The Tight Lipped Taxi Driver

TRIGGER WARNING: Blood and gory stuff

LATE, LATE, LATE! I was always late. The thing was, I never meant to be late, it just happened. So, when I woke up at 8:45 this morning, I knew that I was in trouble. This was the one day that I couldn't be late. I had yoga every Saturday morning at nine (it's so cliché, but someone said it helps with stress or something…) and my yoga teacher, Strict Old Sally would ban me from classes (very severe, I know!) if I was late again. I mean, I guess I could find another class, but they all cost money and.... Well, really there's no excuse, I just can't be bothered to pay anything more than rent. So I rushed like never before, showering and dressing up in record time, shoving an old sandwich into my mouth, packing my bag and dashing out of the door. 

Running into the garage, I was hit with a pungent smell of gas, oil, and burning metal all mixed into one. Shielding my nose with my scarf, I crept inside, awaiting the sight of my car. Smoke rose from the engine, hissing, crackling and generally looking like it was about to explode. The rest of my car was in a state similar to that; dented front; smashed mirrors; a flat tyre. Great. Now my ride was busted.

 Whipping out my phone, I called a taxi, rang the maintenance guy and waited. I was burning with a white-hot rage inside of me, all directed towards one person: my brother. I hate him. I hate him with all of my heart. He does this Every. Single. Time. Whenever I do something nice for him like, lending him money, or studying with him or (in this case) letting him borrow my car, he always messes it up. To be honest, I don't even know why I bother anymore. 

Just before I could rage about my accident-prone brother anymore, the taxi pulled up in my driveway, forcing me to leave my anger behind and hop inside. Sitting inside the taxi, it was quiet, quite tranquil really apart from the quiet hum of the engine. That's when I realised that something was wrong: we weren't moving. I listened closer and I heard the driver talking on the phone with someone in some hushed foreign language with an urgent tone in his voice. The caller sounded like a woman with a deep voice. What was he doing?! I was nearly late for yoga now and I was getting more and more panicked by the second. I leant over to question the driver and in doing so, knocked over my bag. It made quite a lot of noise and the driver spun his head around to look. That's when I saw it; the scar. It stemmed from his temple to just under his left eye. It was a nasty raised scar that would scare most people away with one look. How could that have come about? It looked as if the weapon had been driven into his head with such force and anger that it caused the driver pain when he turned. He winced slightly and covered his flash of vulnerability with a harsh “What’re you staring at?” I looked away and we headed off into the city before I could question our temporary standstill any longer. 

Speeding into the hustle and bustle of downtown LA, I couldn’t stop thinking about the scar, his scar. The fact that he winced showed that the wound was still fresh, probably about 2-3 days old. It was yellow and puffy around the edges, probably infected. I knew all of this because I was a Junior Doctor at the LA Downtown Medical Center. This was one of the times where the job was proving quite useful. He obviously didn’t go to see a doctor because it was covered with some sloppily applied surgical tape. Underneath it was a mess of surgical spirit, blood and yellow pus oozing out from the tape. I was about to ask him if he was the one responsible for the mess on his head, when the taxi came to an abrupt halt, causing me to bash my head into the opposite seat and, once again, spilling the contents of my bag onto the floor. “What was that!?” I exclaimed, a slight tone of anger seeping into my voice. “Traffic,” he replied in a gruff voice, “Maybe if you kept a tighter grip on that little bag of yours, it wouldn't keep flying all over the place, sweetie.” Sweetie?! Who was he calling sweet?! I was anything but sweet!

Cradling my sore head in my hands, I gave him the coldest stare of my life. Picking up my things and shoving them into my bag angrily I kept going over everything that had gone wrong with my day so far; I got up late; Chris (my stupid brother) trashed my car; the taxi driver stalled for the longest time on a 10 minute phone call and I had smashed my head on a car seat. At least I had a party to look forward t- wait. The phone call. Who talks to someone on the phone for 10 minutes in a foreign language fluently? Plus, he seemed quite agitated about it. He also sped off immediately after and I was pretty sure he broke the speed limit. Mysterious, foreign phone calls, speeding, a scar the size of a scalpel; Who was this man? And why was he acting so strangely… “We're here.” I jumped in my seat, startled by his eerie voice. Suddenly, all I wanted was to get out of the taxi, and fast. As I scrambled out of the car, I caught a glimpse of the driver's name tag and took a picture of his number plate. His name was Alonzo. It sounded Portugese but I thought nothing of it. At least the party could take my mind off of it.

It was stunning. Every wall was covered with the finest of decorations. From fancy sculptures to stunning chandeliers; it was a ballroom fit for the queen. Miranda, Lucy and I walked inside and sat down on the velvet chairs as we awaited the other guests’ arrival. Well, they did. I was enjoying the blissful serenity of the hall, longing for it to last. The peace and quiet had set my mind at ease for what seemed to be the first time that day. My dreams were crushed however, when people slowly started bleeding into the hall. It hadn't even been 30 minutes since we sat down, and there were over 100 people there already."How many people did your sister invite?" I asked Miranda questioningly. “I think she invited about 20, but what with my mum and dad's relatives and her friends inviting their friends and stuff we all realised that there would be a lot more people than expected showing up tonight, so we booked this big hall." she replied. I was just going to go back to checking shifts on my phone, when she said,"Oh yeah! You guys should totally come to the after party at my house! There'll be a lot less people and it'll be so much fun, how about it guys?"

 I wasn’t really in the mood for standing in a crowd full of drunk people, but seeing an overnight shift pop up on my phone prompted me to say yes. I could've said no, and looking back, all of the tragedy that followed would've been avoided if I hadn't made the stupid choice of saying, "Yes! Of course I'll come!" It followed with Lucy's high pitched voice saying "I'll definitely be there!"

The rest of the party was a blur of party games and dancing. . . the list goes on and on. I was never one for party games, nor was Lucy for that matter, so we just sat and watched by the sidelines while everyone else was having the time of their lives on the dance floor.

The after party was held at Miranda's house, a large mansion like place. When everyone had crammed in there was barely any space to breathe, let alone dance. Just as I was regretting the whole idea, I saw a familiar face among the crowd, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it...Alonzo! What was the mysterious taxi driver doing at a random birthday party. Just as he headed upstairs, my curiosity took the better of me and I was met with the overwhelming urge to follow him. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd said goodbye to Lucy and Miranda and started to follow him. In hindsight, that was the worst idea I'd had that evening.

The house was like a maze; full of twists and turns, so many nooks and crannies for me to hide in when Alonzo occasionally looked over his shoulder. Every so often, he would talk to some other guests, twisting into groups and sliding out of them unnoticed. The only way I kept track of him was his tattoo. I wondered what it meant, a serpent coiling around and swallowing half its tail like an infinity sign. Maybe it was a gang emblem, who knows. I was too preoccupied with tailing him to realise that we were becoming more and more isolated from everyone else. The halls were decorated with strange ornaments of varying sizes. After a while, I was getting tired and considered turning back, when the strange man came to halt at a wonderfully drawn painting of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He was examining it closely, as if he was......looking for something? What was he doing? Looking for a secret compartment maybe? What would be in it, a gun maybe? I wouldn't put it past this guy to be honest. We were talking about the man who stayed on a 10 min sketchy foreign phone call, sped off without a minute's notice, and gave me cheek by calling me sweetie. I didn't trust this guy one bit, but didn't trust him to be alone in my friend's house either. So I watched and waited for the inevitable to happen.

He stopped at one point in the painting and stared. Following his gaze I saw that in the bottom-right corner of the frame, was a very tiny button. About the size of a thumbtack and no bigger. It was so delicately hidden in the painting that to any passer-by, it would blend right in. He pushed the button and. . . . . nothing. No fancy opening, or random noise, just nothingness. I was disappointed and even from about a metre away, behind a corner, I could see that Alonzo was too. Just as I quietly turned away to get back to the party, I heard a deft and quiet swoosh followed by a howl of pain behind me. I spun around and my gaze locked onto Alonzo. What appeared to be a poison dart had injected itself into his upper-right arm, just where his tattoo was, and his skin was inflamed with an angry red as he clutched his arm in agony. I couldn't bear to look at his wound anymore so my eyes drifted to what had caused it, the dart. It seemed that a dart was released from a slot in the top right hand corner of the painting, where the artist's signature was. The dart itself was a poison dart, designed to inject a slow and lethal poison called strychnine. It looked a bit like cyanide but it was definitely strychnine because of Alonzo’s symptoms. He was bent double, coughing continuously as if it was a struggle to breathe. Occasional muscle spasms caused his face to twist in excruciating pain. At one point, the spasms were so acute, so intense, that his legs could no longer handle the weight of his twitching body and buckled, causing him to fall hard onto the floor as he released a loud yell that echoed around the floor.

I then realised that I was in way over my head. What was I doing? I wasn’t a superhero, trying to save my friend from being caught up in some sketchy guy’s business. No. I was just a Junior Doctor who was in the wrong place at the wrong time without even knowing what I had got myself into. I had moved from my previous place in the corridor to crouch behind a small vase before the dart was released. I carefully and quietly stood from my crouched position and took a step back from the gruesome scene before me. As I turned away, something shiny in the dart hole caught my eye. 

It was a small note attached to a pin in the hole where the dart came from. It appeared to have some writing on it, but the paper itself looked quite old. It looked like it was designed so that the dart would have ejected before the note came out so that if you dodged the dart, you would get the ‘prize’. What if that’s what Alonzo was looking for? I thought. If it was, then was it worth risking his life for, this ‘prize’? Speaking of Alonzo, he was now writhing around on the floor, his neck jerking back violently as if it was about to break. His head suddenly smacked against the floor with a big crack and his whole body went still. Blood was gushing from a wound in his head. His eyes were glazed over and it looked like he had stopped breathing. I carefully stepped towards him, avoiding the blood on the carpet, and checked his pulse. He wasn’t breathing. He was dead. 

My mind went into survival mode. I definitely did not want to get tracked by the police, so I put on a pair of gloves from my bag. My bag was full of surgical equipment in case I had an overnight hospital shift, so that was proving quite handy. I took his phone, the note and the pin out of instinct and stuffed them into a clear plastic bag. As I was searching for any more evidence, I heard a creaking sound coming from the stairs. Damn it! I thought. Someone probably heard the scream from downstairs. I scanned the area to check that everything was in order. It looked perfectly normal. Well, as normal as a murder scene could. Alonzo’s body was sprawled on the floor, the gash on his head surrounded by a pool of clotting blood. The painting above him looked just how it was when we arrived except from the sliding hatch that the dart came through. As I swiftly shut the hatch, a looming figure started to ascend up the stairs. I was too late! I thought, panicking. Someone would find me and I would get arrested and then, and then….. It was then that I realised that the hallway had another exit behind me so I grabbed all of my things, snatched up the bag and ran. I ran all the way to the other stairs, sneaked down them, ran into a random, empty dimly lit room and slammed the door shut.

The gravity of what had just happened hit me as a wave of fear and anxiety crashed into me. What just happened?! I just stood there and watched a mysterious man die in front of my very eyes and what did I do? I didn’t call for help or try to help him or anything. Nope. I just took his stuff and ran. I just witnessed my first casualty and I ran. How could I be a doctor if I can’t even help some man from strychnine poisoning? And my speciality was poison. I was spiralling into a vortex of worry and doubt when someone knocked on the door. “Tris? Are you in there?” It was Lucy. What was she doing here? It struck me that I had never told her that I had gone so she must’ve thought that I had disappeared. Nobody else could know what I did. 

What do I do now?

......