Fiction: Child Locks

By Leia John

It was my first night driving Uber – a Saturday, which meant the bar crowd. The reality of this translates into the salt-sweat-semen stench of frat boys on the prowl, the dog-whistle pitched screeching of drunk white girls and sour, alcohol laden vomit plastered down the t-shirt of a twenty year old who couldn’t hold their own.

This particular fare climbed into the backseat of my car around 2:30am and had me drive him to a particular house, in a particular part of town. What I mean is this motherfucker was scoring drugs; he knew it, I knew it and he knew I knew it.

‘Deal with it,’ the car door seemed to say as he slammed it behind him. He returned twenty minutes later with eyes redder than the Devil’s dick and stinking of reggie weed.

‘Whatever,’ I thought to myself as I navigated my car around deep pot holes between the dappled light of shot out street lamps.

“Ain’t you scared?” he asked. His raspy voice floating up from the back seat.

“About what?”

“You’re a girl, you know, driving alone late at night. I could kidnap and murder you,” he chuckled.

“No,” I drawled, my eyes drilling into his in the rearview mirror as I hit the auto-locks.

“I got child locks and you don’t know where the fuck I’m taking you.”

Leia John is a poet, writer, seminarian and all around fucking lunatic.