Trip Complete
Your ride is here...don’t get in
Tanya hesitated on the curb, fingers greasy from the taco she had just eaten. The light from the taco truck was still warm behind her, even though they had closed their window for the night.
The car sat across the street from her, led headlights making the street ahead of it as bright as daylight, but doing nothing to show her who was in the driver’s seat. The word UBER glowed in blue neon from a small light in the front window.
She pulled her phone out to check the app, but the taco stand shut its light off leaving her in the dark. Nobody else was around, it had to be her ride.
She opened the back door and slipped in. The driver took off just as soon as she shut the door, before she even had time to buckle.
The inside of the car was hot and somehow humid. She broke out into a sweat almost immediately.
“Can you turn the heat off?” she asked, but the driver didn’t respond.
There was a smell in the car too. Something horrible, like rotten eggs and burned rubber, so acrid that it burned her nose.
The car took a turn so fast that she knocked her head against the glass window beside her. This asshole’s going to get a negative star review, she thought. She didnt’ say anything out loud though. She just wanted to get through this ride.
But the smell was overwhelming.
“Did you hit a skunk or something?”
The driver reached up and adjusted his mirror so that she could finally see his face. He grinned at her with teeth ground down to blackened nubs.
“No,” he said. “I picked one up.” Then he cackled.
Her phone buzzed, and she snatched it up.
This is your Uber driver. Where are you?
Her breath hitched.
The car slammed to a stop. Her head snapped forward, stars bursting behind her eyes. She screamed and clawed at the door handle, but it didn’t move.
“Let me out,” she sobbed. “Please. I’ll give you anything. I’ll—”
The driver adjusted the mirror again, slow this time. He studied her like he was starving and she was meat, his tongue dragging across those blackened teeth.
“I hunt skunk,” he said softly. “Don’t none of them ever get away.”
The headlights went out.
Her phone buzzed with another notification.
Trip complete.