And that was why Rosie, when she looked up again, saw not Milada Horakova Street but a little copse, and the cab stopped in front of it. Twilight had already decended, shadowy trees were swaying ominously in the wind and the fallen leaves were dancing on a narrow path leading to a gloomy bunker. It was a concrete bunker left over from World War II and its dark silhouette loomws at the edge....of a wood.
"Do you know what's going to happen to you?" Asked the cab driver quietly.
"No, I really don't know!"
He pulled out a handgun and put it in his lap.
"And now you know?"
"No, I honestly have no idea!"
He had dessicated hands with scaly peeling skin. How wonderfully that dry skin would absorb hand lotion, Rosie thought. It would suck it in so thirstily, but why l am I thinking about that when I should be wondering how to get the hell out of here...
Those dry hands rose from his lap and aimed the gun.
"Get out," he said and she obeyed.
The fresh air was fragrant. The forest murmured. The sky filled up with clouds of crows. And hey, vultures too! What on earth are they doing in this part of the world?
The wind swept her hair into her face as she turned to the cab-driver. Naturally, he was aiming his gun at her, the idiot....
Eyes like glow-worms in a marsh. Ravens circling above him like flies over a carcass.
"Probably you want my to take off my clothes, right?" She asked the pistol barrel. His eyes blinked angrily through semi-transparent lenses.
"I won't give you that satisfaction", he said, "I'll blow you away as you are."
"For no reason at all, naturally..."
"Oh no, I have a very serious reason."
"Well, might I hear what it is? I won't tell anyone, I can assure you."
"I believe you, ha ha ha! All right then, I get a kick out of watching your fear befoe you die. It's my hobby. It beats TV and Video. „
"Then I don't know if I'm the right person for your purposes. I won't be able to show you any fear, since I've been considering a voluntary departure from the world myself. It would solve many of my problems. For example my unpaid utility bills, my rent and so on. The trouble is I could never get up the courage, you know what I mean. As the Bard puts it, „The greatest terror of suicide is failure to accomplish it."
"I don't believe you," said the cab driver and gripped his gun even tighter. One of the crows alighted on the polished hood of his cab and left a dropping on his windshield. Plish! And again: Plish!
It was if a string snapped in the complex tuning of the cabbie's soul. The sound of the crow's performance - evidently familiar to him - forced him to spin round back towards the cab. "Get lost, you brute!" he waved the pistol and made for the crow.
