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sending-the-message · 7 years

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The Passenger by Orphanology

I pick her up near the airport, but not too close. She walks over, acts like she isn't going to my car. I sit in the driver seat and pretend to check my phone. There are some texts on there from the client asking how soon. I don't answer them. I don't even read them. As soon as this is done I'll get a new phone, trash this one. Why people send messages about something like this is a thing I'll never understand.

She grabs the door and slides into the passenger seat. She's tall, very light skinned. I feel like if I stare long enough I could see her veins. Little blue rivers. I don't say anything. Neither does she. I put the car in drive and drift out into the city traffic.

It's afternoon, right before rush hour. I ask her if she's hungry. She shakes her head. Some of her hair is in her mouth. She chews the long blonde strands absentmindedly. My gaze drifts down to see her hands against in her stomach, cradling its swollen surface. If you saw her you'd think she was almost nine months pregnant. That's what you would think, at least.

We drive through the tangle of airport traffic without talking, heading out of the tourist section, with its statues and government buildings and restaurants and reliable electricity, into where high-rises grow and the cops don't go unless they have to. Even though the passenger doesn't say anything, she looks nervous. I see her close her eyes.

I slow down when I see the grey building appear on the left. I cut across the lanes and park in front of it, it's lack of height a stark contrast to the tall, sprawling tenements we drive through to get here. This neighborhood is old, with the kind of buildings that no one makes anymore. Buildings like this one, with its stonework and carved details. In between the fourth and floor a sculpted angel spreads its wings. The feathers glow in the grey afternoon lighting. I turn the car off. When the engine cuts everything is so silent. She fidgets in her seat, asks in English if we're already here. I nod because I don't know if she'll understand anything I'm saying. I get out of the car and go to open her door for her but she's already out, rubbing her long thin arms with her long thin fingers.

"I thought it was warmer here," she says without an accent. She's not wearing a jacket, only a t shirt that says I AM THE AMERICAN DREAM. Her stomach bulges against it.

I'm surprised she knows the language but I don't show it. I never show anything. "It's winter. This is as cold as it gets."

"No snow?"

"Nope."

"It was ninety two degrees at the airport in Boston this morning. Can you believe that?" She looks at the reflection of the clouds in the windows of the grey buildings. "It's April. It used to never get that hot."

"Things change."

"Tell me about it. What's that say?" She points to the sign that hangs off the edge of the building.

"It doesn't translate well."

"But if someone were to translate it, even if they would do a terrible job?"

"Hotel Blue Sky, sort of. But like a blue sky that also doesn't really exist. The way a blue sky is in movies. Pretty, but fake."

"Oh." She looks up at the sign, her pale face and bright blue obscured by the shadow of it against her. "That's not what I thought it would say."

"We should go in now," I tell her. "I don't want to be late."

The front lobby is small and smells like old cleaning products. The guy behind the counter gives a salacious look but she acts like she doesn't notice so I do the same.

"Elevator?"

"Broken. Stairs are over there."

"What floor?"

"Fifth."

She has her hands over her stomach, her long fingers interlock. Hands are the first thing that show someone's age. She looks young but her hands don't. "That's a lot of stairs."

"It'll feel like less going down."

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

The stairwell is dark and she follows me. We walk together in the silence, the only sound is of our footsteps echoing against the metal stairs. I slow down a few times for her to catch up but she moves faster than I would think, faster than the last one I brought out here. The weight she is carrying doesn't slow her down.

"Have you taken a lot of girls, like, you know, me, up these stairs?"

"Not a lot. A few."

"Do they all come back?" She sounds nervous, the first time all day.

"Some."

"Most?"

"Some."

"Shit."

The rest of the walk is quiet. When we come to the door for the fifth floor she asks me to wait. I turn back to look at her in the strange lighting of the dim place. Behind her the stairs unfold downward, like a metal piece of origami that would look like a crane or something if only you weren't looking at it from above.

"I'm not sure."

"About what?"

"You know."

I sigh. "It's too late."

"I can change my mind."

"Not now."

"You can always change your mind."

"Until it's too late," I say. "Now it's too late."

I open the door and stand there, waiting for her to walk through first.

The carpet in the hallway is thin. I swear I can feel the concrete under it. Room 555 is halfway down and to the left. Same room number I use in every hotel I take these swollen girls from other countries. The numbers matter to me.

I knock three times on the door, wait, then three more times. I hear someone exhale on the other side and I hear the lock click. The door swings open. Come on in, someone says, with a heavy region accent.

We do.

The room is like all of the other rooms in the building. A bed, a nightstand, a dresser. There's two men in there: the client and a doctor.

The client is fat, with glasses and a mustache like a dead caterpillar on his thin upper lip. Even though the room is cool, in spite of the radiator in the corner's obsessive clanking, he's still sweating. His tan shirt has wet spots when he moves his arms. He rubs his big hands on his pants before our handshake. They're still damp.

"I'm glad you got here. I was worried you wouldn't come."

"Traffic."

He looks at her, but his eyes drops to her stomach. "She's fantastic."

"She speaks, you know," I say. He looks at me, baffled. She coughs and says hello — not in English. He looks surprised.

"I'm going to go," I say. "I'll wait out in the hallway."

"No," the client says. "You can't go."

"I don't stay. I brought her to you. I wait outside."

"What if she isn't enceinte?" He leans into the word, lets me know he's done his research. "Then all the money I pay you is for nothing."

"Im not going to rip you off. Why would I do that?" I'm charging him double for this. But he doesn't know that. Any price someone willingly pays is the market value. "I don't stay in the room." I say and he's already shaking his head.

"You stay. Or I walk."

I look at him: the quivering mustache, the bright red checks.

"Fine," I say. "I'll stay. But I won't watch."

"You don't have to," he's already unbuttoning his shirt.

"I was talking to her."

"More the merrier," she says. Then she looks at me. "Try to make sure I'm some, not most, ok?" She looks like an animal in a trap right before it chews off its leg.

"It's not up to me."

She doesn't say anything. The doctor steps toward her and she pulls her shirt up so her belly sticks out like a trapped moon.

The doctor is in loose powder blue scrubs and is already wearing his surgical mask and cap. He probably put it on in the hallway before he even walked in here. The doctors always look like this. Disguised. All of us in this try to make sure we would never recognize each other outside of these rooms. For the doctor this afternoon is the side income that pays for his house in the better part of the city, pays for his kids to go to private schools, pays his wife's car, his mistress's apartment. If he does three or four of these a month he's set. The only thing he has to do is try to forget what he sees after he cuts.

She pulls her shirt up. Her swollen, veiny stomach is exposed. I see the surface ripple like the surface of the ocean. All the waves are born and die and get born again but we can't see. All we see is the one big wave.

I turn around and face the wall when I see the scalpel but I still hear it when it goes into her.

Other than an initial gasp she stays pretty quiet. The only real noise in the room is the wet sound of cutting, sawing, her slow breath.

The wall is white. It's been painted over a dozen times but there's still water damage. Whatever it was that had flooded here left scars in the building itself. I touch the part where the paint has buckled, trace the raised edges of it like it's the circulatory system of some bizarre and fantastic animal. Colors are beginning to splash against the wall, scraps of hallucinatory yellow and blue sky white cloud shine. They pulse and shiver in manic delight.

Behind me, the light keeps getting brighter. There's no warmth to the color, just the bright glow. And the smell —like flowers and sunshine. Springtime. I hear the client say something, but he sounds rubbery and far away. it takes me a minute to realize what's he's saying.

Beautiful.

The white moth lands on my shoulder, it's powder snow legs so delicate I barely even feel it. It grooms its tiny milk face with thin limbs. Pearl wings and a soap colored body. It looks like crumpled snow. It takes off again, back into the room. I turn to watch it fly away and I see her.

She is looking at the wall across from her. She doesn't make eye contact with me; she doesn't make eye contact with anyone. The carpet below her is splashed with her blood, torn plastic, some thick clear liquid I don't recognize — whatever they pack it in so it can be transported inside of her.

The client is on his knees on the ground, his eyes closed in rapture. In front of him her stomach is wide open. The moths and lights are pouring from the cut in her abdomen into his mouth.

He's crying, his face aglow. I look at her and she isn't there. Her eyes stay straight ahead, looking at something that isn't there. The hole in her is a road, the hole in her is a temple, the hole in her is a door to somewhere else. The moths look like a bridge between the other place and right her, their white bodies intertwining. I feel I could walk across them and go somewhere no one has ever been.

Noises are coming from the client. He's choking. The doctor cleans his scalpel. I watch the moths fill up the client's mouth until they spill out and dribble down his chin. They're so white. I close my eyes and step outside. The hallway is mute and dim.

The doctor follows me, his mask off, hat pulled down. He turns his head when he passes me and I look away. There's no sound from inside. I figure I'll give her fifteen minutes before I leave but less than a minute later the door opens. She's pulled her hair up and her cheeks are flushed.

"Stairs are better on the way down, right?"

She pulls the door shut behind her.

The sun is shining when we leave the hotel, the last spasms of afternoon before dark. I pull the card out of the cell phone and drop it down a sewer drain. I'll dump the phone somewhere else. I walk to the car but she's not with me. I turn to see her standing on the sidewalk, absentmindedly touching her now flat, deflated stomach.

"Are you coming?"

She shakes her head. "I'll walk."

"To the airport? It's far. Do you know how far it is?"

"I don't mind. Something about being outside..." Her finger trails the edge of cement fixture. "It's nice to be out here."

I don't know what to say. I tell her the money's in her account and she nods and I say goodbye, tell her to get in touch if she wants to try this again, or if she knows anybody. She doesn't respond.

I go to the car and turn the key. The heat comes on. I can see her in the rearview mirror. She's just standing on the sidewalk. She hasn't moved. Her face isn't the same as it was but I don't know what's different.

I drive away, stealing glances in the rearview until all of the sudden she's gone. I throw the phone out the window and watch it fall apart.

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

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