Sunday Short: The Passenger Seat

It was 3:07 a.m. when Daniel finally clocked out.

The office was silent, the kind of silence that pressed on his chest. His footsteps echoed down the narrow hallways of the old building, a place that had recently been “renovated,” though the peeling corners and faint mildew stench told otherwise.

By the time he reached the underground car park, it was nearly empty. Just three cars as usual, except tonight, there was a fourth.

A red sedan, parked crookedly, its body eaten by rust and streaked with scratches, dents along both doors like someone had rammed it again and again. The tires sagged flat against the concrete. Its windows were so caked in dust that he couldn’t even see through except for one spot on the front windshield, smeared clean, like a handprint dragged across from the inside.

He frowned. He would’ve noticed if this wreck had been here before.

But he shrugged it off. Probably some old employee’s junker, he thought.

It wasn’t until he slid into his own car and started driving toward the exit that the unease returned. His headlights swept across the red car as he passed...

...and for a split second, he saw it.

A figure. Sitting in the passenger seat. Perfectly still.

His hands tightened on the wheel. Just a shadow, he told himself. Just a trick of the light. He didn’t slow down.

---

Except…

The exit wasn’t there.

Daniel drove the familiar turns, but the ramp out was gone, swallowed by endless gray concrete. The walls looked the same, the fluorescent lights hummed the same, but every corner looped him back to where he started.

He gritted his teeth. His eyes darted up

The red car again.

Exactly where it was before.

Only this time, the figure inside was clearer. A woman. Hair draped over her face. Head tilted unnaturally toward the glass, as though her neck couldn’t quite hold her up.

Daniel’s skin prickled cold. He pressed harder on the accelerator, desperate to get out.

But the loop dragged him back a third time.

The red car. Again.

And this time, empty.

The passenger seat was vacant. Dust clung undisturbed to the windows.

His heart slammed against his ribs as he slowed down, staring hard inside, searching for where she’d gone.

Maybe she got out. Maybe...

A voice slid through the air, low, raspy, inside his car.

“Are you… Looking for me?”

The sound came from the seat beside him.

His head whipped around

And there she was. Inches from his face. A woman, her flesh twisted, jaw unhinged too wide, skin stretched and torn like wax melting off bone. One eye rolled white, the other fixed, bloodshot and bulging, staring right into him. Her broken teeth snapped together as she grinned.

She was sitting in his passenger seat.

Her hair brushed his shoulder.

And her hand was already reaching for the wheel.