The story
The steep streets of Bucaramanga hold secrets that the early morning fog takes care of hiding. It was a time when the asphalt seemed lonelier and the cold from the mountain range descended mercilessly upon the windshields of the taxis still driving around. Esteban, a man hardened by long shifts behind the wheel, believed he had seen it all under the yellow light of the lampposts, until that night when fate decided to play a spine-chilling trick on him.
The clock showed ungodly hours when a female figure emerged from the shadows on a quiet street corner. The woman, with a fair complexion and blonde hair that shone strangely under the reflection of the streetlight, approached the vehicle with a hurried pace and a nervousness palpable in every one of her movements. Without offering the usual greeting regular customers gave, she opened the back door and slid inside with a rush bordering on desperation.
Esteban looked at her through the rearview mirror, ready to ask for her destination, but the words got stuck in his throat. The passenger didn't ask for any address; instead, she began talking with astonishing precision about the details of his previous fare. She described down to the last detail the passenger who had gotten out minutes before, the gestures he had made, the bill he had paid with, and even the casual conversation they had shared, narrating it all as if that man were still occupying the seat next to her.
An icy chill ran down the driver's spine. The hair on his arms stood on end to the rhythm of a dark gut feeling: that woman was not a simple customer lost in the early morning Santander chill. Her feverish attitude and the way she seemed to levitate between reality and another dimension confirmed to him that he was facing a presence straight out of the witch legends his grandparents used to tell in the region's towns. Fear paralyzed him, keeping him from pressing the gas pedal with the force his instinct demanded.
The trip ended in a tense silence, broken only by the light tapping of the drizzle against the car roof. As soon as the blonde woman opened the door and vanished as mysteriously as she had arrived, Esteban let out a sigh of relief. Yet the terror lingered. When he tried to air out the vehicle, he realized that a heavy, sweet, and piercing perfume, completely foreign to him, had inexplicably soaked into the fibers of the seats, like an indelible mark of that otherworldly visit.
