Uber Driving Gone Wrong

Photo by Strange Happenings on Unsplash

I sank into the leather seat and looked up at the car roof after dropping off my last customer for the night.

A sigh escaped from my lips as I sank further into the driver’s seat.

Too drained from working night shifts three times a week the last couple of months, my eyelids gave in and were as heavy as lead.

But the silence did not last for long. A notification popped up on my phone and stirred me up. A customer wanted to be picked up at a quarter to three in the witching hour.

As I was about to call the customer and refer them to a colleague of mine, another notification popped up.

I sat up straight upon seeing the numbers on the screen. $1,000?

I punched in the address on the in-built GPS. $1,000 for a ride twenty-five miles from the pickup location? What were the chances?

Levi, my friend and another Uber driver working night shifts, said, quote, if something’s too good to be true, it is, end quote.

From what he told me, these kinds of customers were almost all exclusively either influencers doing social experiments or teenagers with nothing better to do but prank hard-working people like us for a hard laugh.

As if I hadn’t enough on my hands and mind already, a phone call I did not expect hit me up just moments later and disturbed my train of thought.

Swearing through gritted teeth and vexed more than words could capture, I slowed down and unwillingly answered the phone. How long was she going to keep this up?

“Hello? Joseph?”

“I’m working right now, can you—”

“Don’t do you hang up on me!”

I drew a deep breath, deliberately pausing to calm my nerves and think straight.

“It’s my last shift. I told you that already.”

“You said that two months ago!”

“Just… just give me some more time, all right! I’m working my fingers to the bone to provide for you and the kids, for crying out loud!”

“No…” Annie said, my partner of ten years, adding before I could come to my defence. “If you were truly thinking of us, you’d start getting a proper job!”

I shut my eyes briefly, trying to control the anger soaring through every fibre of my being. ‘Get a proper job’? A smirk crossed my face. What had I been doing all these years?

Had I the energy to snap back at her, I would. But I hadn’t slept properly for too many nights to do that.

“Listen, I’m not in the mood for this, okay? I’ll hit you up when I come home.”

“Joseph—”

I ended the call and tossed the phone on the passenger’s seat. Rubbing my face to the point the dead cells came off, I slouched forwards and rested my head on the steering wheel.

Annie and I were high school sweethearts. I was part of an alternative rock band called ‘The Puppet Master’, a silly name, I know, but it sounded cool back then.

We drew inspiration from Japanese Visual kei bands like the GazettE and DIR EN GREY. We even had an entire friend group, which was all about Visual kei bands and anime.

Annie was a transfer student and joined our close-knit group during the second semester before graduation. The only daughter of an ambassador, she’d been raised in Japan and was a mangaka in her own right.

Our love story, however, did not last as long as either of us thought it would. When her dad got deployed to another country four years later, we lost contact with each other and moved on.

When we met up years later in our mid-twenties, the sparkle between us I thought had long since faded, rekindled.

We moved in together right away and got pregnant two years later. Annie became with a child just six months after giving birth to our firstborn.

It was a tough time for both of us. My dreams of getting discovered, going on tours, and becoming successful never died.

Between working as an Uber driver at night and a cashier during the day, I frequented clubs with my bandmates and tried to get some exposure.

We weren’t big in the night scene, definitely not, but we still had a small following that was loyal to us.

It wasn’t that Annie was wrong. She was right. I barely slept at home and she was left to take care of both kids, two mischievous boys, and the house chores all by herself.

Not to mention, we barely made the ends meet. Had it not been for Annie’s parents, we’d probably be homeless right now.

I was sorry towards her. She was studying medicine when we met and had her whole life before her. When this whole pregnancy thing happened, she quit her studies to take care of our firstborn.

There wasn’t a day where I didn’t feel a pang of ache in my heart for her, but putting all this pressure on me and deriding me for not being enough wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear.

Beep, beep.

It was that customer again. $1,000, huh? How many diapers did that translate to?

Levi’s voice replayed in my mind on repeat. But if this was nothing but a silly prank, then why was this person so persistent? Surely, a prankster wouldn’t go to such lengths to reach out?

I hit them up. Just to make sure someone wasn’t trying to pull my legs.

A young woman spoke up on the other end of the line. Her soft voice was pleasant to listen to. She sounded young, like someone in their early twenties or an eloquent teenager.

“Hello?”

“Hi, uhm, this is Joseph,” I said, adding as the woman did not reply. “The Uber driver?”

“Oh, hi. Are you here yet?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You… accepted my request ten minutes ago?”

I peeked at the app as the woman carried on in the background. When did I press accept? When was I talking with Annie or afterwards? I couldn’t even tell.

“Sorry ‘bout that. It seems like there’s some kind of mistake on my part.”

“You’re not backing off, are you? I really need this ride. Please.”

I scratched the side of my brow and took another look at the address on the GPS. It was literally in the middle of nowhere, the place this person wanted to be dropped off.

Moreover, I was the only active Uber driver nearby, and this person sounded too young for my liking. What was she even doing at this peculiar hour at such a delicate age?

“How old are you?”

There was a slight pause after I asked this.

“Hello? Are you still there—”

“Please, I [unintelligible]…”

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

A low tone replaced the airy whisper I just heard. It was as if I was speaking to two different people – that was how different the tone came off to me.

Was Levi right, after all? Were these some bored-to-death teenagers trying to waste their own as well as my time?

“I’m sorry, I already decided to call it quits for tonight. I’ll refer you to my colleague—”

“NO!”

“What…?”

“NO! NO! NO!”

“Hey, is everything all right? Do you need help?”

“S- stay away! I said, stay away!”

I briefly put the phone away to take note of the customer’s name.

“Emily? Emily, is everything okay with you? Hello—”

*inexplicable screams*

The line died.

Without thinking about what the hell I was doing, I started the motor and hit the road. In hindsight, I should’ve called the police and stayed put, but sometimes you do stupid things and you don’t know why.

I tried reaching out to the young woman throughout the fifteen-minute ride. But her phone was off and kept sending me to voice mail.

When I finally arrived at the pickup location, the last thing I expected to find was a graveyard on a wooded hill in the middle of absolute nowhere.

There was no sign of life anywhere I rested my darting eyes. Save from some derelict houses at the end of the narrow route, no one seemed to be living in the otherwise dim neighbourhood shrouded in shades of amber and purple from the rising sun.

“Hello? Emily? Are you here?”

There was no reply. I heard nothing but the frantic beat of my heart and the wailing blasts of wind coming through from the northeast.

What was this feeling, though? As if I was being watched. Stranger still, what was the customer doing in this harrowing graveyard at such an odd hour? It made little sense.

“Emily? Do you need help?”

When I searched the entire graveyard for the third time and still found nothing, I made up my mind to return to the city and from there call the police.

As soon as the headlights switched on, however, something in the direction of the blinding lights caught my attention. Was that… Emily?

I stepped out of the car and headed towards the silhouette who stood with her back turned towards me. Her long, black hair reached to her waist and she was dressed in a white nightgown.

Swaying gently to the breeze, she kept murmuring something as I drew closer. I couldn’t hear what it was at first, it sounded like something a drunkard would ramble up, but then I heard it as clear as day.

“He’s going to kill me…”

“He’s going to kill me…”

“He’s going to…” I stumbled backwards and fell as she turned her pallid face towards me and screamed her head off. “… KILL YOU.”

Crawling backwards in the hopes of reaching my car and getting the hell out of there, I nudged something sharp and stopped dead.

A bloody knife. At first, I thought I had cut my hand while trying to get away, but I wasn’t bleeding anywhere.

I glanced up as the young woman appeared before me. Her neck and body were twisted in opposite directions, and her hollow, wide-set eyes fixed on me, as an invisible force dragged her through the wilted blades of grass and left behind a trail of blood.

I stumbled back on my feet and followed the invisible figure to a shallow pit. Both the woman and the thing that dragged her all the way here faded away. The shallow pit turned into an unmarked grave.

I frowned as I touched the damp soil. It was newly dug. What on earth was going on?

The hum of an engine coming through startled me out of my dire thoughts. The headlights of what could only be another car soon followed and illuminated the vicinity, only to switch off as soon as it pulled up next to my car, which had still its headlights turned on.

“Damn it!”

I kept my head low, crawled as far away as I could without making a single sound, and cowered behind a headstone veiled in a thick layer of patina.

Reaching into my pocket to call for help, I realised too belatedly that I left my phone in the car.

Shit! Swearing under my breath, I glanced towards the blazing light as a figure showed up.

It was a man. I couldn’t see his face, though. I was too far away from him. But it was a man; I was positive.

He looked around himself before turning off the headlights. Although I couldn’t see it clearly from this angle, I knew he now had my phone in his hand and was trying to unlock it.

I turned away and rested against the headstone. My chest rose and fell to the cadence of my frantically beating heart.

There were so many questions whirling through my mind, but none of them put me in greater distress as the one taking over every inch of my brain right now.

What was Annie going to tell the kids? That their father, who they hardly saw growing up just… just abandoned them and disappeared from the face of the earth?

It wasn’t that I tried to neglect my duties as a father and husband. I was just… trying to make a living for my family in the only way I knew – by composing music.

A smile crossed my lips as the footsteps behind me grew louder.

Annie said she fell for me after seeing me play the bass during a school outing. I had a fling with another girl back then. What was her name, again? Right, Laura.

She was a nutjob, man. She was… crazy. I thought I was in love with her until Annie transferred to our high school and took my breath away.

I still recall the first time I laid eyes on her. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I didn’t believe in love at first sight until she came along.

But now that I thought things over, had I the chance to go back in time right now, I would’ve done everything I could to stay away from her.

I didn’t deserve her.

I was a failure.

I messed everything up.

If only I could turn back time and…

Holding my breath, I stared up at the towering shadow that fell upon me. The upside-down view of a familiar face greeted me with a wolfish grin.

Before I could speak up and voice my doubts about the mysterious man’s identity, he bludgeoned me to death.

As my head hung loosely from my bloodied neck, the man dragged me through the grass and towards another shallow pit next to the unmarked grave. I couldn’t even turn my head and take another look at him.

When he rolled me into the dark pit and covered me with soil, he turned my head so I could finally look him in the eyes.

“I don’t know how you ended up here, Joseph, but I clearly remember telling you to be careful.” He paused. “This? You brought it upon yourself. When something’s too good to be true, it’s not.”

I moved my lips, at least I thought I did, but no words escaped from me. He observed with a tilted head from where he squatted as I struggled to speak and keep the crimson liquid from suffocating me to death.

Everything plunged into darkness.

The grains of damp sand smothered me out of air and got stuck in my throat.

Under me and from either side, a heap of rotting corpses screamed their heads off and fought to reach the surface and escape from their deadly cage. I was the only person of the opposite sex.

The spell, which left me unable to speak, let up and I regained back my senses.

Like the others below me, shoving and ripping one another apart to get out of this suffocating darkness, I screamed at the top of my lungs and dug my nails into the hard soil until blood covered my face.