The Extraordinary Cabman

By Juan Tolentino

It was late afternoon, and the requisite traffic jams that came with it sauntered
their way across the cityscape. For Shabbat Bhatti, taxi driver, it was another shift,
another evening on the job. The rules of the company were simple: be nice, keep to the
approved routes, and never let the meter go to 50. There were harrowing times when the
meter went past 30, and one time it even got to 42, but never 50. If it were only a matter
of lost revenue, he would have shrugged his shoulders, complained to his wife, and then
take the extra shift, but he did not have the luxury of such simple worries. No, this was a
very special kind of metre. Great things could be lost, great things indeed.
The city was frantic today. Cars, trucks, and vans idled restlessly in the grind, the
heat of countless catalytic converters creating a faint haze that was quickly blown away
by a light breeze. Across from Shabbat, a woman attempted to calm her impatient
children, gesticulating wildly as she approached the limits of her endurance. On the other
side, a young dude with shoulder-length hair hung his arm out the window, occupied
intensely by the satisfaction of doing nothing in particular. For his own part Shabbat was
busy trying to operate his smart phone with one hand on the wheel, wondering how well
his favourite cricket team was doing in the tournament. For several moments he remains
still too long, and then the inevitable angry honks began. Shabbat swore under his breath
and edged forward, frustration arousing alertness.
As quickly as he could he took the nearest exit and coasted down Longe Street, a
good place to pick up respectable people who paid good tips. He coasted to a stop next to
an up-and-coming business, and fairly soon a well-dressed white woman emerged and
hailed him. She entered without a fuss and said little beyond her intended destination
somewhere in White Rock. He didn’t even get her name, but that was all right. As long as
the contract was respected, all was well.
The cab travelled down the Trans-Canada Highway to take the exit leading south.
The traffic was easing, so the flow was faster and Shabbat was fairly sure that he would
get there with plenty of time spare.
That was before he saw the vans of the Hexxers pull up behind him.
Immediately Shabbat grew gravely nervous. Did they know that he was a Cabman
of the Pact rather than an ordinary taxi driver? He kept still, keeping his present course
along the road, his knuckles turning white from gripping the wheel so tightly. This
persisted for several minutes, the taxi never wavering, the van never breaking off.
Then, suddenly, the van’s headlights began to glow red.
Shabbat panicked. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and zoomed down the
highway. At once his passenger began to scream in surprise, fear, and building anger.
“What the hell is this!?” she screamed. “Oh my God!!”
“They’re coming after us!” yelled Shabbat, and indeed the van was also chasing
them, the sinister crimson headlights glowing with evil intent. “Why aren’t you wearing
seatbelt? SEATBELT NOW!!”
“God what the hell!” she screamed, wondering whether to be more scared of the
van, the speeding, or the angry brown man driving her.
The van was getting closer. Shabbat tried to throw them off by switching lanes
erratically, but it was no use. The preternatural agility of the Hexxers’ vehicles was well
known to veterans of the pact. Shabbat cursed aloud in Punjab. All he wanted was a
steady job with decent pay, but ever since he encountered the Sage that one night he had
been pulled into this strange world that he couldn’t escape. Yet, that world was definitely
not going to go away, and as he pondered the large red button on his dashboard he
thought of his wife, his two young daughters, and everything that was at stake.
The button was pressed, and at once the taxi found itself careening across surfaces
of many colours, some of which had yet to be discovered by the human eye, or extracted
through black science. The Hexxer did not have this capability, and desperately they
unloaded their own dark arts, tendrils of blackness reaching forth to smite the cab as it
made its escape.
The cab skid to a sudden stop in a field somewhere, the moisture of the soil
seeping into the burning tires. Shabbat clutched the wheel tightly, still overcome with the
shock and fear of the chase, the woman in the back breathing rapidly and clutching her
handbag to her chest.
“…OK, are you going to tell me what just happened, Shabbat?” she asks with a
slight acrid tone, reading out his name on the little info plate on the back of the driver’s
seat.
“Well…” but he didn’t have time to explain. The Hexxers’ last attack had struck
in the most important place of all.
The meter was reading 55.
At once Shabbat grabbed the meter from its stand and tossed it out the driver’s
side window, black smoke that smelled of death seeping out from the strange contraption.
“You get out now, miss! OUT!” he shouted, reaching into the glove box to produce a
shiny brass wrench.
The woman obeyed immediately, wanting to get as far away as possible from the
crazy taxi driver and its obvious gang connections, but as she took a good look at the
smoking meter she found herself paying rapt attention to the odd, horrid scene unfolding
before her.
The metre was leaking blood, or rather a blood-like ichor, dark as sin, that
bubbled out of the cracks and openings in that mysterious box. Shabbat heaved his leg
and kicked it several feet away, far from the woman and from his cab. As the metre spun
in the air from the momentum, the outer casing began to crack and dissolve, revealing the
monstrous organic components within. When it struck the ground, the black fluid began
to surge even more, killing all the grass it touched and corrupting the soil into a messy
goo. Before Shabbat could do anything further, the metre box burst open in a frenzy of
chaos and malevolence. A dark shadow emerged, thick tendrils of ichor dripping from its
multiple limb-like appendages, a squelching sound echoing across the plain as it
coalesced into a form. It was an utterly horrible thing, totally out of proportion with
anything known to mankind. Its geometry was all wrong; it had angles where there
should not be, eyes where none dare develop amongst normal life. Perhaps it was not
even alive at all.
Shabbat was thrown back momentarily by one of those monstrous limbs, but he
kept a tight hold on the wrench, which he knew too well was his only hope. Bruised and
beaten, he raised the tool up and aimed it at the dark being, who lurched forward with
liquid ease to devour him. Then, suddenly, bright force erupted from the head of the
wrench and struck the thing right in the middle, and it thus emitted a horrifying scream of
anguish. Shabbat crawled, then stood and crept forward, clutching the wrench as tightly
as he could to drive back, destroy, the dark thing. It screamed in pain as parts of its black
form sloughed off before the force, until at last it exploded in a violent spray of goo that
was swept away by an unnatural wind. Shabbat ran up to the remains of the metre box,
smashing it repeatedly with the wrench until, at last, he was able to extract its core: a pure
black crystal that gleamed with hate. With a single stroke, this was smashed, the vapors
rising up and giving out a final wail, a sound that could only be described as the cries of
the damned.
Shabbat staggered back to the cab, the wrench dissolving in his goo-stained hand.
He stared at the woman, still standing there next to his vehicle, stock still and very
obviously not having run away.
“Still here? How come?” he asks, wiping off the remains of the goo with an old
rag in his seat pocket.
The woman blinks. “You still need to drive me home.”
Shabbat gave her a funny look. “This ride is free.”
So, they managed to complete their journey, the cab surprisingly undamaged by
the whole ordeal apart from the missing driver’s side window. Shabbat would have to
delay that dinner with his wife again, but it was a small price to pay for the danger he had
stopped that night. Along the way he tried to explain what little knowledge he had been
granted by the Pact: how the folds in between reality were weak, how beings from
beyond fed on the danger of travel, and how modern convenience made them dissatisfied,
made them angry. A price must be paid, and so the overly complicated affair of the transit
system arose to sate their lust for human despair. That is why the Pact fielded Cabmen to
maintain the high price rates. That is why they also infiltrated Translink to stymie useful
projects for no apparent reason. But the march of progress was too strong to stop. Soon,
the beings would grow too irate and would invade this world. The wrenches made of
Truebrass were the only thing they knew could stop them, but that precious element was
so fragile and so, so rare. Shabbat told her these things, but hated to do so, remembering
how his whole world had become so burdensome since he himself learned. Yet, he
answered, because she kept asking. Rule number one of the company: be nice.
He pulled up slowly in front of her house, a fine, expensive Victorian style house.
Her husband was there, lounging in his dinner suit, and briefly he regarded Shabbat with
mild disdain. That was all right, though; he was one of the lucky ones. He was one of the
few who did not have to live with the burden of knowing, of the terrible duty of the
extraordinary Cabmen.