The Endless Chain
“Oh my God you’re a lifesaver,” Aida said with a laugh.
She squished into the backseat. Rain ran in rivers from her hair. Cal slid in beside her.
“That storm came from nowhere. I’ve never seen hail like that,” Cal said.
He was more soaked than his girlfriend from walking around in the storm trying to get a phone signal. Suddenly Cal and Aida locked eyes in the Uber driver’s car. Their laughter bubbled over and the driver joined in.
“Sorry dude we’re a little punch drunk from getting caught in the storm then skidding off the road and then getting stuck,” Cal said quickly.
“when I realized I hit a cemetery fence of all things in the middle of nowhere. I—we were freaked. Hello Twilight Zone. No phone service. Middle of the night,” Aida cut in.
“We were so excited when you arrived. Cause all I could think was who is driving down a lonely country road past a cemetery in the middle of fricking nowhere,” Cal finished.
“No bother. You guys were in a pickle,” the driver said as he pulled away from the shoulder.
The laughter filled the car’s interior. The dark sedan drove off slowly. The rain enveloped them in a droning curtain.
“It like a horror movie right babe. Like a fricking campfire story or something,” Cal said wiping his wet face with a wet sleeve.
“The vanishing hitchhiker is an archetypal urban legend. One of the oldest cautionary tales, older than hitchhiking; older than motor vehicles. Researchers can’t determine the scary tales origin. Variants have popped up all over the globe, West Africa, central America, across Europe and Asia. Every culture has its own unique narrative tradition of the vanishing traveller,” the driver said. “Like beads on an endless chain.”
Picking up speed the dark sedan cut a path through the dark night. The young couple exchanged worried glances, having a silent conversation in arched eyebrows.
“So pal we just need a ride to New Egypt or you know what the nearest gas station is fine dude,” Cal said.
“Some think the story of the traveller met on the road who then disappears is a snake eating its tail that it had always been. That travelling is a subliminal place neither here nor there fraught with dangers and unknowns and the vanishing is death. Our constant companion.”
The driver’s voice grew flat as the road they traveled on. He was a nondescript middle aged man he seemed to be talking to the road or the night or himself. Cal cleared his voice and put on a tough attitude.
“Dude I said drop us off like whatever,” Cal said his voice deep.
The driver accelerated. Rain pounded thundering down on the windshield. Cal looked over at Aida. Hugging on the backseat, they drew their heads together.
“Babe is this the driver from your app?”
“My app! I thought you called the Uber.”
From the back, the young couple looked to the front seat. There were no lights, no signs, not even trees, just a dim glittering ribbon of asphalt. Only a pair of headlights like two bright eyes devouring the road cut the darkness. The driver’s head slowly turned to face them.
“I wonder about not the origin of the story but its future. How in this world without hitchhiking how will the vanishing traveller story change.”