THE CAB RIDE
Twenty years ago, I drove a
cab for a living. Now I steal cadavers
for a European distributor. When I
arrived at
But, I had seen too many
impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation
and income. Unless a situation smelled
of danger or elderberries, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I
reasoned to myself.
So I walked to the door and
knocked. "Just a minute",
answered a frail, elderly voice with a thick, goulash accent. I could hear
something being dragged across the floor, something
experience told me was a cadaver, male, around 200 pounds.
After a long pause, the door
opened. A small woman in her 80's stood
before me. She was wearing a black
rubber thong and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a
1940s movie.
By her side was a small
nylon suitcase and behind her a large duffle bag, trailing blood. The apartment
looked as if there had been a great struggle and sensing this old woman's great
sense of power I decided not to run. All
the furniture was covered with blood.
There were urinals on the walls and meat hooks hanging from the
ceiling. In the corner was a cardboard
box filled with severed heads.
"Would you carry my bag
and ex husband out to the car?" she said.
I took the suitcase and duffle bag to the cab, then
returned to assist the woman.
She took my arm and we
walked slowly toward the curb. Her grip
was like steel. She kept thanking me for
my kindness and winking lecherously at me.
"It's nothing", I
told her. "I just try to treat my
passengers the way I would want my mother treated. My criminally insane
mother."
"Oh, you're such a good
boy", she said and grabbed my ass.
When we got in the cab, she
gave me an address, then asked, "Could you drive
through downtown?"
"It's not the shortest
way," I answered quickly, eager to be rid of her.
"Oh, I don't
mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry.
I'm on my way to a institution".
I looked in the rearview
mirror. Her eyes were glistening, as
were her knives.
"I don't have any family
left," she continued. "The
doctor says I should stop offing them.
And turn off that meter unless you want to be next, flunkie!"
I quietly reached over and
shut off the meter. "What route
would you like me to take?" I asked.
The next two hours was a
hellish drive through the city.
She showed me the building
where she had once worked as an elevator operator and she threw out a body part
from her husband. We drove through the
neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds and
she pitched out a hand. She had me pull
up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she
had gone dancing as a girl and was where she made her first kill. She tossed out a leg.
Sometimes she'd ask me to
slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the
darkness, saying nothing but rummaging through her duffle bag, eventually
throwing some glistening organ out onto the sidewalk.
As the first hint of sun was
creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now."
We drove in silence to the
address she had given me. It was a low
building, like a small
convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.
Two orderlies came out to
the cab as soon as we pulled up. They
were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.
I opened the trunk and took
the small suitcase to the door, with the now empty but
moist duffle bag beside it. The woman
had already been wrestled to the ground by the orderlies and bound in a straightjacket.
"You owe me... I didn't
take you too," she glared.
I could say nothing.
"Your mother is a
hamster. Plant one on me, big boy."
she answered.
Almost without thinking,
under her control and against my will, I bent and gave her a long, deep soul
kiss. She held onto me tightly, sucking
out my life essence.
"You gave an old woman
a little moment of joy," she said. "Thank you."
She squeezed my package, then was carried into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more
passengers that shift. I drove to the
carwash to try and remove the blood that had soaked into the fabric. It eventually cost me thousands to replace the
seats and fumigate the cab. To this very
day, I cannot speak.
Then I died.