CASH CAB
Written By Michael Weimer
It was impossible to keep your feet dry those few months. Just constant unending rain. You couldn’t walk through the city without being up to your ankles in floating rat shit. It didn’t seem to get to Cam, though. It barely even registered to him. Just scratched the surface of the shit he was dealing with, I guess. To start, he was drowning in bills since he lost his job. Power was on the verge of getting shut off cause of it, heat was already gone. Poor fuck was living in an ice box. Then of course to kick off all that shit; Suzette, his wife of three years, left him for their gastroenterologist.
He just kinda shut down for a while there after she left. And then one day he just starts hailing cabs and letting them go. He did this for weeks in the freezing rain. Sunup well past sundown. He was on a mission, he was obsessed. He must’ve walked up and down every borough, even though Staten and fucking Jersey from what I heard from some other mutual friends.
Cam would tell everyone that was worried about him- “I’m getting on Cash Cab!” They’d look at him like you’d expect. “I’m going to win the prize and everything is going to be okay after that. I’m going to win and everything is going to be okay!”
His parents tried for months to get him help. Hell, they were the only reason he still even had an apartment, but that seemed like the only thing they could really do for him. Everything they said fell on deaf ears, in one ear, ya know? He was going to get his life back for himself on his terms. He was positive he was going to be on that show. Like it was some divine message or something.
So he just kept pressing on. Some nights he’d even sleep on the street if he stayed out too late. He’d hailed hundreds of cabs. If they weren’t Ben Bailey he’d sprint in the opposite direction. Wasn’t long before he started getting a reputation with cabbies across town. Some of them started passing around his picture so nobody would waste the time trying to pull over in gridlock. Most just ignored him, some threw trash at him for being a pain in the ass. He didn’t budge, though. It just made him more sure of himself, more dedicated to his Holy Quest. Every ounce of suffering would be worth the glory to be bestowed upon him under the disco lights of the Cash Cab.
Then one day he was going to call it for a bit. Get a bite to eat. Maybe try to wring his socks out, but then he saw it. It was like the North Star. He weaved through the bumper to bumper traffic, choking down the exhaust that just clings to the ground on days like that.
Cam watched his numbed hands open the cab door from outside his body, the strobing lights on the ceiling were blinding but it didn’t matter, he made it. This was his shot. He closed the door with a confident huff and blinked rapidly, trying to get used to the blinding rainbow of light. He straightens up his spine like a politician and plasters on a smile that even fooled himself. California Gurls by Katy Perry was playing deafeningly loud, blasting out of speakers that let out more dying bass than actual sound.
“Where you going, Chief?” The gravelly voice was alien.
Cam dug his fingers into the sticky fabric of the seat below him, he never saw who was actually driving. That’s not Ben Bailey.
“Buddy, where are yo-”
Completely on instinct, Cam grabs the Cabbie’s seat belt and wraps it around his neck. The Cabbie clawed at the thick nylon garrote and gurgled out every curse word he knew in English and Italian. He reached for the horn, fingers twitching as they turned purple and lost function. Cam yelped like a kicked dog and whipped the belt tighter, bracing his foot on the back of the seat. Sweat was pouring down Cameron’s face as the bulging-eyed cabbie gasped for the smallest breath. He snapped the belt tighter and tighter until he felt the Cabbie’s windpipe collapse in the loud wet squelch of snapping cartilage. The poor fucker was practically seizing in the front seat. All he could breathe was the blood that was flooding his lungs like he was drowning.
But he didn’t stop.
Cameron braced his other foot on the back of the Cabbie’s seat and pulled tighter. The seat belt was digging into the soft, wrinkled flesh of his palm. It cut and ripped at the soft ridges, dying the belt dark with blood and sweat.
The Cabbie kept gurgling pleas. Begging for his life, for his young kids to know their Dad. But Cam couldn’t hear any of that. To him, the Cabbie just sounded like a garbage disposal with flesh. Just gnashing teeth and the wet squelch of his collapsed throat. Then the Cabbie was still, his eyes bulged from their bleeding sockets. Cam let go, his foreign hands torn to shreds from the belt. The Cabbie’s body slammed onto the steering wheel and Cam jumped back into his own skin realizing what he’d just done. His blood-slick hands struggled with the door until the latch finally clicked, sending him spilling back into the flooding streets. Then like a rat he scrambles away into the dark.
Nobody saw him for weeks after that, but of course at the time all we knew was just that one of our own was killed. At the time the NYPD pinned it on some random carjacker they’d been wanting to put away and washed their hands of the whole ordeal. Fucking figures. After that Cam must’ve figured he was such a nobody he wasn’t even on their radar.
So the day after the arrest news broke he went back out on the street watching cabs. That man was nothing but a speed bump for him, if anything getting away with it just made his quest more important to him.
There was nothing that first week back. Then he got a glimpse through an open door.
It was Ben. Ben Ben. Ben Fucking Bailey. That was his bald, stubbled head. His strong, pointed nose. He was positive it was him. He sprinted towards the door a young man held it open for his date weighed down by a caravan’s worth of shopping. He slinked past them and snatched the door from the young boyfriend's grip, slamming it shut.
The Cabbie turned and glared at Cam-
“Hey man, what the fuck, they were just getting-”
Cam smacked the man and lunged forward to choke him but the man swatted him away-
“Are you fucking nuts?” The man growled back at him, opening his door and stumbling into the street as Cam meagerly tried to claw towards him.
The back door flies open, the Cabbie and Man who’s ride Cam had stolen drug him out by the scruff of his shirt, slamming him onto the pavement. The Cabbie towered over the shaky, sobbing excuse for a man.
“You’re lucky I don’t call the goddamn pigs on you, freak-”
He kicks Cameron hard in the stomach and thanks the Boyfriend, offering their ride for free. Cam doubled over into the gutter and hurled his lunch and a fresh layer of bloody bile as they sped off away from him.
Another failure. He just lied there in his vomit and self-pity for hours, feeling more invisible with each person that stepped over him. Eventually he managed to push himself to his feet and he just started walking. He walked for hours without a thought in his head, he was losing his dream. He was losing himself.
The only thing he could feel were his feet and they were in screeching agony by the time he’d walked to Queens. He stopped, his body weakly swaying, and his arm raised itself.
A cab slid up next to him and he eased himself into the cool dark interior.
Then the lights and horns of all creation blared in disco lights above him. A slender handsome man turned to Cam excitedly, a mischievous and well-meaning smile grew across his face.
“How’s it going, my man?! You are in the Cash Cab! The TV Gameshow that ta-”
The color drained from Cam’s face, his eyes rolled back into his skull. He passed out immediately.
He woke up surrounded by the show’s producers and a few detectives that finally put two and two together. Ben Bailey walked off set immediately after.
Show didn’t last much longer after that.