A Passenger of Fate

      It feels like I’ve been driving on this road forever. I don’t know how long I’ve been driving, or even when I started. I look at the clock in my car, which tells me it’s 1:06 in the morning. Why am I driving so late? Where am I going?

           I must be really, really tired if I can't even remember where I’m going. The road I’m traveling on is dark with no illumination other than a faint glow from the moon, which doesn’t help much as either side of the pavement is crowded with thick, overhanging trees. My headlights are on, yet it feels like I can’t see more than just a few feet ahead of me. I turned on the radio to help keep my mind occupied, but all I got was static. I sighed and turned it off. This is going to be a long drive, no doubt, but I know I also need to keep moving.

The dashed line that intersects the center of the road flies rhythmically by. With each passing dash of whitish yellow, I feel myself drifting deeper into a trance. I feel my head slowly fall as my eyelids get heavier and heavier; I’m just so tired. My head falls lower… So sleepy…

           My head jerks up, fearful of running off the road. As I look ahead of me, I see a jogger in a grey hoodie and dark blue sweatpants with a reflector belt around their waist. Their hood is pulled up, and I can’t see their face. If I had dozed off right there, I probably would’ve killed that person. As I drive past them, they don’t make any sign that they noticed me. I look in my side mirror and into that grey hood and can’t see a face as it is masked by shadow in the dark of night.

           Their image faded into the wall of obscurity as I drove further away, leaving an almost unnatural void behind me in the mirror as I moved on. I ignored the mirror and the uneasy feeling that the black curtain gave me and kept my focus back on the road in front of me, back to those hypnotizing yellow lines and the parallel tree lines that greedily kept the night sky to themselves. I thought I’d try the radio again, hoping that I had traveled far enough ahead to get close to a signal. When I turned the nob, I was once again greeted with static. But just as I was about to turn it back off, I thought I’d heard something in the dim frequency; the faintest voice talking through it. I figured I was close to a song, trying to find its way to me, but I couldn’t tell what song it was as the vague words I was able to hear didn’t make much sense to me.

           Cedar…Kayjee…Re-salts…Holding on… it said to me. I was confused and honestly wanted to be able to hear this song in better detail; it was one of those things that was so weird that I felt like I needed to hear the rest of it or else it would bother me for the rest of tonight and mostly into tomorrow as well. But the signal started to worsen, and the voice had left, leaving me with a rising, blaring static that screeched in my head in such a way that it was harder to focus on the road like this than if I were back in complete silence and feeling like I’m about to fall sleep. I turned it off again.

           I squint my eyes as I see something ahead and notice it’s two people standing in the middle of the road. I hit my brakes, slowing to a stop mere inches in front of them, yet neither of them moved a muscle to get out of my way. As my car stood motionless in the road I watched them until one of them – a woman – moved from the other to my window. I rolled down the window a crack so I could hear what she had to say, but cautiously not enough so she couldn’t reach inside the car if she wanted to.

           She had calm hazel eyes and a narrow face, with light hair that furled past her shoulders. “Hey,” she said casually with a buttery voice, “Do you think you could give my friend and me a ride? Our car broke down, and we’re really in a hurry.” I looked at her, then at her friend on the road. This one, a man, kept his spot in front of my car. His hands were in his pockets, and I could see a slight smile beneath his green eyes and short dark hair. When he saw me looking at him his smile grew as he raised his right hand from its pocket in a wave.

           Now, I know picking up hitchhikers – especially at this time of night – was a bad idea, but I couldn’t explain it; I had such a strong feeling from both of them that they didn’t mean me any harm. “Sure,” I said to the woman, all preservation instinct thrown out the window with that one word, “you two can get in the back.” I flicked at the button on my door which unlocked all the others.

           “Thank you, so much!” the woman said pleasantly. She waved her friend to come and then slid into my back seat. The man started a slight jog for the short distance from where he stood to the other back passenger door, his hands clapped in a praying motion as he mouthed ‘thank you’ as he went.

           I gave them a few moments to get settled in before I asked, “Everyone good?” and looked at them both in my rearview mirror.

           “We’re good. Thank you, honestly, so much!” the woman said. “My name’s Eva, by the way, and this –” she pointed a thumb at the man, who interrupted and said, “I’m Maveth. And yeah, we’re so grateful you took the time to stop for us.” He said this with a straight face, but I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, you didn’t give me much of a choice, standing in the middle of the road like that.”

           Maveth and Eva laughed in unison at that. I continued to drive down the road as Maveth said, “Yeah, well we aren’t the only ones it seems.” I looked at him, confused, in the rear mirror, before looking ahead at the road and saw a jogger on the side of the road. They looked like the one from a few miles back – same grey hoodie, same dark blue sweatpants, same reflective belt. “Yeah…” I uttered as I watched them pass. I looked at them through my side mirror, and again could not see their face under the grey hoodie as they slowly disappeared behind the wall of night’s dark obscurity. “Weird,” I said, conversationally, “I feel like I saw one just like them not too long ago.”

           Eva shrugged, “I have a feeling that’s not the last one, too.” I thought that was a weird observation and didn’t know what to say. So instead, I changed the topic, saying, “Either of you guys got any CDs on you? I tried the radio earlier but it’s just static out here. Thought maybe some music could make the ride more bearable.”

           The two passengers looked at each other and shrugged again but said nothing. So, I tried the radio again as I fixed my eyes on the entrancing road which was appearing to be what was moving while I and my vehicle were the ones staying still. The radio’s static once more screeched at me, while what seemed to be the same voice as before was trying to speak to me through the distorted waves.

           Hold… Omah… Lies…

           “Never mind on that, I guess,” I grumbled as I turned it off again. Eva leaned forward until her face was nearly between the two front seats. “It’s all good, we don’t need the radio to pass some time,” she cooed at me, “How about a game instead?” Now Maveth joined her in the careen towards the front of the vehicle. “I could go for a game – how about a memory game?”

           I cocked my eyebrow up as I asked, “A memory game?” I had no idea what kind of game that was. “Yeah,” Eva chimed in, “You tell us something about yourself, and we’ll see if we can fill in the blanks.” This sounded like a really weird game, but I guessed it was a good way to see where my two new passenger’s imaginations lay. “Sure, um… I had a girlfriend. Last year we broke up. How’s that?”

           They didn’t answer my question and instead, Maveth jumped right into the game, “Her name was Claire. You loved her like you never loved anything in the world, but she couldn't wait for you – for school, for a home, for something more serious – so she left; and moved on to someone else. You still haven’t recovered from it.”

           This threw me back – I could call that a lucky guess, I know I'm not the first person to go through something like that, but he even guessed her name right? “How did you know all that?” I asked him. He smirked as he replied, “That’s the game, kid.”

           “My turn – tell us another one,” Eva chimed in. I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to play, but I have to admit, I was curious. “Okay…” I stopped to think, “All right; I once went to an amusement park.”

           Eva smiled that warm smile and said, “You were eleven, your mom took you there after your dad had to go away. You didn’t know why he had to leave, but your mom made sure you were happy – and you were. It was one of the most blissful days of your life. When you convinced your mom to let you ride on the bigger roller coaster you felt like you were flying and made the fleeting promise to yourself you would be a pilot someday.”

           Now I knew it was no coincidence. Somehow, while these two were strangers to me, I was no stranger to them. My hands began to tremble on the steering wheel. I opened my mouth to demand what was going on but stopped when I saw the jogger again. The same exact outfit as before, never aware of me coming. But that was impossible – this road has been a straight line for as far back as I can recall it. “What the hell…” I whispered as we passed the jogger. I watched them in the mirror again and nearly swallowed my tongue with the sharp intake of air I made after I saw the front of them. The front of their grey hoodie had been stained with blood, and a broken, distorted face peered out from the hood; both eyes were puffed, crushed sockets and the nose had been bent at almost a ninety-degree angle to one side. Their shallow breathing made small puffs in the night’s cold air.

           “What the hell?!” I said again in a frightful yell. I looked back at my passengers whose faces remained impassive. “Did you see that?” I asked exasperatedly.

           “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Eva said.

           “Yeah, you couldn’t have known,” chimed Maveth.

           “What… What do you mean?” I asked with a tremor in my voice. They continued their soft stare at me.

           Cedar…Kayjee…Re-salts…Holding on… the radio awoke on its own volition, repeating those same words as before. I looked down at the clock, which still read 1:06 am.

           I was shaking all over. None of this made any sense. Why couldn’t I remember where I was going, or where I came from? When did I get in my car? Why does this road go on, and on, and on, always the same path?

           “Do you remember when you got the news that your dad died?” Maveth asked.

           “What about your first kiss? Or when you finished building that vanity dresser with your dad for your mom?” Eva inquired.

           Maveth, “How about when you broke your arm? Every time you stubbed your toe? Every rude person, every jerkwad boss.”

           Eva, “Every achievement, every movie you watched, every friend you’ve made?”

           I slammed my foot on the brake and turned to face them.

           “Every bit of pain?” Maveth asked, though when he said pain, Eva said love.

           “Who are you?” I yelled at them, becoming aware of the tears which wet my cheeks. “What do you want from me?”

           “We told you who we are,” Eva said.

           “But we do need something from you,” Maveth continued.

           “We need you to make a choice,” finished Eva.

           My eyes darted back and forth between the two. “I don’t understand,” I whimpered. But part of me was beginning to.

           “You were in a terrible accident,” Eva said solemnly, “and it wasn’t your fault. And now you need to choose which one of us you’re going with.”

           I glared at her as I blinked back tears until I choked out, “Go where? Why do I have to choose?”

           “If you go with Eva,” Maveth began, “you will wake up in a hospital. It will be painful, and some of the damage you sustained could be permanent – your life would never be the same. But if you come with me, I will take all of your pain away, and you will move on to… Somewhere else.”

           “I want you to remember all that gave your life joy and meaning,” Eva pleaded with me, “I want you to fight for it, and come with me back to where you belong.”

           Maveth, “You don’t belong there anymore; you’ve endured enough of this life. I want you to remember all the suffering you’ve already endured, and how badly you needed it to end.”

           I slowly turned away from them, my whole body trembling. I put my head in my hands and began to weep uncontrollably. I shouted in a muffled cry, “I didn’t ask for it to happen! I didn’t want any of this!”

           “I know,” Maveth said softly, “that’s what makes it worse, and I’m sorry. But you don’t have to worry about any of it anymore.”

           “I beg you,” Eva said, “you need to fight. You can survive and be something better for the world. You can prevent something like this from happening again. You could even make a full recovery and go be a pilot!”

           “But you have to choose, and soon. Time is running out, and a choice will be made for you.” Maveth said to me.

           I thought long and hard about this. I turned my quivering head to look out the window to those dark trees, and I saw the jogger. This time they were limping, their right leg twisted in a terrible Z shape, the knee bent in a way that no human leg should. Their left arm was stuck in a crook behind their body, their raspy breaths becoming more and more shallow. It was then I decided I wanted to see what could become of the jogger.

           “Eva…” I whispered. I could taste my tears as they slipped between my lips. “I choose Eva.” Eva nodded at me and reached out to grab my shoulder. I saw Maveth shaking his head as he said, “See you next time, kid.”

           I think I’m waking up now. I can hear voices. A woman’s voice is closest. “… The procedure. We’ll have to wait and see the EKG results, but they’re holding on. If we can keep their hold on them, we might keep them out of a coma, but they could end up paralyzed.”

           I’m opening my eyes now. I see a clock on the wall, which reads 1:06 am, and I see the doctor who was talking, she looks familiar with her calm hazel eyes, but I can’t remember where. I look down at my grey hoodie, and my dark blue sweats, both now stained with my own blood. I hear someone call, “We just lost the driver!”

           This sparks something in me. I remember I was jogging. I like to run at night after I get off work. I work the night shift. Something hits me, it feels like my skeleton is being pressed outside of my skin.

           But there is something else… the lady with the hazel eyes. She had a friend, I think. Green eyes.

           Now I’m holding onto those words. We just lost the driver. I don’t see green eyes anywhere, and I am starting to think the driver who hit me with their car has just made a choice.