Taxi Tales: The Invader - A Short Story

The Invader - A Short Story

He sat in his yellow taxi at the car park of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy International Airport on a gloomy, crestfallen Friday afternoon in April. His shift would be over in a couple of hours, but the quite at the car park made him wander off into a distant world: one full of joy, delight, and rejoicing. Raven looked out of his car window, inside the warm was fighting a marvellous battle with the invading cold from outside. The door of the terminal hadn't opened for minutes now, eerie silence set in around the airport.

He sighed. Boredom is something you can never dispel, it's always around, waiting for an opportunity to take over you and torment you with malicious thoughts of the past or future. This time it took on Raven with something he had experienced a few years ago, when he was a newbie to the world of taxi drivers. He would've started to think about that mysterious event again, when the door of the terminal opened again, with a strange figure walking out hastily, like it was late to somewhere. He immediately snapped back to reality, started the motor of the vehicle, and slowly moved to the pick-up point.

The strange figure walked to the taxi, opened the door, and squeezed itself in. The suitcase it was carrying looked like one from the 20's, from the Great Mafia period in New York's dark ages. Raven looked into the mirror, and it was the first time he saw the eyes of his passenger, which were obscured by his old-fashioned hat while walking towards the cab. They were green like the finest bit of grass in Central Park. There was something familiar in those eyes, but he couldn't pin-point what and why. Within a blink of an eye the figure took off his hat and facemask, covering his throat, mouth, and nose.

"Minetta Street 3" boomed the voice of the passenger which struck instant dread into the heart of Raven. Again, the feeling of familiarity hit his mind, even though he still had no idea why. He looked into the mirror again and his face turned pale like he saw a ghost. The passenger's face was half burned, past marks of cuts from knives all over his head were visible and his eyes were now glowing in a chartreuse colour.

Raven stepped on the gas pedal and proceeded on his way to the prescribed destination without a word. Most of the passengers would be talking about random things, however, this one was quite the opposite of that. He sat looking out the window, sometimes coughing like he had something stuck in his throat. They were on 6th Avenue when he spoke again in the same booming deep voice.

"Beautiful world, isn't it?" he said. It took Raven a couple of seconds to process what he had asked him before he answered the man.

"Yes, I agree" he finally said, with a frightened tone.

"First time I saw Earth it was in ruins; you know? From war, corruption, indescribable poverty..." The passenger continued. When he said this, something clicked in Raven's mind. All the events the figure described have occurred at the time of The Great Invasion of the Indringer species. He became suspicious of the figure sitting behind him, but they kept talking, discussing what happened back then.

"Arrived at destination" said the SATNAV in the car, interrupting their discussion. Raven parked in front of a usual New York style flat. His passenger opened the door, stepped out of the vehicle, and then walked up to his window. He opened the door, stepped out of the car himself and the first thing that hit him was the height difference between him and the figure. While he had the height of an average human of six feet on point, the figure towered over him by a couple inches. The figure smiled and took out a strange, metallic card, probably made of platinum.

"Take it" said the figure, handing it over to Raven, "it will help you when the time comes."

Raven took the card suspiciously. He felt it and it seemed familiar. The figure then turned around and entered the house that was directly in front of the car. After the strange man disappeared, Raven sat in his car and began his long journey home, as his shift had finished.

The next morning, he was driving towards the airport from where he had driven the sinister figure the day before, when an unusual object appeared in the sky, taking everyone by surprise and awe. Then it fired a laser at one of the builds, which exploded. Screaming and pure fear had filled the streets. Raven then remembered what the man had said yesterday. He took out the card from his pocket. He looked at the object in the glorious sky and put the card against it. There were shallow, barely visible markings on the card that made up a picture: a ship of the same type as the one in the sky. He turned his car around and rocketed through the streets, breaking every speed limit in effect although it didn't matter anymore. Raven knew his only chance of survival was the card in his hand, the only chance of his family not being torn apart, only chance for them to be not taken by the Second Great Invasion.