Jeepney

The girl just got out of her last class of the evening. She had to stay an extra few minutes to talk to her groupmates regarding one of their projects. Once this was done, she walked over to the jeepney stop and waited for a ride home. She waited alone, as there were no other people at the stop and all of her groupmates didn't go home the same route.

It was close to 10PM, which meant her chances of getting a ride was getting slimmer by the minute as the last jeeps plied their routes at around 10 minutes before that hour. 

She waited for another few minutes, and was able to flag down a passing jeep which most likely was the last one going out of the university.

There was only one other passenger – an older middle-aged woman – in the jeep, so it's pretty empty. After the jeep navigated through a couple of turns, the woman asked the driver to drop her off. 

Now, the female student was the lone passenger.

She went up to the driver to pay her fare. After she sat back down, she noticed the driver was looking at her. She didn't pay much attention and just looked out the window. However, when she turned towards the driver again, she saw that he was still looking at her through his rear view mirror.

For the next few minutes, the driver kept looking at her through the rear view mirror, then directly at her. He did this quite a number of times during the ride. She felt uncomfortable about this, but getting off and taking another ride at this time wasn't an option.

She also noticed that the driver didn't take the usual way the jeeps plying this route took. He appeared to take other side roads – a route that she was completely unfamiliar with.

There was no doubt about it. The driver was definitely eyeing her, she thought.

She was thinking the worst. After all, this wasn't exactly the ideal situation for someone like her. She was alone, in a very dark and deserted part of the university late in the night. If the driver had any ill-intentions, he could enact them at any moment. She recalled the recent news reports of young girls being attacked, mugged or raped. Of course, that did nothing but fuel the panic that was now raging inside of her.

She didn't have anything that she could use to defend herself with, nor was it likely someone would pass by to help her if this happened. She was also a petite girl, with no training in self-defense whatsoever.

In her mind, she was screaming. She felt alone and helpless. She silently prayed for her safety.

The jeep then stopped. 

"Is this it?" she thought as tears started making their way out of her eyes. With that, she closed them shut.

She thought of all her family and friends. She then told herself, "No... I'll go down fighting if I have to!" Claw her would-be attacker's face and arms; slap him with her bag; kick him in the groin; scream at the top of her lungs until she runs out of breath... anything and everything she could do, she imagined herself doing it.

"Ok... I'm ready. Let's do this!" she said silently, preparing to defend herself.

She stops, and looks around her. She realizes something. 

They were at the jeepney terminal. There were many people around, and the place was well-lit. The establishments around were all still open, since they normally closed down at midnight. She was so lost in her thoughts and panic that she had not realized it beforehand. A wave of relief flooded her.

She moved to exit the vehicle, but then the driver called out to her.

"Hey," the driver said.  

She froze, and turned to look at the driver.

Now she had a better look at him. He wasn't at all intimidating and was average-looking. He even seemed to be around the same age as her dad.

"I'm sorry if I scared you. It's just that... when I saw you in the mirror, I could not see your head," he began. "There is a superstition that when a person's reflection has no head, something bad will happen to that person. For us drivers, that also meant bad luck or an evil spirit is in the jeep. So I kept looking back at you to make sure were really a live person. I also had to make sure I wasn't imagining what I was seeing in the mirror."

The girl was shocked at what she was hearing. Was this guy just making up stories or excuses? 

At the same time, however, she felt the sincerity in the driver's words. She didn't take the time to check out her reflection in the mirror earlier, now that she thought about it.

"Our elders usually tell us that if something like this happened to us during our trip, we need to stay away from our usual route to mislead any evil spirit. We can only resume the trip properly once the person's reflection has gone back to normal. So as soon as I saw that you looked ok in the mirror, I got us back here to the terminal," he said.

The girl looked at herself in the mirror, and indeed she saw her reflection as she should. There was no way for her to confirm the driver's story, however. Nonetheless, she thanked the driver for taking her to her destination safely. 

She also took note of the jeepney's plate number before walking away. 

She had dinner at the nearby fastfood store as she waited for her father to come and walk with her the rest of the way home.

One afternoon, a few weeks after that night, the girl was walking around the university when she passed by the scene of a vehicular accident in one of the roads inside the campus. The crash involved a car and a jeep, and the driver's side of the jeep was wrecked. As she walked on by, she heard one of the responding policemen talk to his colleague about how the jeepney driver died on the spot, and that several people were injured. She continued walking and glanced at the wreck once more. It was then that she noticed the jeep's license plate number – it was the same jeep she rode that night.

If indeed there was any truth to the story that the driver told her, it would appear that she wasn't the target of the evil spirit that night after all. May his soul rest in peace.

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