UBER Witch
<Your UBER has arrived.>
I walked down the front steps, brief case in my left hand, carryon in my right. The sedan was backing into the driveway, red light bathing the pre-dawn dew that covers South Carolina’s low-country in early June. The trunk popped open as I approached. A vaguely silver Toyota Camry, paint faded, a few dings and scrapes.
I tossed my bags in the back and closed the trunk. Looking back to the house, to do a mental check over my packing list one more time. It was only a three day trip, but there were several work events baked in and I hadn’t had coffee yet. I had my phone, I had my wallet, anything missing could be replaced. I climbed in the back passenger side and sighed as the thick smell of car air-freshener hit me.
Stephanie sat quietly, eyes forward, ten and two. The stereo was low and playing the sort of pop-country music that makes my back teeth hurt.
“Good morning,” I told her, flatly, hoping for a very quiet ride to the airport.
“Hi,” she sang back in the southern drawl that makes ‘hi’ into three syllables. It’s a great accent over beers and fishing, but my west coast ears certainly hadn’t acclimated to it at this early hour. I sighed again, inwardly, that accent never seems to stick to a wallflower.
The car was clean inside, normal except for a small green alien head dangling from the rear view mirror.
“Airport then?”
“Yep.”
“What time is the flight? I need to hurry?”
“It’s at 7am, no rush.” I immediately kicked myself, just my luck she’d be pinned on the speed limit the entire 20 miles.
“Did ya’ll have a good weekend?”
“Sure did,” I replied tiredly. “Spent yesterday at the beach.”
“Oh, I wish I could do that…”
“What, go to the beach?” Why was I doing this? Just nod politely and shut up.
“Yes, I’ve got sensory issues, it triggers my obsessive-compulsive tendencies, which generally sends me into a panic attack.”
She was just getting warmed up, I could feel it.
“I’d love to be able to treat myself to a day at the beach, I work a lot of hours, it seems so relaxing when I see people down there. But I’ve had too much trauma, I’ve got PTSD, relaxing requires too many medications, then my sleep gets all out of whack. I only slept three hours last night, ya know? When it hurts to even open your eyes?”
I do know. I get a little hyper-ventilaty myself from time to time. Some people work through it by talking, I don’t. Talking about it, thinking about it, HEARING about it, usually triggers it.
I just nodded politely hoping she’d gotten it out of her system. For Godssakes we were only two minutes into this journey. She hadn’t. For the next ten minutes she detailed every catastrophic malady she had been diagnosed with — whether by doctor or herself. I nodded politely until my neck was getting sore and I realized I had a giant panic grin plastered to my face that I couldn’t make go away. By the time she was explaining the depths of her borderline personality disorder my chest was getting tight and my mouth dry as sand.
“It really leans on me hard in the mornings,” she told me, I forget myself completely sometimes.
“Wha… what do you mean?” I panted. It seemed like she was talking very fast, I was hearing the words, but not catching her meaning.
“Well, like sometimes I’ll just sort be somewhere and not really know how I got there or why. Usually early in the morning. I’ll look down and realize I’m standing in the pet food aisle at WalMart in my Kermit PJ’s.”
I chuckled in what I thought might be a good-natured response, but my teeth were clenched together and my chest was getting tighter. She raised her right knee a bit as she applied the break to stop at a light and I caught a glimpse of those very same Kermit print pajamas. I knew I had to get out of the car when she stopped. I’d worry about the bags later; this woman may not have even been coherent as she drove along.
As the car glided to a stop I quietly pulled on the handle, preparing to leap, or fall and roll, or whatever it took to get out. Nothing happened. I tried again, but the door still didn’t budge. And just like that the light turned green and she moved forward, turning right, onto the highway onramp.
I realized I hadn’t put my seatbelt on , and quickly fastened it, then braced my knees against the seat in front of me, assuming impact at any moment. She continued talking but my pulse was racing in my ears and I held my breath. Finally I gasped in a lung full of air, and realized we were gliding smoothly along the empty highway at about 55 mph. We weren’t crashing. The sun was just beginning to peak over the marsh river as we crossed a short bridge, and the flop sweat pasted to my forehead began to cool.
I was on the back-end of a short panic attack that she seemed completely oblivious to. Usually I feel gutted after an episode like that, but the morning rising up over the water was so peaceful that a sort of peace filled me as well. I wasn’t listening to what she was saying about her childhood or her ex-husband, or whatever horrible trauma she was keeping on her sleeve for any random stranger to pick at.
I just watched to view roll by for a couple of minutes and made agreeable noises as she talked about a few stints in jail, mostly not her fault seeing as how everyone just kept ‘forcing’ her back against a wall, ‘forcing’ her to react.
“My ex thinks he can play with me like that? I won’t have it anymore. I’ve lost more than most people could imagine, I’m not afraid of him or anyone else.”
“mmm hmm, that’s too bad,” I mumbled, but I don’t think she was listening to me at all.
“And honestly, they think they can tear me down? They think I can lose anymore? I don’t care if I live or die, not since my last car accident. My head was hanging off to the side, my neck totally broken. I had to put my head back on my neck myself. Sitting in the car in the middle of this same highway just a few miles up. I realized I couldn’t breathe, or lift my head. Well, I’ve got a lot of knowledge most people don’t understand. I study energy healing through massage. I’m a great big nerd like that, I’m always finding new information. You couple that with my abilities as a medium, and I’ve got knowledge about the body and the spirit that no doctor could ever imagine. Well, I was sitting there and just reached up and adjusted my head back onto my neck. They all said there was no way I should have survived, and to be honest, I didn’t really want to, except I thought I was in love then. Well, what do you think that man did while I was trying to recover from the worst head-on collision the sheriff said he’s ever seen anyone live to tell about? Well, he walked right out of my life. He left me, and took whatever I had left to live for. I won’t do that again, I’ll just sit there and die next time.”
She was speaking so fast now, and I kept getting glances of her wild eyes in the mirror. My adrenaline was used up now, I wasn’t in ‘panic’ mode, but I was in ‘I want to get home to my family’ mode.
“oh, gosh, I’m really sorry to hear that,” I replied weakly. I was lost. “How does your medium ability work with your massage practice?” I asked, just trying to get her off the dying talk.
“Really well,” she announced. “I have a lot of friends from the other side. They talk to me, they tell me about the energy sources in the human body, they tell me how to guide the energy.”
“Really, wow, that is pretty remarkable,” I chimed in with my most supportive voice.
“Yes, it is when paired with a curious mind and a deep thirst for knowledge.” She was smiling, proud. We were going to make it, I just had to keep this conversation happy and calm. “My last boss was trying to cheat me though. He knew about my capabilities, and he was getting so rich from my healing. He always took credit, and when I asked to be compensated appropriately for the fact that I was literally saving lives, he just kept telling me I ‘wasn’t there yet,’ maybe next review. Well, I fixed that,” she added with a shrill little laugh. Oh fuck.
“So, how does the medium practice work?” I asked, grasping. I could see the route on her phone attached to the dash. Seven miles still to go.
“Oh, it works, it works great. I’ve got lots of friends on the other side,” she repeated more forcefully. “I’m friends with angels, and I’m friends with demons.”
She looked right at me with this last part. Not in the mirror, she turned around and locked eyes with me. Smiling. Not saying a word. The car was speeding up.
“And do you want to know what?” she began, stretching her arm back, still staring straight at me, pointing her finger in my face. “They help me too.”
My blood went cold. I broke eye contact and suddenly saw we were careening right into the back of a minivan.
“Watch out!” I yelled.
Without turning back around she swerved the car, narrowly avoiding the minivan as we rushed by going 25 or 30 over the speed limit. Slowly now she turned her head back around and returned her hand to the steering wheel.
“Hey, we’re in no rush, don’t worry about getting me there early,” I said in a voice two octaves higher than usual. She didn’t acknowledge me at all.
“I have alien friends too,” she stated flatly.
“Oh, yea? That must be pretty amazing…” I sputtered out. I was on the verge of tears thinking about my wife and daughter. Silently praying to God that I would see them again.
“Oh, they keep it interesting. They’re always fucking with me. Like a couple of times they just picked my car up and spun it around. I was just in the middle of the road one second, and the next I’m like 30 feet in the air spinning around and around.” She laughed as she said this, remembering it fondly. “I was like what in the world, but I looked out the window, and there they were just waving and smiling. Can you believe that? They were just having a go.”
“Wow, that must have been really, ah, crazy?” I immediately regretted my choice of words, but she took no notice.
“It was!” She was happy I understood! “That’s why I put this little thing up on the mirror. They think it is just so funny! We joke back and forth like that, me and my aliens.” She was grinning ear to ear now. “I can always tell when they’re going to come play tricks because that little alien head will start spinning around real fast, like the car did. Then I know they’re here.”
She had slowed back down to something approaching the speed limit. Four miles left. Then all the sudden she snapped at me; “what did you say?”
“I, uh, I didn’t say anything?” I stammered.
“No, not you. That other voice. The low voice.” She was looking all around inside and outside of the car. All of the sudden she started laughing. Giggling like we were in on a private joke together. “Oh boy, here we go, I told you! Didn’t I tell you?!”
I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like she was finally broken. My eyes must have been as big as saucers because when she looked back she smiled and said soothingly, “don’t worry, they’re just playing their games,” and pointed at the alien head hanging from her rear view mirror. It was spinning like a top on its little chain.
She lifted her hands off the steering wheel and turned her palms facing up holding them there. The car started to drift to the right, slowly approaching the white dashed line. There weren’t any other cars terribly close to us, but we were approaching the Ashley River Bridge into the city. The highway took a left turn before it straightened out over the river and no one was steering the damned thing.
“Hey, hold on ma’am. You’ve got to drive this thing, we’re going to hit the barrier,” I spoke urgently, loudly, but as calmly as possible.
“Nah, they’ve got us now, I can already feel it,” she giggled. “They can see my hands, they can see they’re in control. Ya know you might want to show them your hands too.” She wondered aloud, “They’ve never visited when I had a passenger, don’t want them to think we’re getting tricky.”
My hands were gripping onto the door and the seat so hard it was starting to hurt, but I was more focused on the barrier we were edging ever closer to. Suddenly though, the car made an abrupt correction to the left and we glided up the bridge staying right in the middle of the middle lane. She laughed pretty hard at this.
“Oh, Good one!” She yelled into the windshield. She was grinning ear to ear.
I thought I better put my hands up, I don’t know why, it just seemed like the smart thing to do all of the sudden. So, I did. Leaning forward I put both hands out, palms up, on either side of the headrest. Just the way she had hers over the steering wheel. My pulse was pounding in my ears.
She looked over at my hands, then back at me, “smart,” she told me and winked.
At that exact moment, we reached the middle of the bridge and the car shot up in the air. We lifted off so fast I expected to be sick, but there was really no physical force. Looking out the window I saw the river with all its moored boats floating downstream from their buoys. I could see all of Charleston lying sleepily on the bank. The water moved past Fort Sumpter, and out to the Atlantic, barely hemmed in on either side by low lying marsh land and tidal sand bars.
It was all so peaceful, until we began to spin.
Slowly for a moment, but it sped up fast. In only ten seconds we were spinning so hard that it became impossible to see anything clearly out the window, even the sunrise was so blurred that it looked like it was lighting up every horizon all around us, all at once. The feeling of nausea passed quickly as the world beyond the car was so smeared that it began to look like horizontal striped wallpaper. Again, there was no force being exerted on us.
I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around the seat in front of me. Peering out the windshield in complete astonishment. Stephanie had folded her fingers together at her heart, as if in prayer. She had tears running down her mascara-streaked face, a look of beatific rapture in her eyes. I put a hand on her shoulder, partially to console her, but also me. She reached up and held my hand there. Her fingers were so warm, they warmed me as well.
We sat like that for several minutes in silence.
Suddenly, there they were, right in front of us, hovering in mid-air. They were really silly looking, so similar to the green charm with big black eyes dangling from the rear-view. They were a little rounder of face and body, but otherwise just like a cartoon drawing.
She burst out laughing, but in a sweet way. I did too, and she squeezed my hand lovingly. The aliens waved at us, and we waved back. Slowly they were absorbed into the blur. We both let out a gasp, we’d been holding our breath without realizing it.
Then, we were just at the airport. Sitting in the idling car, curbside at the otherwise vacant ‘Departures’ zone. The world came into focus gradually, until her phone chimed softly and instructed her to <Drop off Dave.>
She took a heavy breath and reached up to wipe the mascara from her face.
“Told ya,” she sang at me and pressed the button to open the trunk. I climbed silently out of the backseat on shaky legs, to retrieve my things. As I closed the trunk and walked back around, she called “have a good trip!” and stretched back across the seat to close the door herself. I stood there stunned, a little hurt, alone.
The car pulled away without me, and I stared after, waving at her rear-view mirror. The same feeling of warmth and longing and loneliness I had watching them disappear was with me now, and for several days after.
