The Night Toby Hitched A Ride With Toll-Bridge Bill
My eyes are fixed on the strobing lines that split the lanes. When there aren’t any, I wait until there are.
“…When I say ‘sweets’, I’m talking about drugs, you understand.”
I respond with a nod. I haven’t been listening and hope I haven’t agreed to anything awful.
“God, don’t I love drugs?” He says, eyes off the road and on me, waving the item in his free hand in the air. He pops it in his mouth.
This shakes my attention from the view through the windscreen, and I look across, engaging him against my better judgement.
“But, that’s a mint, isn’t it? I mean, it is right?” I say, keeping a shrill warble down in my throat where it belongs, some part of me still man enough to want to save face in front of this funny little man. “I mean, it didn’t look like any drugs I know.”
He laughs, and it’s a laugh that fits the boundaries of the cab. Suddenly it is easy to imagine him, trucking down the open road, laughing maniacally to himself at jokes of his own imagination as he goes.
“Course.” He says. Then, “So that’s your guitar.”
The statement confuses me momentarily, sounding as it does like it should be a question. It’s obvious that the guitar is mine – there was only me, and it, that climbed up into this tight little space a few hours ago. But of course, it wasn’t a question. I shrug.
“I used to be in a band.” He says, and I nod with enthusiasm, despite the fact that when you travel with a guitar, meeting people who used to be ‘in a band’ quickly becomes less of a novelty. “Yeah, used to tour all over. Used to shag a different bird every night. Used to take a bit of this. A bit of that. To keep it coming, you understand.”
“Hm?” I respond, it being the most efficient way of showing interest.
“And the booze. But then, that’s what ended it, wasn’t it?” He asks. One of those questions that doesn’t require an answer. “Yeah, it was.” You see?
“Yeah, the booze got so bad that I was drinking all the time, even when I was off tour, back home with the missus. I started on these things,” and he’s inexplicably got another mint in his hand, which he pops in his mouth, “to try and hide the smell.”
I can see how that’d work. I guessed that someone with as damp a complexion would fester in the closeness of the cab of the truck, but all I can smell are mints, with a hint of something sweeter underneath.
“…But I gave all that up years ago. Don’t touch a drop, anymore.”
He says it, and I believe him, but that begs the question…
…If not alcohol, what is he masking with the extra-strong mints?
Andrew Cheverton
I do like the way this seems to mix a few urban legend-types tales – never committing fully to any of them – and goes for the ambiguous ending.
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Glad you liked it, sir! It was a simple notion that occurred to me, though surprisingly I hadn’t really thought of urban legends when I wrote it. It does have that sort of feel, doesn’t it?
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Rivka Jacobs
Oh yeah, the captive audience in the taxi cab. The narrator says he got in the cab “hours ago….”
Very subtle, nice and quiet quasi-horror tale. Or, rather, a story of possibilities. I agree with what Andrew says, about how you touch on several urban legends at once.
I also like how you’ve illuminated the paranoia that all of us feel when we’re stuck in a cab; a tension and anxiety that’s probably mutual between driver and passenger.
Nice character work, a nice sense of balance — never going too far in either the direction of “Whew, it’s all my imagination,” or, “Aggh, the cabby is insane, let me out of here!” Kind of balancing between the two extremes, leaving the reader in a state of suspicion and insecurity.
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Rivka Jacobs
Addendum (because I can’t edit): re-reading, it’s the cab of a truck, not a taxi cab in the story. But otherwise, my comments remain the same. Or, maybe change “Aggh, the cabby is insane …” to “Aggh, this truck driver is insane….”
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Thanks, Rivka!
Yeah, it’s a hitch-hiker story! A fairly flippant one at that, and it’s always nice when those ones strike a chord.
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