I had one last ride for the night and then I could go home and pour myself a glass of wine. I had been looking forward to that glass of wine all day. My passenger was getting dropped off a few blocks from my apartment so it was perfect. After 4 hours of making small talk with strangers and driving them all around town, I was exhausted. I hated small talk almost as much as I hated not drinking wine. Almost.
It was Halloween and the streets were littered with people in costumes. From scary masked men all the way too slutty princesses, I had seen it all that night. During one of my last rides, I was crammed in my car with 5 giggling teenagers in my back seat. Yes, five. They insisted on sitting in each other’s laps and didn’t give me a chance to protest. Belligerently drunk and dressed as mermaids, they were recording themselves on one of their phones while taking turns singing “Under The Sea”. It had been a terrible 15 minutes and I vowed to never watch The Little Mermaid again. My dashboard read 11:30 PM after I dropped off the mermaids, and I had to concentrate rather hard on the road to see where I was going.
I pulled up to the address on my phone and turned my engine off. The street seemed to be abandoned compared to the rest of town and I remember savoring it. My eyes were drawn to the front door of the residence, it was painted bright red and seemed to glow in the dark. Their porch light illuminated the paint making it look fake, like a drawing colored in with red crayon. It opened slowly and a dark silhouette emerged from the home. As they approached I noticed they were dressed up as a ghost and I held back an eye roll. How original.
They got in silently and closed the door like they were trying not to break it. They had a white sheet draped over their entire body with two cut outs around the eyes. It was too dark for me to see anything other than the white sheet in the rear view mirror.
“Hello,” I said, in an attempt to be friendly.
They didn’t answer, I shifted awkwardly in my seat and started the engine. Twenty five minutes until I could curl up on my sofa and sink into oblivion.
“Don’t go home after this, someone is waiting in your apartment for you,” said the ghost.
My heart did a sharp dance. Why would someone say that? How did they know I was going home right after this? I remembered it was Halloween and relaxed a bit.
“Very funny” I replied, looking up in the rearview mirror in an attempt to see their eyes.
They were gone.
My heart felt like it had exploded inside of me and I swerved the car to the side of the road. All that remained in my back seat was the sheet they had been wearing, nothing else. It couldn’t have been a joke. I had been driving 40 miles per hour, and didn’t hear the car door open at all, even if they had decided to jump out into the street. If it wasn’t a prank then I had to be losing my mind because ghosts aren’t real. Especially not ghosts that leave sheets behind in cars.
I looked back at my phone at the rideshare app and the ride request was gone. There was no history of it anywhere.
“Fuck,” I said to the sheet.
I called the police and they all but laughed at me, chalking it up to a halloween prank. I insisted they check my apartment though and one of the officers caught on that I was having a panic attack. He offered to follow me back to my place and do a walk through.
I waited outside in my car, shaking from the insanity of it all and forcing myself to breathe. Breathe in deeply, hold for a few seconds, and let it out. I repeated this a few times until my hands stopped shaking.
The cop emerged from my building and walked over to his partner before finding me.
There had been nobody inside. It was absolutely humiliating. The cops rolled their eyes and left me there in the dark, feeling like an insecure child.
Of course it was some sort of sick joke. Or a delirium tremor hallucination brought on from not drinking this morning like I usually did. It didn’t really matter. There was no serial killer hiding In my apartment so I could go inside and drink all this bullshit away.
I took off my chunky boots immediately after closing my door and all but ripped off my jacket. With my precious bottle of wine in hand I retreated to my sofa and turned on the TV. It didn’t take long for me to become too sleepy to keep my eyes open, and I drifted off into a deep sleep.
The man snuck through my window soon after I passed out.
Luckily he didn’t kill me, but I wish he had.