#been rolling this idea around in my head for a while and the dreamlands server inspired me to finally write it <3

[bluejayblueskies]

pov you're an arkham taxi driver

Rating: Teen and Up Category: Gen

Characters: Original Characters, John, Arthur Additional Tags: Outsider POV, Alternative Perspective, Second Person POV, Some Humor, (a bit tongue-in-cheek)

CW: ableist language, cults, and mentions of violence/murder

Read on AO3

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The man who climbs into the back of your cab looks just like any other man living in Arkham. That isn’t saying much, of course, given that they all look like any other person until the shit hits the fan, but there truly is no way to tell. That said, when the man begins muttering to himself, you’re not surprised in the least. You’ve been doing this job for far too long, and you’ve seen far worse.

(Some things do not wash out of upholstery, which is a fact that you’ve come to know quite intimately. You have a strict no-fluids policy now, which you think is perfectly fair and reasonable of you. The horrors can go ooze all over the back of somebody else’s taxi, thank you very much.)

“What is this Dark World?” the man says. His voice is hushed but not hushed enough, like he thinks that just because you’re up here and he’s back there, you can’t hear him. Why do they always think that? “Wh-what does it look like? I…”

He stops, clearly listening to something that only he can hear. You watch him in the rearview mirror as you drive through the streets of Arkham. You know these roads like the back of your hand, and you know the people who walk them just as well. You recognize the quietly horrified expression that flashes across his face, there and gone like it had never been.

You’ve reached his stop. Normally, you might take the long way ‘round, stretch out the ride for some extra cash, because things are hard out there right now and you’ve got a family to feed. But there’s no point. This guy is so far inside his own head (literally? You don’t know how these things work) that he barely blinks when you tack on the extra dollar fee.

Look, it’s just good business practice. Somebody brings a whole host of weird spooky shit into your cab, they gotta pay for it. Like a convenience fee. It’s not like every other taxi driver in this godforsaken city doesn’t do it.

The man leaves the cab, still muttering to himself, dropping the coins absently in your outstretched hand as he goes. He even says, “Thank you,” which is more than you get half of the time. You twist in your seat to check, and—nope. No mysterious packages, no odd stains, no lingering smells. Not even a shiver down the back of your neck.

All in all, a perfectly pleasant interaction. You almost feel bad about the surcharge.

(Almost.)

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Your taxi still smells faintly of smoked meat when you pick up the man who talks to himself. You’ve been doing this long enough now that you can identify one of these types of people pretty much on sight—the ones involved with things they ought not to be involved with. Still, given that your last passenger—decidedly mundane—thought it appropriate to eat in the back of your taxi and subsequently saturate it with foodsmell for the next few hours at least, you’re more inclined than usual to turn a blind eye to whatever’s currently happening in your backseat.

… That doesn’t mean you can’t eavesdrop, though.

That’s the thing, see—they never assume that you’re listening. It’s possible they do and they just don’t care, but after the third time somebody openly discussed murder in front of you on the way to their destination, you’ve come to the conclusion that your presence is negligible to them.

Well, that’s just fine. Preferable, even. The last thing you want is for any of these people to think that you pose a threat to them. You’d much prefer that your limbs stay attached to your body and at all the right angles.

Anyway. The man is a detective, you think. There are also plenty of those in Arkham, which makes sense; more supernatural criminals necessitate more people to stop them who aren’t afraid of a bit of spook. He mentions a symbol in an old house—his destination, you assume, not far at all from the bookstore—but the way he phrases it, it’s … like he’s talking to somebody else.

… Probably best not to ask. If a man hears voices in his head and deigns to talk to them in public, well—that’s his own business.

“I always valued my sight, obviously,” the man says after a moment, “as much as one can. But it’s quite a different thing to lose it altogether one day.”

He continues, but you’re not listening anymore. Instead, you’re looking back and forth between the road in front of you and the man’s reflection in your rearview mirror, eyebrows raised.

He’s blind? Funny, he doesn’t look it. His eyes dart around, taking in the interior of the cab, the scenery outside the window, focusing on specific things. If you squint, though, you think you can see the faintest yellow shine around his irises, like that of the stray cats that scurry across the road in front of your taxi when you have the night shift.  

You don’t have time to think about it any longer, though, because you’ve reached the house. It looks just like any other house, but they all do on the surface. The evil lies deeper, uncovered only if you’re not smart enough to keep your nose where it belongs.

You’re smart enough. This man evidently is not.

Pity. He seems nice enough—gives you nearly twice the required fare, thanks you, doesn’t leave any smells behind as he departs. (Christ, the bar is low, isn’t it.)

The man walks inside the house, almost certainly to his own detriment, and you drive away. You don’t expect you’ll be seeing him again any time soon.

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“Alright, well—I’m all ears. Tell me.”

You almost respond before you glance in the mirror and see that the man in the back of your taxi isn’t looking at you. He cocks his head slightly, as if … listening to something?

Then, he says, “So you think this religious sect had opened a gateway?” and you have to fight back a sigh.

It fucking figures that you’d be transporting another goddamned cultist. Or at least somebody involved with them. It’s been a week or so since you picked one up, and apparently, the universe has decided to mock you for your belief that maybe you wouldn’t have to do so again.

You hate driving cultists. Sometimes you can tell just by looking at them if they’re involved in all that bullshit, but most of the time, you have no idea until they’re ruining your entire day. You know what all the other taxi drivers say—charge more, mind your business, and you’ll be fine—and you listen, of course. The extra money is nice—means you can actually put food on the table for your kids—and not being dead is also a significant perk.

But you see, that’s the issue. You drive a taxi; this should not be a life-or-death situation kind of job.

You sneak another glance at the man in your backseat.

He looks a bit frazzled. “Yes, um, well…” He trails off, then recenters himself. “Uh, this beckons the question once again—who are you to have a religious cult open a gateway to another world just to bring you through?”

What the fuck?

“I continually brush off the very real and serious concern that you may be something more sinister, and you seem quite okay with that. I don’t know exactly what you are—”

What the fuck? Who the fuck is this guy?

You take your eyes off the road, just for a moment, to do a full sweep of your car. There’s nobody else here—just you and this unassuming man in a suit and tie who you’re now certain is either very mad or very, very cursed. You really hope it’s the former, but given all the other things that have crawled into the back of your cab (in some cases literally), you’re not optimistic.

Fucking hell.

… At least he’s not covered in blood.

You drop the man on the doorstep of Miskatonic University and drive off as quickly as you can. There. He and his cryptic mutterings are somebody else’s problem now.

Christ. You wish the economy weren’t in shambles. You could really use a new career.

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You’ve been doing this job for a long time, so you don’t bat an eye when the guy in the back of your taxi starts talking to himself about kidnappings. So long as he keeps all his business back there and leaves you out of it, you’ll stay up here and mind your business. It’s the polite thing to do, really.

You do bat an eye, however, when you pull up to his address and there are police outside the building.

The arrangement you and the other taxi drivers have with the cultists in this town is as unshakable as it is unspoken. They pay extra for their fare, and you don’t drop them on the steps of the police station when they start discussing illegal shit or carry suspicious-looking packages into the back of the taxi with them. You leave them be, and they leave you be, and everything is all hunky-dory.

That agreement, of course, rests on ambiguity and plausible deniability. If anybody ever tried to bring an actual body into your taxi, or if you picked them up from an obvious murder scene or ritual sacrifice, then yeah—all bets are off. But generally, the cultists don’t want to end up behind bars any more than you want to end up buried six feet under, so it all tends to shake out all right.

This guy apparently didn’t get the memo. He’s staring at the cops wide-eyed, using every swear in the book, and it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s the reason they’re here if he stepped out of the cab and started shouting his confession to the wind.

“How can we calm down?” he mutters to fucking nobody. Yep, he’s off to the looney bin for sure. At least he can make an insanity plea once he gets arrested. “They—they’ve just found my partner, they’ve found his body … oh fuck—”

You resist the urge to turn and give this guy a what-the-fuck look. He knows you’ll have to make a report about this, right? Even if he gets out of the taxi right now and makes it past the police without being seen, he’s basically just confessed to fucking murder in front of you. You can’t not write this up. It wouldn’t be ethical.

As the man continues to ramble to himself, you rifle through the glovebox until you locate a pen and paper. You jot down the address and a quick description of the man. You’ve never actually had to make a report like this before—who would have thought, seeing something new in this town even after all these years—so you’re not sure what you’ll need. Best to be thorough.

As you’re studying the man’s face, he suddenly looks at you, wide-eyed. Before you can say anything, he pulls a random assortment of coins from his pocket and thrusts them towards you—Christ, five dollars, is that supposed to be hush money or something?—before practically fleeing the cab.

You stare at the coins for a moment, then at the paper in your hand, before shrugging, setting them both on the passenger side seat, and driving away.

You don’t know the man’s name, of course. But the police accept his address and description all the same.

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There is a frazzled, frantic man in the back of your taxi, talking to himself, and you wish you could say that this is the weirdest thing that’s happened to you all day. But you’re pretty sure the guy who wore a white mask and said fuck all the whole ride holds that honor.

On the other hand, though, this man may have just confessed to murder? Some guy named Eddie? Or maybe whoever he’s talking to killed him—it’s a bit unclear. He’s clearly having a conversation with somebody, but there isn’t anybody else in the cab other than the two of you. Either you’re transporting a murderer (not ideal) or an insane person (also not ideal) or both (really not ideal).

But also, he’s almost certainly one of Arkham’s weird-as-all-hell cultists, so who knows. Maybe there is somebody back there, but they’re invisible. Or something.

You double the fare just in case.

You’re pretty sure the man is hyperventilating now. He keeps flexing the fingers of his left hand, staring down at it as he curls it into a fist and then uncurls it. The look in his eyes, a hungry sort of curiosity, is at stark odds with the horrified panic consuming the rest of him. It’s fucking unsettling.

At least the guy in the mask was quiet. And he tipped well.

It’s a low bar to be sure, but hey—money is money. You’ve gotta pay the bills somehow.

The man continues to study his left hand like it belongs in the fucking Met, and to be honest, it’s kinda starting to get to you. It’s funny; you’re hardly fazed by the murder confession, but everything else about this guy kinda makes your skin crawl. There’s something really freaky going on with him, and you want no part of it, you decide.

It’s a relief when you drop him off on the curb outside an abandoned old house and drive away. You wish you could tell yourself that you just won’t pick up people like him anymore, but you can’t. Aside from being utterly impractical, it’s not like you knew what he was going to be like until he climbed into your cab.

And besides, his money works just as well as anybody else’s. And god knows that’s all you can afford to care about.

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The man from this morning is sitting in your taxi again. He looks different now—shaken, trembling, haunted. Like he’s seen a ghost, perhaps, or whatever spooky nonsense his kind of people get themselves involved in.

You’ll never understand it—why people join these cults. But you don’t have to. You just have to pick them up and drop them off and keep your mouth shut, and you excel at all three of those things.

You add the surcharge and start to drive. You recognize the provided address as the one you picked him up at a few hours ago—his house, maybe? You try not to be curious, but sometimes, you can’t help but wonder. Particularly when the man begins to talk to himself again, hushed but still very much audible, because it’s not like these cabs are soundproof, are you kidding?

“That is easy for you to say,” he says, sounding equal parts distressed and resigned. “I am losing pieces of myself. My ha—my hand is gone.”

You look in the rearview mirror. Nope; he still has two hands.

“My eyes are gone.”

And two eyes as well. Though they do dart around oddly, in a manner that doesn’t quite match what the rest of his body is doing.

“I don’t know what’s next to leave. For all I know, if you … if you take my mind entirely, I will no longer be able to think.”

Hm. You’re honestly not quite sure what to make of that.

You turn a corner. His building is just ahead.

Most of the other taxi drivers don’t believe in any of the horrible things that are rumored to lie just beneath the surface of Arkham. And they’re probably all the wiser for it, honestly. A good degree of skepticism is healthy in this job, he’s found. It helps you keep your distance, keeps you alive and kicking to see another day.

Still, it’s hard to watch these strange people get in and out of his cab and not believe, just a little bit, that there is something more to it all.

So, fuck it. Maybe there is some supernatural entity living in this guy’s brain or influencing him in some way. Maybe it controls him physically, or maybe it just makes him think that he’s being controlled. Some things are tricky like that, you’ve found—can make you see things that aren’t actually there.

Whatever the case, you … actually feel bad for the poor man sitting in your back seat. He’s clearly had one hell of a day. Exhaustion drags him down, and he gives you the distinct impression of somebody who was dragged kicking and screaming into the realm of the unnatural without being asked for permission. He smells a bit like blood and gunpowder. Normally you’d be put off by that, but it’s overwhelmingly surpassed by the pity you feel for this man.

However. As badly as you feel, as much as you pity him, there’s nothing in this world or any other that could convince you to get involved in his situation by choice.

So you drop the man off at 13 Mosby Avenue, alone in the rain, and drive away two dollars richer.

The last glimpse you catch of him is in the bright white of a lightning strike, high above in the clouds. He looks … taller, somehow. Like his shadow has peeled away from the ground and now looms ominously above, an unholy specter of darkness that winds around him like it’s trying to consume him utterly.

Then, you turn a corner and he disappears from view.

You blink a few times to dispel the image before pulling over to pick up another person who’s hailing you down. The two people who get in your cab seem normal, at least—a mother and her daughter, if you had to guess. They give you their address and then begin chatting quietly amongst themselves. All perfectly mundane.

Christ.

You really ought to retire, you think as you begin toward the next destination. It’s hard out there, and you’re lucky to have this job, but perhaps you’ve been doing this for too long if your eyes are starting to play tricks on you like that.

You ignore the voice in your head telling you that your eyes know exactly what they saw, just as you’ve ignored every other voice in your head over the past decade or so telling you that something is off, just as every other taxi driver has done and will continue to do. You drop off your passenger and pick up another, and if the one after that smells of sulfur and carries a black-stained backpack on their lap, well.

It’s really none of your business.