My passenger was a dead woman - I saw them pulling her body from the river on the news this morning alongside a photo of her smiling at a birthday party. They'd been asking for people to come forward if they knew anything about her murder but I don't think anyone would believe this.
She didn't look dead at first, she'd been waiting at the taxi rank and just so happened to step in my cab. Could have been anyone else but I seem to welcome strangeness somehow. She asked to go to the lake, something about a meeting she couldn't miss which seemed odd at such a late hour.
It took me a few minutes to recognise her but she seemed to know when I did, our eyes meeting in the rear-view mirror as she gave me that same smile from the birthday photo. I kept driving even though I knew she wouldn't be able to pay the fare, something compelled me to see what how this encounter would end.
The closer we got to the lake, the more she began to decay until she was a water-bloated, blue-tinged, strangulated corpse - likely mimicking how she was in the morgue's drawer at that very moment. I pulled over in the carpark,close as I could get and she asked me to walk with her a moment.
I couldn't refuse - I had to know what she wanted from this not-so-chance meeting we were having. She didn't speak for most of the walk, just silently left a trail of watery footsteps behind her until we reached the shore. That's when she told me to pick up whichever woman was waiting by herself the next night at the exact time she'd been waiting at the exact stop.
And I did.
And I do every single night.
And they haven't pulled another one from the lake since.
No comments:
Post a Comment