Diruktober Day 10: Eyes

  Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by re_be_ka_f. I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun. 

The cab drivers were busy late into the evening, and especially as the bars started to close. It was in the last trickling of the rush that he was flagged down by a frame so small that he almost didn’t spot her. 

She never looked up from the ground as she entered the cab, but he couldn’t help thinking that her demeanor was endearing. 

She directed him further than expected, beyond the bar streets which he suspected she hadn’t come from after all. 

He finally came to a little rundown shack. There weren’t neighbors for many miles and the widely spanned street lights provided little relief from the darkness. It was by the light of his own headlights that she found her way down the stone path and into the structure. 

He found himself curious– overwhelmingly so. It was a curiosity that tugged at him like an addict to justification. He knew that it wasn’t the right thing to do, and yet he found himself reasoning to no one. 

”I just want to check on her. Make sure she is safe out here. I won’t do anything at all.” 

He found himself stepping out of his cab before he knew it. All of the curtains were drawn, not a single spot visible from which any light would be emitted. Cautiously he circled the small shack, testing each step ahead of him in the crisp winter. 

Finding no entrance, it was only as he circled back to the front of the building that he noticed an antiquated keyhole in the rusted old knob. A burn of guilt spread from his stomach as he found himself hoping that the steps didn’t creak. He crouched to level himself with that single pinprick of visibility to the inside of the shack. He closed one eye to focus and hovered as close to the door as he could without daring to touch it. 

All he could see was blue.

A bright, piercing blue like the neon light of dingy old dives he frequented greeted him. 

he strained his eyes to look left; there was only blue. 

He strained his eyes to look right; there was only blue. 

With his curiosity hardly stated, he returned to his cab with no choice left but to bear the weight of his guilt tenfold that it had culminated in nearly nothing. He carried a weight in his chest through the night, a mix of guilt and innervation. 

He decided to stop at an overnight diner to clear his head on the way back into town. It was beckoning him from the featureless night surrounding the country roads. The lullaby of endless trees would have lured him to sleep had he not been so shaken by his strange encounter. 

Greeted by the comforting smell of early morning meeting late night and stale coffee, the cab driver sat at the old bar with rusty stools. It creaked beneath him as he adjusted his position, calling out for a coffee in the empty diner.

“Morning,” The older man seemed to be responsible for the restaurant on his own. The owner showed some sympathy for the driver's rundown face as he poured him a mug. 

“Long night?” 

So the cab driver told him how he had found himself so far out of town. He told him how he developed such a strange draw to this woman, and even, shamefully, how he’d circled her little shack.

“Oh, I know that girl,” The owner perked up to say as the cab driver lifted his mug. 

“Did you get a look at her eyes? Piercing blue. Electric.” 

The cab driver's breath hitched and he spilled his coffee down his front. 

When he looked left, he saw blue. When he looked right, he saw blue. 

Nothing but blue.