Very Strange But Very Short Stories #5

Mo

Mo

As a rule, I avoid Ubers. Firstly because, to me, they don’t feel safe. As a young woman, I rarely feel more vulnerable than when I’m in the backseat of a strange man’s car. A man who has full control of the windows, door locks and direction you’re heading in. The advertisements give off the impression that there are fleets of female drivers just waiting to pick you up - but I’ve never had one. Where are the go-getting, girl-bossing entrepreneurial young ladies giving the boys a run for their money?

And secondly, I find the entire process too awkward to deal with. Some don’t want to engage in conversation, but others do. Some won’t let you be - even when you pretend to be deaf, they end up knowing sign-language and make you look like an idiot. 

But this morning, I didn’t have any choice. The trains were still all on strike, and for someone with a job like mine, taking a day off just isn’t an option. People depend on me. Hell, whole markets depend on me. I simply had to be in the city today, so that was that. Uber booked. 

When I got in, the driver - Mo - offered me a warm bottle of water. I politely declined, as there was no way I was ever going to drink something offered to me by an Uber driver. Not without a drink-testing kit, anyway. As we set off, sure enough Mo started up a conversation about his kids, or something. I told him I didn’t want to talk, but he kept on going anyway. Luckily, I had remembered to grab my headphones on the way out, so I placed them onto my head and pumped up the volume on Classical FM. I’d prefer it if my drivers kept their eyes on the road anyway. Chit-chat is a distraction, and I’m not interested in becoming another crash statistic, thank you very much. 

Classical FM turned out to be a bad choice, because before I knew it - I was dead asleep. I hadn’t gotten any sleep the night previous, due to my neighbour's new baby screaming its ugly little head off at all hours. Honestly, I pay an ungodly amount of money to live in that apartment building, and I don’t think it’s at all fair that such sound pollution ought to just be tolerated. It’s selfish, really. 

The sound of a car door slamming woke me up. I looked around myself, expecting to see my office building - but no. I was in the middle of god-knows-where, next to some woods. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Great, I thought. The ONE time you fall asleep, and now you’re going to get murdered in the woods. I checked the doors - locked. I checked my phone - and on the Uber progress map it said we were somewhere in Kent. The only thing worse than getting killed in the woods, is getting killed in the woods of Kent. 

I reached over the empty driver’s seat to see if I could roll down the window, or find something blunt to defend myself with - but as I did so, I heard the deafening clap of a gun going off somewhere in the trees. It hurt my ears (which are extremely sensitive). 

When the police finally got me out of the locked car, they told me that Mo had shot himself in the woods. Apparently, he’d been having a difficult time as of late, and had written on the notes app of his phone a sort of digital suicide note - stating that he just needed someone to talk to. 

As a result of the whole debacle, I missed an extremely important meeting and the company lost out on thousands of potential pounds that morning - which is why I am logging this complaint today. I expect a full refund for the journey, and compensation for the inconvenience caused me. 

Thank you.