Speaker 1: I'm sitting outside the trends well Quick maud On Huron
and forty fourth. It's two thirty seven in the morning.
I'm recording this half of the audio journal I started
last fall. Half because some night's the only thing between
me and complete silence is the red light on my phone.
The rain's oscillating between mist and proper sheets. My wipers
shut out with each pass, city lights smearing lazily across
the glass. There's a hamona air electric and restless, as
if some were close. Engines are idling or power lines
have been stretched too tight. My reflection rebels in the
rear view, looking older than I feel. And for now
it's just me in the smell of cheap coffee, cling
to my jacket. Five minutes ago, Lisa stepped out of
my backsy. She's a regular, was a regular. Maybe I
don't know how to call this. We've done at least
a dozen rides in the last few months, late shifts,
end of the bar, crawl, sometimes out of the business
park after some unholy double. Always talk it to it,
sometimes seeing off keyt to whatever played us I've keeued up.
Pal night was wrong from the moment she leaned and
a pick puddled against the rain under a discant umbrella,
eyes scanning traffic behind her. Something frayed in her movements.
She only spoke once somewhere during the light at ash
and fifteen, and it wasn't about her boyfriend or some
new brunch spot. She kept one hen on her purse,
knuckles whitening, staring straight through her rain speckled window. When
we pulled up here, she didn't move at first. She hesitated,
glanced at me the way people sighs of cops behind
dark windows. Then she leaned forward close enough I could
see the gloss across her teeth, like she'd been biting
her lip. All right, if you ever see the black
car with the old serious radio, she whispered, breath shaking
so badly I felt it more than heard it. Don't
flag it down, no matter what I mean it. My
first response was to laugh at Jitteryek's hail. That died
a matter when I caught a tremor in her. Her
eyes darted to the curb, to something invisible. Before I
could say anything to lighten the moment, she was pushing
open the door. That's when I caught a sickly sweetert
a swirling up from the cushions, half tobacco smoke, half
syrupy old puffume, not hers or not how she'd ever
smelled before. It was vintage, like something worn for dare
or a funeral, sticky and alien in a space that
usually smells the spilled dinner she drinks and gin bags.
She stepped on to the slick sidewalk, hesitated under the
edge of the gas station's yellow dawning, looked back one
last time as if she could see through my windshield,
a car swept by aunt huron head light distorting everything
silver and blue behind her. Then she was gone into
the gloom, swallowed by the rain. I've had odd passengers,
but there was something about the way Lisa said, don't
flag it that found a groove in my thinking, and
started turning, as if warning me was a debt sheep
been carrying. I waited, engine idling, watching for her shape
among the anonymous umbrellas and shadows drifting in and out
of the store. I never spotted her again. To night
wasn't the first time I'd felt the city dipping its coals,
just under the flesh of normal life. But as I
drive off, the warning hands between my is like a headache,
something in her urgency, the way she clutched her purses
so it contained more than cash or idea life preserver.
Maybe the next night, a login as usual, skimming through
the familiar profiles, David with his rhyming jokes, none of
the predn ners, but Lisa's name is absent from my APPEU.
I should be able to send a follow up, or
at least see previous ride locks. Nothing pulls up. It's
as if she was never a passenger. No icon, no
trip history, no post bride rating. Figuring maybe she skipped
down or deleted her account. I thumb a message hope
you got home safe last night. Let me know if
you need anything delivered, but unread. I thumb another message, shorter,
just a question mark. Nothing comes back after a day,
or picture vanishes from my contacts list. User not found
in gray. I obsess over the empty spot on the
app interface, flipping back and forth until I nearly missed
my next fare. While waiting for a picket near the
same quick Mart, I get out and inspect the back seat.
The faint trace of that perfume is still there, marbled
overstale friyes and sanitizer hard edged and artificial. There's also
a faint imprint in the seat and arkware. Her legs
pressed against the edge, my thumb brushes a half smoked
cigarette tucked into the credits, The filter kissed with an
unfamiliar plum colored lipstick, dark, and then Lisa's coral shade.
The cigarette's presence pushes against my memory. Lisa never smoked
around me, and I'd never seen that color on her before.
As a cradled between two fingers, the city's energy snaps back,
taxes rushing down huron neon fhlicker dancing off pavement, nearly
glossed with rain, all the adrenaline of the last ride's
final warning compressing into a single, pulsing ache. I dropped
the stub in a plastic bag for my glove box.
I don't know what I'm preserving, just at something in
me isn't ready to throw any part of this night away.
I drive the Loop twice more before heading home. Every
stop place red lingers just a moment longer, and the
head lights reflecting in my mirror seems slower, slightly out
of alignment, as if surveying me rather than the road ahead.
Few weeks ago, my biggest worry was meeting my weekly bonus,
spreading my way between night shifts and day sleep, feeling
like I was always hustling to nowhere. In particular, everything
since Lisa's warning moves differently, heavier, electric, stuttering along, and
lockstep with paranoia. I try not to dwell, but each
shift now begins with the shadow of that car hanging
at the edge of my thoughts. I never expected to
end up here. Five years back, I typed stirers into
the pulse of the city instead of steering for it.
Back then, my words carried weight. They could unlock a
door or top of someone with the right secret. I
was an investigative reporter, the kind who loved a midnight leek,
knocking down walls of silence. Then came the blurred and
health clinic debacle, one anonymous tip, one misread file, one
story too eager and undejected. The retraction ran for weeks.
My job evaporated, I lost respect. I'd bought a trade
for half my adult life. Driving was supposed to be temporary.
The platform promised flexibility and cash fast. I believe they
use it to float while I rebuild a reputation somewhere else.
But weeks became longer, night shunned into the strange never
of rightyer schedules. Some nights I sleep four IROs in
faded sheets, pham buzzing me back awake at one a m.
Always too late or too early for anything in a
normal life. This glimpses of myself in mirror's door handles,
glass retail facades rarely feel quite real. My car matter's
more than any place I rent. It's my lifeboat, my
hunting blind. I keep it scrubbed, though not obsessively, out
of professional paranoia, vacuuming up each night. Grit after are
drop my final fare toss hoodis pens orphaned. Receipts are
cleared ritualistically before every shift. I line up the playlists,
always with three moods. Up tempo for danger eres, rain
tracks for post bar blues, calming instrumentals. When traffic stokes,
my temper as sank at least half snacks in the
clover bucks, spirit chargers, cash trucked behind the owner's manual.
It's a patchwork life, but it pays the few bills
that matter every day. The platform's ratings hover overhead like
a digital sword of damocles too many four stars, and
I get grumbling emails. Though punctuality means less chance. At
the end of Montbona's Everything's measured and index stars to
dollars and zidy to insomnia. I've learned to separate the
city into layers by necessity. Early evenings, the business corridors bloom,
clean cut exacts, hotel bars, dinners that run too late
for taxis. By ten, I hit the party arteries, high
rise club shedding patrons with aching feet, laughter, thickest syrup,
perfume soaked into every seat belt. After midnight, the whole
circuit tilts, sudden silences, party goers gone, the passes, lenair
war urgent. I drive past the edges northeast industrial zone.
Salthbridge's Blockie wharehas his sprawl of half empty residential tower
slump like battered sentinels at the city's edge. For staying sharp,
I use audio notes and solved cases urban lore, even
recording snippet from the radio for reference. Audio journaling keeps
you from living on not a pilot, I've wrote in
anopook early on. It also kept me company, a vestige
of my old life away to convince myself I was
still observing, not just existing. Driving at night, I collect stores,
many unfinished, few worth pursuing. Sometimes at the ol Knight
clay Pot diner, groups of drivers swaptails. Some are just
dark jokes with punchlines. The fair who tipped fifty for
a silent ride, the man who left a brown stain
on the rear handle, vanishing before I noticed it. I
remember the old woman who muttered to herself the entire way,
as if reciting something from memory. Once Affair asked me
to let him off five blocks early and vanished between
park delivery vans. I waited, headlights playing over the Alice Brooks,
but he was gone. Among drivers, there are it spoken rules.
Bad fire men, you lock the doors at a red light.
Passengers who want me here gaze might be trouble or
simply broken by the work day. I try not to
buy into most of the rumors, but there is respect
for the uncertain thing. Sense he should and push too
hard into the weariness that lives at three a m.
Lisa's warning unsettled me because she broke, for she'd never
been skittish, if anything. She teased at the night's strangeness,
making up stores to match the city's moods. I can't
forget the way her words seem pressed up between panic
and necessity, as if she lost control over who could
hear them before she vanished. I rode in my notebook,
trying to exercise it. What's the worst that can happen
in this job? I stubbed her. A thrown up passenger
getting shorted on a tip by someone too drunk to count.
That's what I used to believe spelled catastrophe in his life.
Now every shadow through my windshield starts to feel like
a question, a prolog to something nobody's told we yet.
The quick Marts, Dino's late night laundromats, those islands of
artificial light, and the endless dark winter Arroyja driver At
n two nights after Lise's warning, I pick up a
grud student named Emily, A whisper of gal hay, wet
and hand shaking, likely from affeena and anxiety both. She
slides into my back seat with a shy apology and
a rumpled back. Back route is familiar campus to the
Midtown towers. After a block or two, as she daves
rain water from her face, she murmurs mortarself into me
I wish I could always get the safest ray. I prompt,
you mean highly rated. There's a couple drivers and know
round here who She stops, shakes her head, pulling a
sweater tighter. No, you know the black car. It picks
you up before you book. Somebody said, the driver knows
your name like always. She halfs a nervous laugh, glancing
at the window as if seeing echoes stitched into the
city's darkness. My roommates were as she took it. Once said,
the radio played these old lullabies, but she didn't remember
the lyrics, just static. I dunno, city's too weird. At night,
she wraps the window with her nail, biting her lip.
I try to stare, to warm a ground, but she
goes silent, lost to whatever ChIL she's carrying. When she leaves,
I knowed a whaff of that same perfume, though muted,
almost blended into the fabric. She didn't smell like much
when she entered, A faint whiff of campus laundry detergent.
Maybe later two rides and half an energy bar later,
I pick up a bartender from the glisten and leo
quick with snark. But to night unusually subdued. He slides
in eyes blood Hut. I ask about the longest shift
he's ever worked, just to fill the right time out
of nowhere, he says, you ever see the black sedan?
No logo, no nothing. I watched it circle the block
three times last night, stopping only when this woman flagged
it down outside illusion. His voice cracks a bit. Thing
is I didn't see her book anything with the app,
no phone, just a little wave stuck in conversation. I
prompt for more leo shrugs. My sister took it home once,
she swore the radio played some static. QUI lullabout, said
the guy in front, whispered her name before she even spoke. Hell,
maybe I dreamt half of it, but it creaked her
out enough to get a night bus for a week.
His eyes dart toward the window. Some rides aren't meant
for guys like me. Anyway, It gnaws at me. I
drive home that night, with the city feeling elastic, building
smear taller by rain, alice stretching wider, headlights bending and
refracting in strange ways. I jotted all down in my
notebook during a lull. I check the ARPI history running
descriptions by color, make model, No phantom black car, nothing
resembling the specifics mentioned by Leo or Emily. There's no match,
no listing, no record of a driver wearing a faded
cap and playing a serious radio with an off frequency ham.
No car description matches what the passengers relate in every story.
The ride cannot be booked. It just pulls up, recognizes you,
sometimes even knows your name before you say it free
shifts later. The applog's another oddity into my back seat. Stacy,
a tech consultant, always on her phone, never one for
small talk. She says nothing about black cars. But after
she's gone, my cars sent sharpens. That strange perfume rushes
and again, swirling over at everything else, as if it
owns the space. I ask the next passenger, an older
woman with sharp eyes wearing too much vanilla, if she's
wearing puffume, But she shakes her head, peering at me
like I've lost the thread. I start listening for details
on other rides. The way people hesitate before saying where
they live, the odd nervous laughter as they described, the
safest rite or card that appears before you need it.
The story are never the same, But the shape of
the terror matches. The cars black, always clean, always are marked,
always accompanied by some music throbbing beneath static and the radio.
No one can quite explain why they're afraid. After only
do they remember a sense of relief and something nameless,
like forgetting part of a nightmare just before waking up.
It becomes my routine. Drive lessen record odd stores. I
start sleeping less, keeping the car window crack to keep
that haunted smell from settling into the cloth. I run
internet search as passenger forms, driver complaints, even archived local
newsposts about missing persons who reported late night rides. No
data matches what people keep describing. The harder I look,
the less concrete, any of it becomes as if the
city itself wants me to forget. But the story only
gets sharper with repetition. There is a black car. It
turns up when you need it most or least, and
you know a book it it finds you. That's when
I step over the invisible line from urban legend to obsession.
I throw myself into the work. Sticky notes multiply in
the kitchen wall, offer a cheap map print out. I
track a remote encounters, odd stories, and the handful of
recent disappearances not explained by police. The city is suddenly
a jigsaw puzzle, nod at the edges, its pieces, refusing
to interlock, string and thumbtack, snake through the neighbor has
read for vanishing passengers, blue for unusual smells, green for
black car sightings. I keep night locks after every shift.
I record fragments of overheard conversations, passengers mentioning, shadowy drivers,
anxious requests for extra stops, sudden silences if someone's heard
of the black car A probe quietly, always professional, but curious.
A handful remember only glimpses of sedan without a logo,
dashboard dials letten and teak red, the faint crone of
a song nobody can name. I swap stories at the
still counter of the clayp of Dinah, with drivers clocking
out at four a m. Most dismissed tales of the
black car's stress are sleep to provision. Urban legend kit
says bread icemear by, too much coffee, don't chase what
isn't in the app. That's how you end up booted
by its you, or worse, rode by some canned up
psycho playing games. But Durham, an old hand who claims
to have survived the wild West taxi days, shoots me
a worry look one night. Sassa something, he mutters, picking
out a formation of syrup on his plate. Back in
nine not your app not anyone's passenger flag door opened
on its own. Never saw her again. His as haunt
me long after, as if some part of him still
rides in that car. After another rainwashed Tuesday, after a
passenger stumbles through a story about a ride that new
my route before I did. I given and dive into
the city's public traffic cam feeds city ATA isn't what
it used to be. The archives are messy, half digitized,
and misfiled, but persistence pays out a troll footage from
three hot intersections. Two missing persons last confirmed there one
of the phantom rides described by a nervous older man.
The first oddity is technical in the three elevenae and slot.
As a cluster of passengers exits a club, a black
sedan flows into the utter lane and idols the video
quality did as pixels blooming light's flirting tubraid. A figure
enters from the shadows. She doesn't check her phone, doesn't
even pause. She walks decisively toward the rear door slides
in before she shuts it. The license plate seems to
flick her obscured by a cluster of image readair refrain.
I log all the times and places, trying to get
a pattern. The loops don't line up cleanly, but there's
a gravity to them. The mak sidans appear at transition zones.
Church is now boarded up corners where every one's in
a hurry to leave the gaps between right chair zones
where the city's official maps will lap just enough to
leave a sliver of overlook. Street surveillance eat away its leap.
One night, near the edge of Southbridge, my dash cambarnacles
to haul timid recording. The fee dissolves into static, a
dark blood draping the lower fringe of the screen. At
just that moment, a rider scheduled for two forty five
dozen show. When I call my phone flickers, the speaker,
distorting into pure noise. Playbacklayer gives me nothing but a
pale wash of video, a shape at the frame's age,
half glimpsed, dissolving before definition. The app liches two. One night,
after two a m. I see a ride request flash
into my queue, no name attached, then vanish before I
can swipe. I see the ghost of it. Notifications whisp later,
when I check the locks nothing. All of this refuses
to add up, but the anxiety steeps deeper every day.
I tell myself its exhaustion. But then comes the texts
and on the life number. No call back, just a
single message someone's watching you. Let it go. I don't,
of course. The warning only throws gasoline on my spiral.
I move from interviewing passengers discovering driver forms in search
of digital traces. I ask contacts in my old journalism life,
or whispers about disappearances or off book taxis. Doors shut
gently but firmly. Don't waste your come back on this nonsense,
my ex editor urges, let the night keep its doories.
Then one Friday, I'm idling outside the ruined Hammond paper factory,
officially condemned but still marked by one working street light
at a strip of crack parking. I'm there by accident
or maybe not, sitting just out of range of my
next per book fare re listening to call I recorded
from a woman in the warehouse district, her voice trembling
with the phrase the ride knew my name, It called
me by name. Rain spits against the windshield. The street
is otherwise dead empty except for a few sodium streams
and hissing puddles. That's when I see the car. It
glides to stop across the street, perfectly parallel, engine purring
like a cad do so forever. It's sleek and unfamiliar,
midnight black beneath the failed lamps, no righteous sticker on
the dash, no markings, what server. The interior glows dimly
with the weird reddish hue I've only ever seen on
old radio styles, flickering a soft blue circle in the console.
Through the cracked window, I heard the half recognized strain
of music that blurs into radiostatic serious. I think, though
the tune is all something you might remember hearing in
a dream. Nolo is to solve into fuzz and back again.
My skin prickles. I peer across the street, trying to
make out the driver. The glass vacancy renders a figure
nearly invisible, just the rough outline of shoulders as sliver
of face, composed tony of darkness and reflected tail lights.
I try to lift my phone, intending to snap a photo,
but as the driver in the black cartoons their head
in my direction, something in me recoils. The world hiccups,
My brain stutters as Verdigoflarer's time skips, and for a
moment the scene doubles and dissolves. My heart thunders out
of time with the wet hiss of the streets, and
every muscle in my nick titans. The migraine hits before
I know it's coming. It throbs with the familiar violence,
rings of co or pulsing at the edge of my vision.
I force my head down, unable to look at the
car for more than a split second. On my dash
camp the timestep jumps six seconds, skipped the screen a
blizzard of pixels. Review later shows no vehicle, no sound,
but a low warble across the road. The passenger, I'm
waiting for a balder man in cargo shorts, foam presstures
the ear changes course without looking at me. He pauses
at the curve, absorbed in a call. The black car's
rear door opens and he slides him with the mindless
efficiency of someone on auto pilot. The door closes with
that ceremony, and just as suddenly, the car pulls away,
flattening itself into the city traffic until it vanishes. My
phone gives a single hollow beep, my schedule of right
pings no show. Then reroutes my map entirely, the lions
of the map twisting GPS, spinning compassless for the next
ten minutes. Before settling again. I let the phone heat
up in my trembling hands, mind splintered with fear and confusion.
I scull through open cases, disappearances, tied to blocks, adjacent
to every place a black car has surfaced. I freeze
too many intersections, too many names are traced back to knights,
have it across the city, carried strangers to their fates.
Trying to convince myself that my only job is getting
from it to be the lines start to connect to
my circuits wrap around the last known pick up for
four missing persons in the last three months, wides I
gave fair as I recognize now, I can't escape the
thought my routes aren't just overlapping with the sting circuit.
They're feeding into it, like tributaries dragged inevitably downstream. I
stare at the city map on my wall, the tangle
of colored string, the mounting pile of anecdotal note PUDs
and clippings, every inch of my apartment forrobes, with the
knowledge that I may have been bade, or maybe just
a node, something the city uses to mark who goes
missing next. I can't shake the thought that by digging,
I'm making it worse, and fighting whatever lies between the
rain and static to tennants gaze on me. Still, the
obsession turns urgent. I keep aut it compulsively, even as
sleep vanishes completely. Every drive feels freighted. I check the
mirror so often that tailgating cars spook me, Headlights shimmering
and naturally as if looking back. Sometimes I catch glimpses distorted,
never the same twice of a black card, just at
the age of my vision, only to lose it at
the next pass. The city amplifies its warning in a
hundred small ways, Passengers who counsel after spotting me, applitches
that shuffle my destinations, shadowed figures appearing and vanishing in crosswalks.
Everything has tension, every silence a threat. But I know
now with certainty that this isn't the story I can
walk away from if I do it, claims another Lisa,
or the next loss Bartander, the next anxious grud student.
I pin one missing face to my WALLA woman's smile
caught off guard in the glare of club lights, her
arm around some one who vanished just weeks after, the
front page of a community paper asks have you seen
mirnder de sigh? I promise Atlaud. To the empty apartment
and the breathing city outside, I'll find her. I won't
let the city's goh s driver draw anotherough lined through
my map. The rain returns, rattling the thin kitchen window,
and somewhere behind it lies the low and broken hum
of an engine that never turns off, a lullaby that
stays lodged behind the noise of the real world. I
grit my teeth and res all to night, and every
night after. I'll drive until I find a way to
cut through the static, even if I have to risk
the ride myself. I reach for the keys, not ready
to let the night close in without a fight. I
reach for the keys, not ready to let the night
close in without a fight. The ignition grumbles before springing
to life, my head lights twitching into the street's watery dark.
My throat feels thick with and said things. Every muscle
too tense for comfort, every know tripping alerts that my
rational mind can't quite explain. Rain hushes down the windshield,
little rivers, tracing random routes, veins across a body far
older than the city's twenty laate arteries and led veins.
Routes stay the same, superficially. I roll up west Lake
Pattern as old as exhaustion, but my eye scan every coat,
every blind alley, each stops sign haloed by drizzling sodium
vapor DAPs in the urban camouflage feel sharper. A delivery
van idling at edge of a lot. Did a shadowline
there too? Toultable on? A cyclist holds at a bus shelter,
face glowing blue from their phone, glances up just before
I pass, and I see a flush of uncertainty or
maybe simple fatiguets to round her mouth. I check my
right cue compulsively, waiting for something strange to blink into existence,
but there's nothing, just normal runs hotel to riverwalk, cruise,
bar to aloft the night owls and strugglers and young
lost who define the after midnight city. They pile in,
mumble their addresses, fumble with umbrella handles and tips. Most
resist conversation, but I try anyway. One rider, two blocks
from cross roads, a disheveled man in an oil company hoodie,
meets my eyes in the mirror. For split second. You
folks working this SKO shift few oversee cars where they
shouldn't be. Lucky blink and the blocks rearrange. He doesn't
wait for my answer, jerking his jacket tighter, as if
fans could fend off whatever's out there. He leaves nothing
behind in the seat, beside sweat and dread. The graveyard
loop brings me past the old tram yards, and I
make myself stop engine ticking, wiper's flogging. The silence every
echo out here as waits some misplaced bracket or brace
still bolted to the world, even as jobs and red
spiral away from meaning. I try to imagine any crack
wide enough for something unatural to slip through, for purely
human city to play host to something quietly predatory. The
map on the passenger seat glows in my periphery. It
creased with thumb prints and smudge pen the strings and
pins a home cross into my mind's eye. So many
vanished faces, so many roads converting at empty intersections, always
tied to these blank, uncataloged stretches. The phone buzzes a
new ride pane. It flickers hands for a heartbeat too long,
then resolves. Staff rows five hundred nine eastern two point four.
My grutting, my teeth, accept and stay back toward inhabited territory.
Stavros turns out to be a wordless giant. I set
somewhat far off behind a laddice of exhaustion. He holds
a batter duffel into my trunk, muttering a thank here.
I can barely pass through the rain. His presence is
too solid for goose. But as he climbs out half
way along, he pauses, hand on the door. Drive careful man,
See he's weird at night. Feels like it's watching us. Sometimes,
he hesitates. Don't stop if you see a cough flashing light,
saidy D yeah not everything broken down wants to be helped.
Something inside me shivers at the advice. He lumbers off
into the wet shadows, merging almost comically into a patchwork
of dumpsters and late night Peter clothes the city closes
over him, and once again I'm alone in the car.
I punched the record button on my phone. I keep
coming back to one thing. If none of them this
is provable. If there's never any evidence caught on a
feed or in a lock, does it matter who believes me?
If I disappeared, would I just slide into the static?
I save the note? Habit not? How pen keep moving,
eyes locked to the side streets. New puddles gather at
the curbs, reflecting neon, pale and stretched, warping everything upright
into mass like obstruction. A broken parking meter of fifth.
This is with a low electrical hum that seems, in
that moment indistinguishable from the serious radio static. My pul
choots and I tighten my hands on the wheel. Past
two thirty my routill lapse, one of the hot loops
for the missing cases. Every muscle on my forearms aches
from checking the mirrors. When a ride jo pulls up
at the light beside me, a silver Sedan driver hunched nervously,
I realize I'm hoping for normally so much A chokes.
Downtown begins so empty, fewer pedestrians, fewer working street lights.
I focus on every detail, on smells and textures, I
can carry with me into whatever comes next. At the
next pick up a woman with plastic wrap forest bundles.
There's nothing out of place, only the medicinal rush of
lilies in her herod to cutothanks. I drop her and
hover near the core of the convergence on my plod
of map seven points seven points as trip points and
underpasses where bus lines once forked and now only Tagger's
linger a field stretch bent by too many years of
traffic in transaction. Here the black car was first room
to appear in the forums. Here one of my vanished faces, Miranda,
was last seen Umbrella snapped inside out in the wind,
stepping away from a club with her phone still lave,
though the col didn't connect to any one who remembers
speaking with her. I creep past the spot. There's nothing in,
just a rush of wind and one blown plastic back,
shrieking past a storm drain. I roll the window down
to breed city air, inviting in the cold, wet and
hoping absurdly for that sickly floor or tobacco scent, some
ghost of Lisa or the radio lullaby. Only direluted exhaust
and last coal fryer oil fill my lums. My phone shudders,
a warning connection and stable, then a glitch, fragment, a
ride request just the word help, has the pick up
name blinking, then gone, My hot jolts. I check lolks
tring shot as fast as I can, but the artifact evaporates,
not even a fountom entry left behind. The night pressure rises.
Each ride feels like another stitch in the raw net.
I start talking to myself, reading place names, anything to pour,
reality taught round me, fifteenth bay vy docks, I murmur.
I wonder whether every city's night is this kind of
unseen circuit, or whether ire is a special built over,
some kink in the world where vanish things simply end up,
renamed and recirculated. The app pings adeto on a scheduled ride.
I check the route, odd circles back to night under constantine,
a dead zone. My rational mind says glitch, but the
rest of me is newly alert, watching every inky window
in Storephins's Achelaran my dash from cycles lends whirring a
pair of tale It appears in the gloom uphead, black
car idling, no plate, no marks. I tense every line
of my body ready, but as a draw near, an
old man climbs out of the passenger seat, coughing, hunched
even smaller against the children. Gravity alone would explain the
cup pulls away, gliding into obscurity so quickly, a question
whether it was even there. The old man glances at
me from beneath a running street lamp, face perfect for night,
most generous way, eyebrows lips pinched around something unspoken. For
a second, he stares straight into me as I freeding.
The map of my secret setch to cross my forehead.
Then he's engulfed by the city, and I am left parked,
rain running down my mirrors, asking myself if I just
witnessed a survivor, or an accomplice or something else. Entirely,
nights like this warp time. By the time pale blue
begins to leak along the sky line, I can hardly
tell which of my senses to trust. My fingers numb
and shaking, fumble the keys. I shut off the ignition,
silence pummeling me with a rush I didn't expect. Before
heading home, I walk around the car, feeling the trunk
back doors, tired, half expecting to find some sign, a
calling card, or another half burned cigarette. There's nothing new,
but they are around. The rude door still holds the
shop stale sweetness, a perfume too old for this ear
cut by some sharper metallic age. On the ride up
to my apartment, I glance again at the missing poster.
I press to my dashboard moran a smile seems more
haunted by what I know now, less a beacon, more
a warning. I set the poster upright, a badge and
a promise, and close the visor once since I I
collapse onto them and open my audio notebook. My voice cracks.
I start, and we start fighting nerves in the sense
of being both too close and impossibly far. Night's ending,
but nothing resolves. Black car or no. The pattern lips tighter,
feels like all my overalls were meant to keep me out,
but now there's nothing keeping it away. Next shift, I
get closer. I close the file, dog eared and finish.
I need to re iro asleep before the city wakes again.
But dreams won't come. When I drift toughender. I'm always
in the car. Tail light's dissolving in mist and from
the radio somewhere between channels, a lullaby I can almost recall,
just before the static returns. After the factory encounter, entire
days disappeared to a notice, block's sleep, overtaken by anch's pacing,
My nice dissolving into a montage of route mapping, alley loitering,
and recurse of paranoia. I haven't properly left my apartment
in twenty four iOS. The sickly sweet puffum lingers on
my coat, warming its way into my senses. No matter
how much I s go up behind the fabric by
the open window. Every surface in my place bristles with
the evidence I gathered cigarette baggies. Nope, as riddled with arrows.
I am sure she printed traffic cam snap shots, pinstille
jabbing into the city map, as though by sheer volume
I could clean meaning from chaos. But underneath it all
the lodge. If that used to structure my days is worring,
then the one in text sloops in my head. Someone's
watching you. Let it go. If anything, it only deepens
my resolve stealing something inside me that runs on the
same stubborn voltage that lift amethus scandals and late shift
deadlines back in my reporting days, I recognize the signs
of obsession, of digging too far. But another side of me,
the one that spent nights listening to Lisa's kandor to
the growd student's nervous fables, can't allow for retreat. It's
my circuit now, not just the city, but the invisible
path of turns behind each ride and cancelation, each shadow,
where the black car glides at the corner of vision, unshowered,
hand shaking with the jetters from too much coffee and
not enough sleep. I sit hunched over clusters of sticky notes,
were checking the lions, tying mirror Lisa and all the
missing to my own roads. Between rotations, I find myself
recording brittle snatches of audio March twenty third mirror flashes
of the roundabout April second. Apple glutches coincide with vanishing
passenger GNE seven statican serious one hundred twelve locked doors.
Each time I speak, my own voice sounds more distant,
cracks somewhere between fear and determination. As night falls, it's
not dread, but a dry, laden dissipation that fills my
lungs through the smear of rain clouds outside car horns
and sirens freight up and down Huron every now and
then I catched flicker of passing headless reflected on the
window pane, and imagine seeing a black Shimmachu just by
a curb, taunting me from the margins of the city's
nervous system. I know to night is different. In instant
A log in the interface lags, deleting my previous three
nights rise before rebooting itself as though nothing happened. My
driver starts ratings compliments, even the minor complaints, all replaced
by bland blanks, trying to help chap arouse me to indifference.
Try again after midnight. Outside, the air is rolled with
ozon the returning rain, a low hum across the glass.
I forced myself to prepare coffee. Wet whites package bows
down into the glover box. I scanned the cap one
last time before heading out, shivering at the punch of
old perfume still snatch in a back seat. I'll leave
the windows cracked, spite the weather hout mingling with every
gust that may be someone else else, someone reel will
notice the change is bleeding into my car. Once inside,
adrenaline rises with the sound of the engine. I slip
into the corded muscle memory of nightly rituals, but my
body no longer trusts the pattern locks click twice for
safety mirror's jectory, four times more than necessary. The app
flickers on and off brief is, showing me a profile
image as at mine tight lipt overexposed eyes blacked out
by motion blur. I swipe away in panic and try again.
My own face returns, but for a heart beat, a
chill tingles up my arms, as if a ghosted hand
has reached through the cove. I walk the city as
if by forceful I can flush out the black car
cut its coret to my world. The city's arteries are
empty than I have ever seen as a fole, but
the desperate yielded space to this experiment. Only two rides book,
both quick and mercifully normal. SIU chefending her double shift
in her retiree with three mesh shopping bags and a
collection of quiet humming size. Everything else is static. No
new fears, the app's background clock stuttering irregularly, my earnings
meta frozen. After dropping the retiree at a darkened apartment block,
I step out and try to stretch. The pressure from
my neck rains, searing a cold line along the collar.
There's a new sound, like the thin buzz of radio
pull just out of range. It's faint beneath the rush
of rainfall and barely audible over the shiver of wind.
But real, not engine noise, and not my own playlists
stuttering from fatigue. This sound is purposeful, coming into us,
and pulses as though an old, distorted melody is tunneling
in from another street just out of sight. When I
circle back toward the heart of the circuit, the epiccupsns
row his seven ghostly ride requests at me in the
span over a minute, each canceled before I finish reading
the pick up details. Each location is a familiar haunt.
Seven points the old tram yard Constantine. It's as if
the whole city is blinking at me, asking if I
dared to play through his broken machinery. My phone vibrates again.
This time the notification is different, a ride request from
Aknown the pickup Worehouse, one hundred three Queil Street, under
the high highway ramps on the city's forgotten edge. The
request hovers for three seconds, then disappears, as if apologizing
for its own existence. I don't hesitate. I snap a
photo of my map and wrat the car across downtown,
every nerve alert, every twinning, My own haunted starre in
the windshield, my hand sweat on the wheel as I
flip between mental checklists. Get out fast, don't let anyone
into the car unless you can help it. Transmit everything
in real time to my cloud. If it goes wrong,
at least my last ride is recorded. The drag toward
Quell Street is apocalyptic. The city seems to empty up
a few cars, no caps, just the harsh orange drip
of failing sodium lants over the wet concrete. I crawl
beneath the overpass where Quail Prouden's into a forgotten delta,
the lawn derelict warehouse. His facade flickers behind a palisade
of rusty fencing. That's when my phone's green issues a
new message. Turn off your headlights. The text comes from
no contact, just to cellular black street address. Before I
can disobey, my headlights flicker once, then clickough entirely, surrendering
me to the half light of rain and infrastructure. For
a moment. Nothing happens. Then from my rear view. A
spectral gleam cuts the darkness of black car rolls silently
behind me, headlights ghosted, yellow, hood polished to featureless void,
one window half rolled down, the same warbled melody, soft
but undeniable, trickling from its speeds over the causerus of rain.
My hot hammers. A gloved hands, more precise, extends from
the rear passenger window, motioning me forward with a gesture
both familiar and impossibly old. I turn around in my seat,
straining to glimpse the details behind the tinted glass, but
its all distortion, shapes flickering against the weak neon grind.
I remember Lisa's warning, don't flag. It can assist every
urge to open my own window, to call out, to
step out. Instead, I fumble from a recorder hid the button.
Staticus is in the cabin, layered over by the hiss
of my own shallow breath. The black cart idols waiting
in perfect stillness in the operative seat, A shadow a
suggestion of a humid outline, but both too crisp and
too fluid. It seems to lean observing me, the eyes
loss in reflection, but the mouth shaped and something between
a grimace and a grin. I should flee, but I
am riveted, as if my muscles have made some contract
with the city's relevolent memory. Then, over the whine of static,
the driver's voice, warbled synthesis, hundreds of voices folded into one,
crawls through my phone speaker. You keep following, Avery, you
keep compiling what you should let spiral away, But you
don't know which ride ends the sun circuit? Do you?
The question loiterers in my mind as the air stills,
every other sound, seeming about to make space for his words.
In that moment, my throne screen flickers again, the display
running frames of my own face, distorted at every second,
interspersed with the video of every misimperson I've researched. The
face is momentarily superimposed over mine, my hand shake, my
fource data, uploads, voice detects, logs, all to the cloud,
each photo, each audio clip feverishly send. Even as the
progress bus stutters and flickers. The car's door pops open, softly, inexorably.
My own locks jiggle, then settle into place within new
I'm familiar clunk. The engine in my cock cuts off
shut in the city's nose out. All that's left is
the drone of the radio from the other car, the
half remembered Lulla by unspoiling with static and wavering crewn.
It's the same melody that haunted the pause between conversations
with Lisa, the outdecho that tickled mospeakers at the age
of legitimate stations. The radio static matches the flutter at
the edge of my nerves. Through the warped glass, I
see the outline of a passenger moving the black car's
back seat. It's a woman, slight hunched, heir in arrain
Snashkoif she looks up, flashes a quivering smile, one sutterly
familiar Lisa, drawn thin by terror. But it can't be her.
The features are off, eyes too wide between blink's mouth,
too stiff around the corners, and the tilt of the
head at an angle that breaks the logic of neck
and shoulder. She raises her hand pompressed to the glass
in a parody of reassurance. I can't stop myself, some
part of me, compelled by logic, I no longer control
and locks my own doors. I freeze as the passenger's
side door cracks open, rain cutting in streaking the scenter console.
I taste the sweet rot scent, perfume and cigarette overlaid
by the sting of ancient sadness. Lisa has Simulate from
slides into the front seat, the car shilling by full degrees.
As she settles in beside me, she tugs her purse
into her lap, knuckles shining under thin skin, eyes driven
by pain. In some urgent code, you get one last ride,
that's all any of us get. Her voice's leases down
to the inflection, the coiled energy, wound through the syllables,
but as faltered, processed as if by an old casette
tape played forward and backward at the same time. I
try to form a question, but my tongue feel stuffed
with wool. Instead, she goes on, words tumbling out in
a hush, only for me. They don't want you, They
want the circuit. They users to knit, so the city
remembers to forget. Each name you found is someone who
wouldn't let go. It palls a desperation, makes escape look
like mersey. But you can't fix it by riding alarm.
You can't end it by watching. Don't take what can
be returned. She clutches the post tider hand spasming as
if electricity is running beneath her finger nails. I glance
at the back seat, where the snow the strongest. There
for a fraction of a second, I see faces, dozens
of them, blowed in agony and silent appeal. I recognize
Lisa Miranda, a glimpse of Emily's terrified glance, even the
bartender's lops. I did smile offlickering faster than my heart
can beat. Outside the black car idols, engine humming and
sink with the static from its ancient serious radio. The
driver is more visible now a face. They have a
fully resolving shifting like pixels under attack. Sometimes a young
man with mirrored sunglasses, sometimes an old woman with half
loaded eyes and a yellowed scarf, sometimes wearing the gream
ring Miranda was known for. Sometimes in Leah's signature baseball cap.
They glance my way, and in that instant, the car
warps the world around it. Street lights pulls bending into
abteue angles, objects sharpen and dull, painting the rain and
colors and men for our eyes. My phone shakes so
hard it nearly jumps from my lap. Notifications exploding in
rapid succession, broadcasting my own name over and over, then
as lisel Lease, not Lise, Aline's in her breast, close
and called by my Every device in reach blisters with
static and seizes up entirely. She hesitates, then whispers, voice
splintered by something not quite human. You can't ride up
for others, favory, that's not how it works, Walk away, please.
Then she's gone. The sea beside me is empty, just
the trace of her scent. The passenger side door stands ajar,
rain adding at my feet and soaking the map. The
black hour across the street is gone, vanished, as if
absorbed into the blank barrel of night. My car's engine
coughs to the life on its own, before settling into shuddering. Normal.
But nothing feels normal. Reality slows at the edges. Voices
seen piped through the speaker's garble plaintive, help us, let
it rest, don't chase what the city forgets. My dash
came runs corrupted, loops of empty streets, over lays of
faces I cannot name, blinking in and outward every frame
I left, the audio recorder thumb trembling. All I can
smell is her perfume. I don't know if I brought
this home or if I've already been marked. No new ride,
no way back. Suddenly my phone rings just once and dies.
It's green, fairing white, before fading to black. I try
to connect to the cloud, desperate to upload anything, left
files to solve for snouts. A rays Ford was replaced
by blank squares. All history except a single corrupted audio
loop leases last warning slowed to a crawl, drenched in static.
The app blogs me out. I try to log in,
but it refuses, pushing an error that changes every second
session expired, invalid, credentials, account not found. Rain keeps tumbling
from the sky. Indifferent, I sit in my car and
stare at the empty seat, my own hands reflected in
the window glass. My world narrows to the circle of
the steering wheel, the pounding in my chest, and the
rush of dead memory running out of the car's vents.
I stumble home before dawn, still saw and still carried
by the certainty that I'm not done. My apartments called,
every wire, every lapt up jack, every back up suddenly
corrupted or fused. My warm ap peals, the gloom, melting
pins scattering to the floor. The last case pin clings
stubbornly to seven points, daring me to try again. The
city outside remains unchanged, ignorant of the night's revelations. Local
news checked by habit when the world lightens, speaks fagure
of ab and stability, labor protests by drivers, rumors of
platform sabotage, no mention of black cows, no whisper of
disappearances or ghostly passengers. The rest of the world continues
as if nothing is amiss, but the sickness has crept
under mus again. I watch the street from my window,
seeing every black sed and double take seeing every innocent
passenger vanish within it. I yearn to run through the alleys,
knock on doors, confront the company, but I know by
instinct that what a trace can't be unlearned, and what
I've pursued is now fixed in place, like a hook
and tissue. I try to reach out to my old
contact's editors, retired cops, even Brett and Jerham at the diner,
numbers ring through voicemail's pile up, but no one outswerus.
When I do cross paths with a former colleague, she
simply brushes by, muttering it's not a story. Ivery just
a city's bad dream. Don't get lost in it. Desperate
for answers, I resort to coal research, overlay maps, running
vehicle histories, digging up records of obsolete license plates, a
crack all police reports, run queers on cars seized and pounded.
Auctioned pattens emerge more a cake than I expected. Every
missing passenger route correlates with the sights of former garages
shuttered by the city as taxes died out. Every phantom
ride terminates near a decommissioned lot or a scarred slab
of concrete roomored haunted by ride circles for years. Obsession
weighs as heavily as fear. I barely sleep, pacing my
room in tangled loops, fingers drawn again and again to
the last insolved case on my map. Miranda desigh her
postal leers a fixed reminded, the smile now a dare.
If I could just find her, just return one person,
maybe the curse will flee. By the third night after
my encounter, the lines converge. My research yield a name
for a puffum. Silver Haven's out of production since the
fire at the Oltran Depot warehouse forteen years ago. Only
a handful of bottles ever made it outside the plant.
Loco Wo says, the workers desperate for money after the
layoffs pawned. Everything that scent the radio is even the
name I find one archived company rost a photo online.
Thirdrow Miranda in an ill fitting blazer, smiling, under weary
eyes next to her. Half a dozen faces lost to
recent months. A cross check every name I can. Their
fates are predictable. Most have gun missing. The few left
have nothing to say, nothing to add. Accept the impression
that sometimes the city offers you an out. One An
aging warehouse guard simply lasts and says every city needs
a last ride. Iris just remembers how to summon it.
The evidence tilts towards something deliberate, something's systemic. The car
appears with desperate passengers, sometimes before they request it. Disappearance
is always on rainy nights near a city infrastructure that
predates the apps. Not a person not accompanies, some inheritance,
some shadow, using the circuit and the network to erase
trouble and pain. But a city is also becoming hostile
each time I approach someone connected to the missing my
phone glutch is at force. Notes rewound photos, auto deleted.
News about my former reporting work vanishes from the webers
escan for traces. Even my own by lines disappear, like
the aftermath of a memory being overwritten. This is when
I realize the city doesn't want to prosecute what it needs.
It calls the records, clearing space for the rhythm of
disappearance to continue. Every digital tool, a wheeled phone recorder
GAMRA becomes unreliable, corrupted with static infected by the same
mysterious error. Circuit broke and try again later. Driven past safety,
I decide on a reckless gambage bait for the trap.
I open an anonymous passenger Provalle Rebecca, modeled on someone
as vulnerable as the circuit seems to seek. I flag
myself at seven points, precisely where the black car lost surface,
with destinations set to constantine the path of every known vanishing.
My plan let the cost seek ME record everything with
new hard wired equipment and transmit life to an offside backup.
This time, I write notes on paper, pin a wil
to my wall, seal the map with a final crumbling
strip of tape. Ring Pepper is down as I drive
to the intersection, windows cracked serious radio lot on a
customed frequency. The dashboard winks in and out, my phone's
signal straining. I park in darkness, engine idling, the wall thens,
sounds recede, lights lose their color, midnight strikes, a radio crenal,
static throttle, plint of vedges in between songs. The up crashes,
my phones display, flattening into white noise, then black. My
locks flick open again on their own. A shape emerges
from the fogged black haw. Maculate headlights flick at gold.
The rain beads impossibly fine along its glossed HOAt, like
it's never seen dirt. Its engines low idle thrums in
my bones. My cou's phone stands dead, but the hard
white cameras stays green. For now. I steak aloud, final
recording seven points, midnight, voice forced calm as the impossible
car rolls up beside me, window gliding downb without sound
from the gloom inside. A driver half shrouded by the
flicker of the old serious unit. No. Two blinks the same.
Sometimes the driver is bandaged, sometimes black gloved, sometimes best
skinned and delicate. Whatever lies beneath is unseable, but every
movement seems stitched from the postures of my missing faces.
The driver speaks, but in a voice that's dozens at once,
overlapping harmonics folding in on themselves, unmisticable sadness, sympathy, accusation,
and hunger. Are you ready to stop looking? Avery? This
is the last ride out? I freeze, breath, trembling, a
fastened Her door opens from the inside. From the shadowed
back seat, Lisa looks up this lease, neither dead nor alive.
Clarity flickering in her eyes before fading behind technical ruin.
Her mouth works before the sound catches up. Don't get in,
no stories, not to night. All you can do is
refuse or be replaced. I reach for my foam again,
but it crumbles with heat, battery warp the screen of
smoking ruin. My audio recorded glitch's spitting out only static.
I pull a paper notes from my pocket, determined to
commit anything possible to before I too lose my name
in the city's memory. But the words fuzz, pen lines blurring.
She's soaking up the sickly sweet scent of age perfume.
The black car idols, city folding inward, the walls colored
bleach out, had light painting every surface the same indelible gray.
My sense of movements start as each heart becomes at
the wrong interval, as the figure in the driver's seat
leans out further, hand emerging, The palm is banded with
jewelry rings from every passenger I've investigated. The wrist is narrow,
scowled with an old righteous Bracelet attack your turn, Avery.
The corse says, one ride out, or you walk away,
and the city keeps forgetting those who try. My mind
fractures fought, sleeping from fear to defiance, Miranda's face, Lisa's warning,
my own desperation to fix what I did not break.
Each hold me by threat, the temptation as vicious. Take
the right, trade truths for oblivion and rest or look away,
and no dozens more will be lost. The circuit mended
in waiting for someone else to pursue it to the
point of rosure. From behind, My own reflection stirs in
the mirror, older cracked hair, tangled eyes rimmed with sleep,
as red I realized suddenly Ambo's subject and witness caught
in the orbit of the circuit, not by accident, but
by design. Lisa's voice cuts through the static, urgent now go,
don't ride. It's the only way to break it for tonight.
Go now. Fingers trembling, I press my hand against the
window the night, pressing back, chillin and yielding in shout no,
not to night. The car beside me shutters, lights, trembling,
engine keening a sound of ancient loss. The scene melts,
tail lights to solve. The window flicks up every surface,
returning to undingrime. On the seat beside me, a torn
scrap of paper glows faintly, a remnant of my own notebook,
the only item not erased. It reads in muskrip, but
not my hand. Thank you for not going for a
lapse moment. I am neither driver nor prey. Rain slams down,
reasserting the whirl. My own engine stutter is reluctantly awake.
I grind the key as if the act cans sever
the cities, in visible tendon looping round my neck, head
lights pierced to gloom, my mirror showing on the empty
road in the lines of lamp light. Rain. I don't wait,
type punch the accelerator, peel away from seven points, and
do not stop until I see familiar blocks. Electric blue
of a late night pharmacy, the eelobus of a lawndrom
out at the city's edge. In my wake, I search
every mirror, every block, every intersection for the return of
black laws and crooked radio static. But the world, at
least outwardly resets. My phone remains deare, mydentce gone, nothing
left but a fountain taste in the air and the
promise of one more dawn. I drive until the cities
is beneath the ramp to the highway, until all the
old rise blow behind me. I sit in a cuff
for a long aching span, staring at my hands, knowing
I have refused the ride and traded every trace of
my findings for the royal currency of exhaustion. I last
with the horizon paling. I gathered the last and ruined objects, keys, paper, scrap, wallet,
and step out rain, bite and cold and sharp. I
leave my car at the edge of the lot, engine
ticking down, perfume sharpening at my heels. I do not
look back. My last aft before leaving the city is
to remove the old bright jest sticker from my windshield,
crumpling its cities of edge under the heel of my boot.
For a breath, all is silent except the dripping trees
and a distant bumble of ties beyond the overpass. I
walk away, refusing to turn or wait for what the
night might offer next. Avery's final realization comes quietly as
they passed the last street light. There are some fairs
who save only by never offering the ride. For the
first time in months, the static in my head gives
way to silence. I keep walking, listening only to the
wet hush of the city is behind me the headlights
of a car blinkout, leaving nothing in the dark. I
keep walking, listening only to the wet hush of the
city is behind me. The headlights of a car blink out,
leaving nothing in the dark. By the time I reach
my apartment, rain beats along my collar bones and soaks
my jenes. The street outside looks and change, same peeling
traffic paint, same flick amidway through the ancient crosswalk sign.
Yet every sound feels slightly off, not louder, but less
certain about what deserves to endure. Beneath the sodium vapor,
my building door, once needing a shoulder to open, glides
inward at the slightest snudge. I step inside and notice
the elevator buttons stammering through digits, as if the odor
of force is up for negotiation. In my apartment, the
walls blotched with yellowed outlines where my missing person's notes
once clustered. I feel the oat clean, my hands act
of their own worl gathering odds and ends are spoon
a pair of dead batteries, the crack mark. Everything goes
into the trash compulsively, like ridding myself of infection, even
the keys. I let them fall to the kitchen counter
and jam them under a stack of mail, as though
hiding some part of me from what lingers in the hallway.
It is when I fetch my last working note, put
one without radio interference, when the circuit never corrupted, it
that I realize untrembling muscles twitching from exhaustion and aftershock.
My body aches with the effort of resisting something larger
than logic, mine snapping between memory and read. I sit
bare feet pressed a warpf flanoleum and wonder for the
hunt of time, if I did enough by not taking
the ride, Was I spared or marked for some fate?
Delivered piecemeal one night at a time my phone laid
on its face. Since returning sits inert no comforting glows.
The charging port, crusted by city dust, refuses to connect cables,
loose enterts, humming with and spent charge. When I pick
it up a last time, it powers on by itself,
screen flaring blue black with a sibilant electronic wine, two
words groll impossibly and a font my phone does not possess.
Thank you. I drop the device as if stung. Here
at show crack against chip tiles and retreat to the
only window with a view. Shadows pull along the curb
instinct and unresolve into anything recognizable. Traffic picks up somewhere distant,
the city's machinery, resuming for an eye or a loose
sense of time, or trust in it, Watching for that
old black sid Anne. Nothing comes but the weight of
consequence sworms beneath the calm. Three rides canceled mysteriously while
I was gone up, marked with the comprehensible air codes.
No custom or service number yields a living voice, just
lips of hold music and a stuttering robo apology. Orical
cannot be completed as dialed. My count on the platform
is indefinitely under review. The penalty for surviving is to
be systematically locked out of every angle of return. I
try to call this absurdly. For certainty, nothing new. The
line rings forever, the voice nail reset to a generic
digital sigh. Even her account's avatar is replaced by a
blank circle, a momentary placeholder, as if even her memory
dilutes daily in the city's main frame, a handful of
unfamiliar numbers, one from a state away, one master ping
my phone throughout the day, never leaving a message. I
no longer pick up, jarred by the realization that perhaps
the wrong voice will answer that. The city, through its legend,
its digital wires, now owns any color place. Documents are
once painstickingly crafted, are gone. Files wiped, emails backdated, every
data trail shraded us together backwards, making my own research
unreadable to any one but me. The obsessive color coded
map on my wall so recently the nerve center of
my investigation now peals pins loosen string, curling dampy toward
the baseboard, like the remnants of something half digested. A
sense of vacancy blooms in the aftermath. No one from
the diner returns my messages. All foreign friends look off
one by one, their lost posts, either cryptic or eerily mundane.
Even Stavaus, who muttered old knight wisdom about not helping
the wrong stranded soul is unreachable. Chef leads speak only
of weather, not of vanished passengers or the black mirrored anne.
City news breezes past anomalous service outages and transit disruptions
without ever acknowledging a person's name, let alone a face.
Yet to me, the faces remain. Sometimes at a corner
of waking, I see leases unsert and smile in the
street window of a shop I once ferried her to.
Sometimes it's Miranda's green ring glinting up from under a
bus bench, always too far to touch. Every so often a
scrap of melody radiostatic inflected with the child's lullabyspools from
a saligned speaker in the ceiling, and all other sounds.
Fall away objects in the apartment importune me for meaning.
Long washed out notes or receipts. The singular cigarette kept
by accident cheap lets stick melted to its paper edge,
tangible proof only to me. There are, of course, consequences
for the choices I made. My count remains locked. The
company issues no official statement. The help forums fragment into
rumors and speculation. New drivers are hired, most lasting less
than a month. The edges of my world contract no
longer welcome in the network of insomniac drivers and on commuters.
Exiled unremarked from a weld whose rules are once trusted,
Isolation becomes absolute. After a week, I catch myself peering
out a passing carse watching for the wrong flicker, the
wrong antennah, the familiar round of an old serious display.
The sickly perfume impossibly remains strongest in the car, even
after I have the seats professionally cleaned, scrubbed with solvents
borrowed from a mechanic's private stock. The sweet rot taints
that can navigates my nostrils. Every time I turn the ignition,
it's as if the car refuses to let go, as
if it marking time, until I weakly resume the old route,
until the city is wide apt and retries me again.
Some nights, I paced the apartment heart racing, replaying the
final confrontation with the black car, wondering if all I
did was by time for someone else. If the circuit
is now simply retuning itself on another frequency, another vulnerable
drivers route. I drough messages, warnings, oblique references to drivers
I can still reach. But my books is never grace
by anything braver than autotexts or exhausted misspelled indifference. One morning,
a new sticker from the company Gerish whom branded arrives
in my mailbox with the bland note try again so
soon we value your dedication. I'd tear it up without
opening the envelope. In quieter moments, I sit with my recorder,
speaking in low tones to myself through the static. The
habit is unbreakable, secret hope that clarity might go less
if I just say the right phrase. But most of
what appears, and the playback is corrupted, thick with white
noise or ghostied voices, whispering a polyphony of names that
don't belong to any one I ever knew. When damped on,
I find myself driving again, not for work, not for passengers,
but to simply patrol the edge of what I can bear.
I stop at the bridge, overlooking the city's about a grid,
watching tailights weave under a brewer of incoming clouds. Here
at the limital ire, before induction into another day, the
weight of what happened eases just slightly. The city seems impersonal,
trained of the malevolence that pulled so relentlessly in midnight iOS.
And yet when I close my eyes, I know there
are still things moving quietly in the circuitry beneath the streets,
patterns that neither forget nor remember as humans dup, but
simply a crew waiting for the next person who cannot
help but follow what they should only observe or return home,
leave the car park beneath the only unbroken security lamp,
and vow for one night at least, not to answer
the pulsive digital pings or haunting melodisins pulling through the rain.
For a few hours, the silence is tolerable. I sleep
through the day, wicking only when shadows lengthen past the
curtain's edge. That night, the city offers no new rights,
only rain, pale and persistent gurst in over the glass,
no black car, no flicker forbidden radios. Yet as I
walk the empty street, the smell of perfume clings around
each door frame, every car, innocuous by daylight seems to
flick a darker, one more shade of black, hiding in
the sea of chrome. If I am ever tempted, now,
it is not by the possibility of answering what the
city wants, but by the feigned impossible idea that, in
refusing I have closed a tiny loop broken one circuit
for one rotation. Is not hope exactly, but the ghosts
of it. Two nights after a final message arrives to
burn a number and sign thank you for not taking
the ride. If you ever see the black car, keep driving.
The perfume will not fade. Sometimes, as I leave for
groceries or return in the mild hush of morning rain,
I smell the bold and canny sweatness in the foy,
or catch the faintest glimmer of static over my neighbor's radio.
It remains intractable, neither ominous nor consoling, just a fact
of the air, now impossible to explain to those who
have not breathed it. The very last night, before I
leave the city for good, I pause at the edge
of the unramp. One hand trails over the mirror, daring
to trace the line of sight from rear view to
distant shoulder, the dash can brand new, despite lessons learned
to Glitch's wants. In the recording, barely visible through gloom
and reflected sodium haze, I see a black Sudan, perfectly parked,
headlights flickering with mournful patience, the low static of an
old serious radio threading into my consciousness through a concrete
and rain. My heart pounds, logic blurring at the edge
of fear and resignation. There is nothing left to prove.
I drive on, windows up, never slow, in letting the
city's patterns recede behind me for the last time. All
that endures is the sense of eyes and seen watching
the act of refusal, the car in the mirror, shrinking speck,
and in that silence fading at last,