Driver

She was beautiful.
No, exquisite. Perfect lips, poetic cheekbones. Hair that caught light in its curls and kept it, darkly.
It was her eyes that bothered him.
Green eyes, but not the right kind of green. Glowing, like something nuclear. Foggy, like a pool that has stood still too long. Lit from the inside, unnatural. And infinitely, quietly sad.
She sat silently in the back seat, hands folded in her lap like some old talkie star. She stared out the window, the same window he had polished and shined and cleaned an hour ago. An hour before he met her.
“You okay?” he watched her in the rear vid, the shiny rear vid just installed, just hooked up. Those eyes moved toward him, fixing on the back of his head and he could feel them burning there, pleasure and unease and a strange sort of wonder.
“Yes, thank you.” Her voice like smoke and mirrors. A hand tucked her hair behind one ear and he caught a glimpse of green lines crisscrossing the insides of her wrists. Tattoos perhaps, but more like scars. Not like a fem so stunning to tattoo her arms. Maybe she was property, but then where was the owner?
She turned back to the window, shut down, gone away. The vid showed just the reflection of her eyes, glowing there against the dark outside. Infinitely sad.
Here, he thought, lay the reason he sprung the extra to buy the top of the line. Class rides like this beauty, quality fares. No more junkies, no scum to leap out the back or crimp wiring out of the doors. Here was his step upwards.
He knew the place she wanted to go. There was nothing there but warehouses, the track from an old landtrain. Nothing but dark and loneliness. He had asked her about that, and she had smiled. He couldn’t argue after that. He could only drive.
Her purse sat next to her on the seat, the brand new ultracushion made to cradle rich asses. It gleamed beige, carefully set and then forgotten. His old fares used to clutch their bags. Black bags, always. Clutched tightly to the chest or worried between thin hands.
He switched the rear vid to voice activate. She was too distracting, it wouldn’t sit well if he wrecked his precious new hovercab because he was staring at a fare. No matter how intriguing.
The night was cold. The warehouse district had no lights. He turned between two old offices, windows randomly shattered or boarded. No glass left whole, no reflections. A canine scampered out of his floodlights, not someone’s food yet.
The rear vid flicked on. “This is fine.” Her voice intoxicating. “I can walk from here.”
He met those haunted eyes through the proxy of the vid, impossibly verdant. “Not safe for a lady to walk around here, let me take you all the way for free.” He didn’t want to see her step out of his cab, his life.
“No, that’s alright. I’ll be fine. Thank you for your concern.” The smile again and he lost his will.
Slowly, he lowered the hover to groundbounce. He looked at the meter. “Twenty nineteen.” The high-tech meter that tracked weight and distance and fuel used and number of passengers.
Like grace personified she opened her purse. From within she pulled a bill, real paper money, a collectors item worth twice its face. “Please keep the change.” She pressed it through the grating between them. The green lines on her wrists were thick, raised. Definitely scars.
Paper money. This is why he was here. A fortune in his hand. He unfolded it.
“Miss, I can’t take this… you gave me a hundred on accident.” He tried to squeeze it through the grate back at her, tried to squeeze himself through.
“No, it’s for you. Thank you.” Those eyes, that smile, the door raised and she was gone.
He watched her back as she left. Dark coat, light bag, slow walk. She didn’t look around. No fear, no curiosity. Just the walk away. Just walking away.
The hovercab, shiny, new, reset the faremeter for him. It blinked, zero, zero, and then settled down into a dull red glow. A sullen glow. He keyed up and swung around. This was his life, to have a serving of his fares’ lives and then go on. He would remember this one, though. This strange mystery.
His floods swept the ground as he circled back and glinted off a light object against the dark earth. A purse, a beige purse. With no human near it.
That’s not right.
Ladies don’t set their purses down. Something was wrong.
He dropped the hover in place, too fast and it made him dizzy. It set down with a bump, no smooth groundbounce this time. He killed engines, left the lights.
The hovercab, the purse, sat quietly at the top of the arch of a bridge. Nothing moved.
He popped his door. “Lady?” he called into the darkness. He searched for her eyes, knowing they’d glow. No green, not anywhere.
He set foot on ground. It crunched, too solid. The only sound. “Lady, you left your purse.” No answer.
The purse was light. He hefted it and looked, down the bridge to the right of him, down the bridge to the left. Nothing but dirt, quiet, forgotten places. Storage for things no longer important.
Only the edge of the bridge remained. If not left, and not right, then over. Over into black, onto the metal veins of the old landtrains. Not her, but he had to look. He leaned out to look, hoping only blackness, wanting only nothing.
No glowing eyes, but a pale hand stood out against the cold earth, and something spreading underneath it, reflecting. Too much reflecting.
He was back to the hover in a flash, keying up and messaging emergency services all in one motion. He took the cab over the edge and down into the below, settled it thumping on the landtrain tracks. No landtrains to use them.
In the bright illumination of his floods she did not move. The blood spreading beneath her was the wrong color. He left the engine running and stumbled across wood and iron to reach her.
No moving, no breathing, no glow. No smoke and mirrors, too much reflection from the wide green puddle. Thick, viscous, it crept outwards. Mocking him. Stealing her beauty. Stealing her life.
“Lady, are you alive?” He reached a hand to touch her back and it squished down, soft like a pillow. Not solid like a body. “Oh god”
He would check her pulse, see if the heart still beat. Like the old talkies. He leaned across the blood reaching. Fingers almost touching her neck.
And losing his balance. His other hand shot out instinctively, catching him. Landing directly in the warm, sticky fluid. Too sticky. It kept him, held the hand he tried to pull back. It stung, heating, warming, burning. It sucked at him as he struggled. It drew him in.
The pain. Her blood, attacking him, pulling, squeezing. He pushed with his other hand, scrambling backwards. It kept his hand captive. One of his feet touched the edge of the puddle and it kept that too. It flowed upwards, as blood should not. Spread up and over his hands, over his boot. Contracted, gripped, squeezed. He cried out.
She moved. Her hand twitched. He suffered. She breathed. The green drew him in, crushed him. He screamed, and it crept into his mouth, cutting off the sound with a gargle. She pushed herself upright, new green scars crisscrossing the left side of her face. He died.
She sat next to his corpse as the blood withdrew, stroking his hair. It shrank, withered, was gone. “You should have left. You should have let me die.” The eyes closed, a drop of sadness added into their infinity.
Gathering her purse, she left him there.