Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Ghoul Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

GHOUL

Naomi glanced to the rearview mirror of her taxi, eyes meeting those belonging to the handsome man in the backseat. “What’s that?” she said, missing what he’d said.

“Must be spooky to be out here alone at night, what with all the killing going on,” he said.

Naomi shook her head gently as she pressed the brakes, waiting for a light to turn green. It was rainy and cold beyond the windshield, a typical December 23 in downtown Endhoven. Christmas lights twinkled from about half of the apartments above ground-floor businesses, the efforts all but futile amid the rundown drabness.

“I’m trying not to think about them,” she said.

On the bench seat next to her was the day’s Chronicle, the front-page headline read: THIRD BODY FOUND IN FIVE NIGHTS. The cops had no leads aside from the mangled states of the corpses—two men and a woman. All three individuals had been out late at night, had had alcohol in their systems, and were last seen alive on foot, despite the weather. The police recommended that all unnecessary travel be limited, but it was Christmas and folks were going to do what they’d planned.

“I would, if I were you. You never know who might be the killer,” the man said.

Naomi looked to the rearview mirror to see the man smirking at her. She didn’t care a bit for that smirk and averted her eyes.

“How do you think he does it?” the man said.

Naomi kept her focus hard on the street. There weren’t many people out, but the dispatcher had been lively so far. Naomi started her shifts at 8:00 PM, and it was now 10:16 PM. She had more than seven hours to go.

“I’m guessing it’s PCP or something like that. Dude just goes nuts. You hear all the time about superhuman strength from drugs.”

That was a thing that she’d heard—not all the time, but she’d heard it more than once. Naomi again glanced to the mirror. This guy behind her was like any cocksure man, invincible until the moment he’s not. This kind of man was almost always vanilla as a tub of ice cream and just as harmless—unless a woman embarrassed him. Embarrassment was like drinking a serum fixed by Dr. Jekyll to this kind of man.

“Greer’s Place?” she said, changing the subject.

The man released her gaze from the mirror reflection and sagged against the backseat as he looked out the window. “Yeah, meeting my wife and her friends.”

He sounded so downtrodden that Naomi nearly laughed.

—

Christmas Eve was always slow until about 10:30 PM. Naomi had a fresh newspaper, and according to the story—headline reading: KILLER REMAINS AT LARGE—the police had found no new remains, though the reporter suggested that did not mean there weren’t more bodies.

The rain was coming down harder, muddying her view of all the lights and lessening the already minimal pedestrians there might be. A woman stood in a Bell phone booth, and Naomi rolled up close, stopping so that her backseat, passenger’s side door lined up with the booth.

A young woman with spikey pink hair, wearing a blue leather jacket and black leather boots up to her knees shuffled from the curb to the car, her purse over her head like the world’s most useless umbrella. A blast of cold air filled the cab the moment she swung open the door.

“You Gina?” Naomi said, holding her CB radio’s mic before her mouth.

“Yeah, who else?” the woman said, brushing water from her jacket to the floor, backseat, and door of the cab.

Naomi radioed base before pulling from the curb, back onto the lonely street. It was already inching toward midnight. Not good. Naomi looked to her rearview.

“You out partying?”

“Sure,” the woman said.

“My name’s Naomi.”

“Yeah, who gives a fuck?”

Naomi frowned, glancing to the clock. She was cutting it close, too close. She probably should’ve settled with one of the earlier fares.

She again looked into the rearview. “I like your jacket. And hair.”

The woman upturned her left eyebrow. “Yeah, me too.”

“I like your boots, too,” Naomi said.

“I like your pendant. You Jewish?” The woman smirked with the left side of her mouth, licking her upper lip slowly.

Naomi took the Hamsa pendant dangling from the rearview mirror between two fingers, rubbing it gently. “My bubbe gave it to me when I started driving cab. It’s supposed to make me lucky.”

The woman in the back clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Are you lucky often?”

Naomi checked her side mirrors, then her rearview as she flipped her blinker, taking them off-route and down a vacant alleyway. Once the car was in park, she turned in her seat.

“I can usually get a little lucky,” she said.

“You’re a brave one. I might be the killer,” the woman said.

“So are you; I might be the killer, too.”

—

The streets were empty, the roads icy. Fat snowflakes fell gently onto those barren Endhoven streets. Naomi again had a fresh paper next to her on the bench seat. It had been another night without a body, but she was not currently thinking about that. She was now looking at the clock on her dash, wishing for something, anything.

The numbers switched over to 11:53 PM and she closed her eyes. Skipping a step, she kicked off her shoes, then unzipped her denim skirt. She planked herself and slid the skirt down over her hips, leaving her suddenly chilly in her frilled Playtex panties. She kept her shirt and long overcoat on.

Another minute passed: 11:54 PM. She groaned, slapping a palm against the dash above the radio. The seconds mounted. This was no good, no damned—

“Naomi, Car Twenty-one? Need you at the Sunoco on Barnes and Tenth Ave. Heading to Eleven-twelve Twenty-eighth Ave. Fare’s name is Joey.”

Naomi snatched the mic. “On it!”

She wheeled a U-turn on the dead street, one eye on the road, one eye on the clock. She burned across the seven blocks in hardly any time at all, her wheels skidding rubber into the Sunoco parking lot. A skinny figure, huddled into his too big coat, hurried to the cab. When he opened the door, the light lit and Naomi saw the pimples, the bad moustache, the blue hair beneath the lifted hood.

Naomi got rolling before the kid had a chance to buckle his seatbelt. She stared into the rearview. “You’re cute,” she said.

The kid frowned.

“What are you, sixteen?”

“Fifteen…in March,” the kid said.

Naomi let out a huff, glancing at the clock: 11:57 PM. “You ever been laid, Joey?”

“What?” he said, his voice squeaking halfway through the syllable.

“If I join you in the backseat, will you put your cock into me?”

“What?”

“You heard me. I need to get fucked, Joey, and you’re the man for the job. You up for it?”

The kid looked around. “This a Candid Camera thing?”

 Naomi pulled down a lifeless side street and slammed the shifter into park while the car was still rolling, grinding the gears and bringing them to an abrupt stop with an ugly clunk. Naomi swung open the door. It was 11:59 PM. She climbed out and tossed her jacket onto the driver’s seat.

The kid watched her, wide-eyed, from the backseat as she wiggled out of her panties. She swung open the door and leaned down to look in at the kid.

“Please. This has to happen right now.”

The kid looked at his crotch then to Naomi. He began unzipping while he shuffled across the bench seat. Once within reach, Naomi grabbed him, slamming him against the rear fender. His pants dropped. She yanked down his boxer shorts. He was hard, standing at attention. Naomi put a leg up on the backseat and bent her other knee as she grabbed for his erection. Instantly, his body spasmed and she felt the hot splash in her palm.

“Oh, Joey,” she said, backing up.

“I’m sorry…I never did it before,” he said, the words high and urgent. “I can be ready again in like two minutes.”

“That’s two minutes too late,” Naomi said, already feeling the change coming upon her.

Her flesh began to grey and peel as if badly sunburnt. Her teeth spilled from her mouth, tinkling down to the filthy asphalt. Great gullies formed in her lips, oozing boogery grey fluid. Her fingernails fell away all at once, landing in salty puddles and blackened snow mounds. When she brought her face up, her eyes had gone cloudy white, not dissimilar in hue to the semen that had shot into her hand.

“What the hell?” the kid said.

He yanked up his pants and underwear, spinning from the rear end of the cab, then raced along the sloppy sidewalk. He got ten steps before Naomi leapt. Her ice-cold flesh pinned the kid to the cement and her face lowered to his throat. He screamed until she tore through the flesh with her rigid, razor-like gums and devoured his voice. The blood spread as bones snapped and flesh disappeared down her throat.

Within seconds, a fresh set of teeth began pushing into her gums. The flaking skin smoothed, the lip gullies sealed, and her eyes returned to their natural brown.

—

Naomi stumbled in through the door of her family home. She’d dressed, and was more or less herself again—mentally, each transformation seemed to take a little piece of her—though was covered in blood, bile, and bits of cartilage. Her father was at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, a bagel, and a lit cigarette. He sat there every morning listening to the radio, but was only ever up this early come late December.

“Oh, peanut, I’m so sorry,” he said and reached over to switch off the nonsense Peter Gabriel song that refused to depart the pop charts.

Naomi looked at him. He’d apologized several times every Hanukkah since she was thirteen—the year she’d hit puberty. He looked so pathetic, and she was so used to it by now, that she could only sigh and say, “I know.”

From down the hall came shuffling feet. Naomi’s undead mother appeared, eyes milky, flesh grey and loose. Lips oozing. Mouth full of sharp gums. She moaned staring at her daughter.

Naomi wondered—for about the billionth time—who she might’ve been if her father hadn’t been lonely and depressed on that cold December night some thirty years ago, hadn’t slipped his dead ima’s wedding ring upon a fingerlike root rising from the dirt and pronounced “By this ring, you are consecrated to me,” three times; if her father hadn’t pronounced his intention to marry that root that was no root at all.

Naomi flopped onto a chair and held out her gore-smeared arm. Her mother shuffled forward and began to lick away the mess.

“At least you’re only shedim over Hanukkah. Maybe if you meet a nice boy who can…you know…and you get married…” her father said, trailing as he did whenever the meaning was obvious.

Naomi sighed, lifting her other arm to her mother’s mouth. She guessed, even if her father had found a living bride, hadn’t done that stupid, stupid thing, even if she’d had a normal mother and never became a ghoul, he’d still bother her to get married.

XX