Deacon awoke to fiery laser beams burning his eyes and probably burning his brain. At least, something smelled like it was burning, was it his brain? He realized that it was sunlight coming through the drawn shades, and not actually laser beams, though that realization did not make them hurt less. He sat up and immediately was assaulted by his equilibrium being turned end over end and burning chunks of bile came up his throat into his mouth. He looked around, holding the vomit inside his mouth until he was able to locate a small wastebasket and pull it over. He then vomited violently into the receptacle.
After several waves and eventual dry heaves, when the deed was complete, Deacon looked down and frowned. Despite his best efforts, some of his vomit looked like it had projected, and he only got a small portion inside the trash can. He began to utter a particularly bitter curse word, but instead another wave of vomit came up. And again, only a portion made it on target.
Deacon found a few loose cigarettes lying on his nightstand. He did not question this mana from heaven, who had left them there or why. He instead quickly popped one between his lips and lit the end. As he took a pull and let the smoke escape from his lips and nose, he began to feel human again. The ability to smoke was the thing that separated humans from the animal kingdom. The next step was probably to find out what smelled like it was burning.
Deacon was back in his own tiny one-bedroom apartment. As he exited his bedroom and walked into the kitchen, he briefly searched his memories for how he got there. The last thing he remembered was flying around with dolphins. Try as he might, there were big holes in his memory, and he could not piece it together. Had he been drinking with hobos last night?
When he reached the kitchen, he finally saw what he had been smelling. There was most of his food, burned up in the trashcan. He had never been a great cook, but the hamburger meat, hashbrowns, eggs, an entire loaf of bread, even that cake mix that someone had bought him over a year ago that he had never gotten around to making. He opened the fridge door and began searching through the cabinets. Someone had burned everything. He started to get mad before he realized with his complete lack of memory, it may have been his own doing.
The phone hanging from the wall rang and the sound pulsated in his sensitive ear drums. He reached out and quickly snatched it from the receiver.
“Hello?” Deacon’s angry reply was far hoarser and more cracked that he had expected it to sound.
“Yo, good to hear you up and about again! How’re you feeling?” It was Nate’s voice on the other end.
“About how I probably sound. I feel like about fifty pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag and my mouth feels like Ghandi’s flip flop. What happened?”
“I dunno man, you were partying with some hobos.” Then that part was true, Deacon thought.
Then some of it came back to him. He remembered Sarah and the other guy. The Mustang guy. He remembered his entire world, his entire future flushed down the toilet, and all he could do was sigh.
“Sarah…” He began, but simply could not finish the thought out loud he realized.
“Yeah, I figured that had to be what happened. You were mumbling something about her when we put you in bed.” Like a good friend, Nate stopped short of gloating or reminding Deacon of the many warnings he had given.
“You were right I guess, Nate. Fuck you for being right, but you were.”
“Well dude, if it’s any consolation…I take no pride in being right this time.”
“Just out of curiosity, how did you know?”
“Well, this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but everyone knew. I remember there was this time before you got together with her, she uh…wanted to do stuff with me in the school bathroom. And uh, yeah. I mean, I let her…but I always kinda looked at her as sorta slutty after that.”
“Wait, you “did stuff” with her? What’s that supposed to mean? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Well, I didn’t really do stuff with her, it was more she did stuff to me. And I did tell you Deacon. You kept telling me that she’d changed and blah blah blah. You didn’t wanna hear it.”
Deacon searched his memory files and a hazy memory of just that sort of conversation did come up, though he could not access the entire thing. He glanced at a clock on the wall and saw that it was four-ten. He cursed under his breath as he realized he didn’t have that much time before he was supposed to be back at work and ready to drive.
“Look man, I gotta go get ready for work.”
“It’s cool, dude. I was just checking in to make sure you were cool. I’ll see you on Saturday, right?”
“What’s Saturday?”
“Oh, man did you forget? We’re throwing a party. You better be there!”
“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. I’m off Saturday, even though I’m just on a completely different schedule than all of you day-people.”
Deacon hurried off the phone, took a quick shower, brushed his teeth twice and threw on some clothes. Before leaving he also swallowed a few aspirin, ibuprofen and followed it with a tall glass of water to try and stop the throbbing in his head.
“You know the only thing that will truly get rid of the hangover, right?” He heard a voice coming from his refrigerator.
Deacon came over and threw open the door. There was no one inside.
“Why am I having a conversation with my fridge?”
“Because you are still under the effects of the LSD you took last night. That and you’re fragile state of sanity right now.”
“You leave my sanity out of this, asshole!” Deacon returned angrily. “But just out of curiosity, what were you going to suggest? My head is pounding.”
“Hair of the dog that bit you, friend. You just need to get another drink in you.”
“Naw, I can’t do that, I gotta work.”
“Nobody will know, just get that drink in you. Get it in.”
Deacon thought about it for a while, it was a tempting offer that his refrigerator was making.
“I will as soon as I’m off. I can’t jeopardize getting fired over it.” Deacon then straightened up and closed the refrigerator door. “Anyway, why am I arguing with my fridge?”
Deacon grabbed his keys and left his little apartment.
* * * *
Deacon scanned the credit card and handed it back to the well-off looking man in a three-piece suit. He turned around and thanked the man and waited for a tip. Finally, something would go his way for a change, this man looked like he could afford a decent tip, and for a fare that ran for thirty miles through city traffic, he was sure the man would agree that Deacon had made much better time than most cabbies, who probably would have milked the fare. The old guys tried to smarten Deacon up to the game, but he still believed in being honest, and that people would recognize that honesty and the universe would respond in kind. The middle-aged businessman looked up and noticed the young cab driver waiting and reached into his pockets. Deacon held out his hand and the man dropped a handful of change into it and then hurried out of the cab without another word.
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“Gee thanks. I can finally afford that…” Deacon counted it mentally, there was two quarters, two dimes, and six pennies “…candy bar I was saving up for. Amazing.” He uttered drily.
Deacon shoved it into his inside jacket pocket and pulled the column shifter back into drive before easing back onto the street. It was a slow night, and that was the last call-in pickup that he had lined up at the moment. He thought about it before deciding to head out north towards the Magnificent Mile. There were usually plenty of fares to be found in that area, especially around the bars and clubs.
He didn’t make it that far north. When he got close to Hyde Park, not too far away from the university, he saw a car a few spots ahead of him in traffic pull to the side of the road suddenly, nearly causing an accident. Someone leapt from the car, looked around somewhat panicked, saw the cab’s light on, and started waiving his hands to hail him. Deacon pulled up alongside the curb and motioned for the man to get in.
“Oh man, I hope this guy’s not a flake.” He mumbled as the man approached.
He looked like a proper, respectable man, probably well-to-do, dressed in a smart business suit and donning an old-fashioned fedora. The passenger slid in a large, covered box into the back seat first, and then climbed inside alongside it.
“O’Hare please. As quick as you can get there.” The man said nervously as he pulled the door closed behind him.
Deacon flipped on the taximeter and pulled away.
“You got it.”
The cab driver noticed something in the rear view that instantly made him think twice about this new fare. As he was back on the street and partway down the block, he noticed the dark colored car that the man had gotten out of pulled a U-turn and was speeding down the road. Half a dozen police cars came out from a side street and blocked the car in. He was not able to see what happened next, if the driver was pulled out and arrested, because he was too far away at that point, but he did notice that his passenger was turned completely around in his seat, watching the scene out the back window intently.
“You in some kind of trouble?” Deacon asked. It would be just his luck that he would pick up some fugitive and be forced to go down to the police station and answer questions all night. That would seriously cut into his drinking time, and the liquor was calling to his shaky nerves.
“It’s fine, just drive. It’s all a misunderstanding.” The man instinctively placed his hand on top of the blanketed box. Deacon noticed the protective nature that the man exhibited; he was unconsciously stroking it. Deacon thought of Gollum and the ring.
“Wha’dya got there? It’s not anything illegal, is it?” Deacon raised his eyebrow at his passenger, something didn’t feel right about the situation. All the stories from the old timers back at the station began swirling around his head. Stories of cabbies getting robbed, shot, or stabbed by crazies in the middle of the night.
A weird noise rumbled from underneath the blanket that covered the rectangular box. It started as a huffing noise, and both men inside of the cab stopped talking when they heard it. Deacon was trying his best to figure out what it was and whether he should continue the fare, while the other man seemed to know what it was, and when Deacon’s eyes caught his in the rearview, he saw the distinctive look of fear.
“Faster driver.” The man tried to remain calm when he spoke, but Deacon could sense the terror underneath.
Was he scared of whatever he had in the back seat? What could he be hauling that would cause that reaction? Then Deacon got his answer another mile down the road when the huffing noise started up again. Only this time it was followed by a deep long growling. The box was not large enough for a large dog, but he was sure now it was a live animal. An angry live animal.
“Do you got some kind of dog back there?” Deacon asked. People in this city never failed to surprise him with the stupid and brazen stuff they tried to pull. “There’s an extra fee for pets.”
“Fine, if you can hurry and get me to the airport quicker, you’ll get a two-hundred percent fare. Just stop asking so many questions!” Deacon could tell by the tone and timber of the man’s voice that he was someone important, or at least someone who thought himself important. Maybe a politician or…
A professor, Deacon realized. Of course, that made perfect sense and explained the vaguely superior air the man put on with his speech and his posture. He had picked the man up just a few blocks from the University after all. He was just starting to congratulate himself mentally for his deductive reasoning skills when that package in the back seat made another noise, this time it started as a growl but ended in the most bone-chilling howl he had ever heard, including all the nature programs he had ever seen. Like a pig grunt mixed with a large dog.
“That’s not a dog! What the fuck is that thing…some kind of demon?”
They were still a good way off from the airport, but that noise had frozen the blood in Deacon’s veins. It sounded almost supernatural, and angry.
“Pull over.” The Professor ordered. “It just needs more tranquilizer.” He continued, but mostly to himself while opening a briefcase and pulling out a few vials and needles. “I must have miscalculated. That should have been enough…more than enough, I underestimated the xenobiotic metabolism.”
“I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this and a bad feeling about you.” Deacon pulled over as requested and reached for the CB microphone to relay his situation back to the station.
“Dispatch I have a situation, over.”
“Don’t tell anyone!” The Professor hissed as he fumbled with the needle, distracted by the cabbie’s radio.
The Professor jabbed the end of a hypodermic needle into a vial from the briefcase and pulled the plunger to fill it. He carefully pulled back the blanket, uncovering a portion of the box, which Deacon could now see was a cage, or maybe one of those steel wild animal traps the city caught stray cats and raccoons in. The professor began to open the door to the cage, and as he did, the entire cage began shaking violently. This looked like a bad idea.
“Look, let’s just call animal control, that thing seems pretty ang…”
The Professor screamed, the cage shook one last time, and something came flying out. Deacon gasped, he did not recognize the creature that came out and began attacking the other man. It was not a dog at all, it was the size of a large cat or a small dog but looked more like a giant black rat of some kind. The animal opened its jaws impossibly wide and latched onto the Professor’s throat. It was all fangs and fur and claws and totally berserk. This was not a pet.
The wild animal continued to thrash as the man started to gurgle and bled heavily from his neck. Deacon could tell the man was in trouble, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was a cabbie, not an animal control officer. He protested when he saw the amount of blood that was leaking from the man all over the back seat. He was sure that cleaning would be coming from his paycheck.
“Screw it.” He muttered and reached out to grab the creature. Maybe if he could grab it by the scruff, he could pull it off the other man and save his life.
Deacon touched the fur, but the creature was too fast. It snapped down on his hand like a crocodile.
“Yow! Fuck you, you little motherfucker…” It latched on tight and stubbornly refused to let go. Deacon began waving his arm around, trying to fling the creature flee. It felt like the teeth were going straight down to the bone. He slammed it against the roof and the dashboard, but it just grew more obstinate and bit down harder. Deacon screamed at possibly the worst and most immediate pain he had ever felt. The creature met its match in orneriness, the harder it bit and thrashed, the harder he kept slamming it against the dashboard.
The next few moments happened like a blur. The Professor managed to kick open the back door and fell out of the cab. He was holding his torn throat, trying to stop his life blood from squirting out and judging by the greasy slick puddle of crimson coating the back seat, was losing the battle. The creature at the same time, seeing the opportunity, released his vice-like bite, hopped over the seat and flew out the open door into the night. Immediate relief fell over Deacon, even though in just a few minutes the burning pain from his shredded hand would come back.
“Come back car 23, what’s your situation, over?” His radio crackled back at him just then.
Deacon looked down at his mangled hand, which was bleeding profusely, but obviously not as bad as the other man, who was now lying outside his cab and was not moving. He was pretty sure the man was not moving. He leaned over to check. The man was not moving. Crap.
Deacon reached for the microphone with his good hand while trying to wrap the bleeding bite wound with a bandanna that he pulled out of the glove box. “Call the police, dispatch. I managed to pull off the highway, I’m on Montrose. Some passenger brought some type of animal and it got loose and attacked us both. I don’t think he’s doing so good.”
There was a long period of radio silence and Deacon thought about repeating himself to make sure dispatch was aware of the situation.
“Rodger 23, authorities have been contacted and are on the way. The boss says you will still be held accountable for any damages to the cab.”
“Of course, I will be.” Deacon laughed. “Of course, I will be.”
Deacon closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat, waiting for emergency services to arrive.