent another polite but irritated message to my passenger.
When I looked up from my phone, I saw two people standing just a few feet away from my car. I jumped. Where had they come from? The first was a frat boy in a blue dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and salmon shorts and loafers: clothes for a well-heated downtown bar, not the side of the road. It was hard to tell anything about his companion, covered in so many layers of baggy clothes, hood up, face hidden.
"C-can we come in?" The frat boy asked. He looked pale and drained; his teeth chattered.
"...Uhm." I grunted. "Yeah. That's what I'm here for, isn't i--"
It happened faster than blinking. The frat boy's companion threw him aside like a bag of trash and whipped into my backseat. The frat boy himself scrambled to his feet. He mumbled to himself as he ran woozily through the trees. In the back of my car, the darkness and silence deepened.
"I hate this time of year," came the voice from my backseat. It was as sweet and melodic as a pop star's, but with something unnerving rumbling beneath it. I heard the sound of scarves, jackets, and other layers being shed. Unable to see anything in the fogged-up rearview, I moved to--
"Don't turn around!" My passenger commanded. I did as I was told, looking at my phone, I noticed the 'ping' was getting further away. The fratboy. If he had been my supposed pickup...then what was in my car?
"Umm…" I began. My tongue felt sticky. The interior of my car was like a sauna. It was hard to think clearly.
"Oh, what?" The voice in back pouted. "You want money? Here, you got it." My passenger threw a skinny leather wallet onto the seat beside me. It looked exactly like the kind a fratboy might have. "Now let's just sit here for a bit. Relax. We all need to relax, right? Especially this time of year. It's so lonesome. Aren't you lonely?"
"Uhm." I grunted again. Now that I'd been asked, yes, I did feel lonely. I'd sworn off dating apps for the month and the only conversations I had were superficial exchanges with passengers. The days all blended into each other, as gray and featureless as the November sky overhead.
"Of course you are," the voice from the backseat cooed. "Don't you miss the warmth of a tender, intimate touch?"
"I mean, I guess," I gulped, "but look, who are y--"
I felt two fingers on my throat. The touch was warm and intimate, so much so that my hair--and everything else--suddenly stood on end. Although there was a current like electricity coursing through my veins and I could feel the throbbing of my heart, the animal part of my brain screamed danger. It screamed that just two fingers shouldn't be long or wide enough to coil around my whole neck. Human fingers didn't have so many joints or the texture of talons.
"I can make you feel even better…" my passenger was so close that I could feel the warmth and moisture of their breath in my ear. I was still struggling to process what was happening when they lay their neck on my shoulder. If only it had stopped there. Instead, the neck slithered down my chest like a hungry anaconda. The next thing I heard was the sound of teeth unzipping my jeans.
The wave of pleasure swept through my worn-out brain like a tornado through a trailer park. Its roar drowned out my fear, my reason, and even my self-awareness. It was like dying and being reborn a thousand times per second.
When I finally came back into this dull reality and my wasted body, I no longer felt my passenger's touch. I felt empty, like I'd been drained of something that I could never get back.
Compared to the overwhelming sensation I'd just experienced, nothing else in life had any meaning at all.
I had to have more.
I tried to twist in my seat, but I was as weak as a shipwreck survivor. In the mirror, I saw a girl.
The perfect girl.
And as our eyes met I felt sure that if I were gay, I'd be looking at the perfect man; if I had any fetishes, they'd be embodied in the thing sitting in my backseat. Instead, the girl--who looked like a combination of my high school crush, my favorite actress, and (uncomfortably enough) my Aunt Karen--smoothed out a sundress over her tanned athletic legs and flashed a winning smile.
"S-s-so," I finally managed to stammer. "Where to?"
"Anywhere with people. Campus, maybe." When she spoke, the fear came flooding back: that voice that didn't belong to the body it came out of. "Now that I've got enough energy to change form, it doesn't really matter." My passenger shrugged, leaned back, and looked out the window. Without blinking once.
Barely noticing where I was going, I drove to a spot by the university with a lot of clubs and bars.
“Here.” My passenger ordered. I pulled up to the curb. The knot of fear and desire in my gut made me grip the wheel until my knuckles went white. The door opened and closed faster than I could react, which was probably for the best. Outside the foggy window, my ex-passenger smiled at a pair of students crossing the windy quad. They looked at each other, grinned, and waved back.
I'm sure they didn't notice that the thing that crossed the dead grass to walk with them had moved impossibly fast. I wondered what it looked like to each of them. It started to rain again and the three figures disappeared beneath a dorm awning.
I haven't turned off my work app since then. Every time I get a job, my heart pounds with the hope that we'll meet again--it's the only thing that keeps me going, and that terrifies me.
Maybe this is a warning. To trust your gut. To be careful around anything too perfect or too strange. Or maybe it's just a way to pass the time…
Until we meet again.
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