Last Ride

The first version of this story was written for a Writer's Loft contest. To clear up any misconceptions here is the original contest prompt:

'Your topic for OCTOBER is to write about people, or a person, getting lost while going to, or returning from, a HALLOWEEN COSTUME PARTY! It can be sci-fi or humorous, both or neither.'

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Oscar Guignol was nearing the end of his shift and driving through a less desirable part of town when he spotted the odd couple standing on a street corner, looking decidedly out of place -even for Halloween.
         After twenty years of driving a taxi Oscar had become a very careful man, and he was glad they were standing underneath a streetlight so he could get a good look at them before giving them a ride.
         He couldn’t help but look at the woman first. She reminded him of a family-size fridge – solid, practical and so immense that she almost loomed. As she approached his taxi Oscar managed to get a good look at her features, and immediately pegged her as one of those horribly capable women you find running retirement homes and youth detention centres: level-headed, sturdy, and about as vamp-like as a duck. So the clinging black dress just didn’t seem at all right.
         Oscar Guignol also wasn’t sure about the black wig cut in a widow’s peak or the make-up, but it was the cleavage which particularly disturbed him. Oscar was of the opinion that bosoms came with an age restriction, and anything over forty-five just wasn’t polite.
         He looked at her companion, almost hidden from view, who was possibly the shortest, fattest vampire Oscar had ever seen. The man seemed trapped in his evening dress, designed for a much slimmer man if the strain on his poor cummerbund was anything to go by.
         As for his complexion… well, he was rather ruddy for a vampire, as if no amount of pasty greasepaint could hide the fact that this man spent a lot of his free time hiding in his shed with a hipflask, away from wifely disapproval.
         And the incisors… sure, they were long, but it seemed to Oscar they were rather yellow. This guy simply hadn’t made an effort, looking more like Humpty Dumpty dressed up for a night on the town, and literally getting too long in the tooth.

Oscar rolled down the window an inch, careful to keep out the October wind.
         “I’m sooo glad we found you," the woman said, "we’d almost given up hope.”
         “People such as yourself shouldn’t be out here at night,” said Oscar. “This is not a safe neighbourhood ."
         “You don’t say? Well you see - after all that smoke at the party my husband insisted on walking a bit," said the woman. She had a lilting voice, in an unpleasant sort of way. "Only we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.” She pronounced each word distinctly, as if first subjecting it to rigorous scrutiny before it was deemed adequate.
         “Lucky for you I came along then,” said Oscar.
         “Oh yes, absolutely,” she trilled.
         A stupid voice for such a large woman, thought Oscar. It sounded affected.
         “I assure you, you have no idea how fortunate we are that you came along. We’d almost given up hope,” said the woman, now looking pointedly at the rear door of his taxi.
         Oscar released the locks. If she thought he was going to get out of his warm taxi to open the door for her in this weather, she had picked the wrong taxi driver. “Hop in.”
         “I see,” said the woman. “How quaint.”

It was turning out to be an odd night, Oscar reflected. It wasn’t often that you picked up a hatchet-faced vamp and her ovoid escort, but then it was Halloween, and it took all sorts.
         She definitely seemed the talkative sort, rattling off the address and the best way to get there. Not like her husband, who had settled into the remotest corner of the backseat and seemed to be either sleeping or sulking.
         Oscar glanced in his rear-view mirror and caught the woman’s eye. “So,” he said. “I guess you were at a Halloween party?”
         “Oh yes. It was quite a do,” replied the woman, who was attempting to rearrange the stretchy dark envelope she was wearing into something approaching respectability. “Even the deputy mayor attended, so we were told. Although you never know with Christine. She does like to stretch the truth a little.”
         There was an indignant rumble from the dark confines of the backseat. “He was there. I seen him.”
         “I – ssssaaaw - him, Harold,” The woman corrected, puckering her lips as she exaggerated the s, “I - ssssaaaaaw him. Do speak proper English. And how would you recognise the deputy mayor, anyhow?”
         “S’easy. Saw a photo of him in the newspaper last week, didn’t I?” said Harold.
         “Hmmmm. Perhaps,” the woman acceded. “I suppose it is possible. But I still say Christine does like stretching the truth when it comes to who attends her parties - or soirees, as she calls them these days.”
         “Aww, you’re just jealous Maureen, ‘cos she’s your sister and lives in that big house now,” said Harold.
         Oscar Guignol was rather impressed by Harold’s resistance to what he suspected to be decades of wifely omniscience.
         “I’m not.”
         “Sure you are.’
         “I’m not.” she said firmly. “I’m just–” she halted, as if deciding which word would do “ perturbed - yes that’s it, perturbed, shall we say - by the way she seems to have changed. I mean, she still invites us to her parties, but it’s as if she snubs us.”
         “No she doesn’t.”
         “She does. Just look at tonight. Stuck in a corner we were, away from the crowd and the orchestra.”
         “That’s because last time you complained you couldn’t hear yourself talk. Because of all the noise. It gave you a migraine, you said.”
         “Well. It was noisy last time. All that Salsa and Meringue. Whoever heard of a Latin Halloween night anyway?”
         Oscar Guignol smiled. Ahhhh, domestic bliss. They probably had twenty-five years of bickering behind them with more to look forward to. And she looked like the kind of woman who’d already negotiated a price on matching coffins, and had made sure their graves would be in a desirable part of the cemetery.
         Now where had that thought come from? He chuckled. Yup, it was definitely Halloween.
         “—and I don’t like what she’s done with the house,” said Maureen. “It’s dreadful, all that black and white and chrome.”
         “Not everybody likes floral chintz,” said Harold.
         “I know that Harold. I just don’t see why she bought herself that mansion with all those little Gothic windows – how on earth she is going to clean them I don’t know - and then she makes us sit on those awful tube chairs. My back was killing me after an hour. We will be at the doctor again next week, I can tell you that right now.”
         Harold grumbled something incoherent.
         ”-and those dreadful people at the party. Honestly. It’s as if nobody makes an effort anymore. Tying a shoe to your head and calling yourself dog poo? I mean, honestly. And there was a woman wearing a hideous blonde wig. I asked her if she forgot her costume, and do you know what she said? Do you? She said she was Career Barbie. And then her friend joined us and said she was Doctor Barbie. Twirled her stethoscope at me.”
         “Supposed to be ironic, Maureen."
         "Well there was nothing ironic about Christine asking me whether we couldn’t come up with more original costumes for next year. I told her: we’re traditional. But she said that we weren’t making an effort. That we were spoiling her party. Lowering the tone, she said. The cheek!"
         “We’re here folks,” Oscar interrupted.
         ”Actually, we are not.” Maureen said. “You’ve driven us to the wrong street. This is Acacia Lane – I clearly said Acacia Street. I gave you explicit directions and you failed to follow them. I’ll explain again and then you will take us to the right address. And we shan’t pay you.”
         ”Actually, I don’t think I will do that,” Oscar said amiably.
         “You will,” said Maureen forcefully. “Otherwise I’ll report you and have your taxi taken away. I will make sure you will be out of a job with no reference. You look foreign so they’ll probably deport you. Harold, take down his number.”
         ”No Maureen.”
          Intending to swiftly deal with this spousal non-compliance and return to her righteous wrath she glimpsed sideways, to find her husband counting out five crisp hundred-pound notes. “What are you doing?” she barked as he handed them to Oscar Guignol, who stowed the money in his breast-pocket. Where are you going?” she shouted, perturbed now, as Harold opened the car door.
          Harold didn’t turn. Instead, he stepped from the car and looked up at the night sky. “Actually, I’ve always fancied Antigua,” he mused, mostly to himself. He shut the cab door behind him and was satisfied when he heard all the locks close. He removed the dentures and his cummerbund and exhaled with gusto, relieved to be able to breathe properly again. Then he began to stroll leisurely, not once looking back as Maureen had the life sucked out of her for a change.