One night, the old taxi driver pulled up to his final stop. He’d been driving all day, every day, all week. The car stank of cigarettes and sweat. For decades, he’d been driving this very same car to the same destinations, and he never stopped to think about himself, to see his family, or to enjoy a meal. But now, as he pulled up to his last customer, a warmth settled into his back. He rolled down the window of the passenger door.
“Donovan?” he asked.
The rider, whose face remained masked underneath the shadows of his clothing, nodded. He wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, as well as a pair of faded jeans. His hands were shoved into his pockets.
“Sit up front, if you want,” the taxi driver said.
The rider tilted his head down. He opened the passenger door and slid into his seat and fastened his seatbelt. He slouched down in his seat, not even bothering to give a greeting or say anything. The taxi driver tried to get a look at his face, but the rider looked away. He shrugged. Maybe it wasn’t worth knowing. He shifted the car into drive and took off into the night.
Droplets of rain tapped on the car, gently enough that they were almost unnoticed in the veil of night. The rain clouds blocked the moon, but orange street lights illuminated the inside of the car as the two men drove on. Music murmured from the car’s radio. They sat in echoing silence.
“You don’t need to tell me where your destination is, by the way,” the taxi driver said. “I already know.”
The rider didn’t say anything.
“I saw it a few nights ago. What’s going to happen tonight, I mean. I saw myself dying and choking. I looked so helpless, so dead, but it looked like I didn’t even fight back.”
He glanced at the rider.
“It is you, isn’t it? I know that it’s you. Why don’t you just do it right now? Why don’t you just get it over with?”
The rider gripped something in his pocket and turned to stare out the window. A moment of silence passed.
“All right, I get it,” the driver said. “The time isn’t right.”
He sighed.
“You know, I think I’ve always wondered about this sort of thing my whole life. If I had done something differently, even the smallest thing, could I have changed the result? My life, even? I don’t know. When I was a kid, I used to help my dad outside all the time. It was our thing, you know. I didn’t love working on cars, or digging up soil, or riding on motorcycles, but he loved it, and I loved him, so I did it.
“One day, he fixed up these old minibikes and asked me, ‘Wanna ride it when we get home?’ and I, of course, said, ‘Sure Pa, that sounds great!’ And then, when I was out riding, I messed something up on the bike. It started grunting and wouldn’t move, no matter what I did. I eventually got it moving, but it kept clicking and clicking and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to tell my dad because he just spent all this time and money working on this bike. So I just kept beating myself up, saying, ‘Why didn’t I just wait to ride the bike some other day? Why didn’t I just take it slow and not try and challenge myself?’ I wished that I could have done something different, or gone back in time, or seen the future and told myself to stop before something bad happened. But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. There isn’t any changing what’s happened or what will happen. I wish I could have understood that earlier.”
The driver reached for a cigarette, but there weren’t any left. He put his hand back on the steering wheel.
“You know that, don’t you?” he said to the rider.
The thing in the rider’s pocket clicked.
“I could have driven right past you tonight. I thought about that vision that I had, about me dying, and I thought that it was a warning. I spent all week thinking of how to avoid it. But it wasn’t a warning, was it? It was a notice.”
The rider slipped the thing out of his pocket. It glimmered in the streetlight.
“I’m ready for the inevitable,” the taxi driver said. “I’m ready.”
Nighttime permeated the skies forever as the taxi slipped further and further away into the darkness. A bright light lit up its interior.