This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/-TyrantLizard- on 2025-05-21 16:31:04+00:00.

I’m just about to be discharged from the hospital. Broken arm, broken clavicle, nineteen stitches in my scalp, and all kinds of fun little cuts where they dug glass shards out of me.

Also my Civic is totaled.

I’ve been driving for Uber in the LA area for almost six months now. Believe me when I say I’ve got plenty of stories already, but this one takes the cake and then some. My cousin is a screenwriter and he couldn’t come up with some shit like this, and not just because all he writes are low budget Christmas movies about business girls who go back to their hometowns to fall in love with a guy in a peacoat.

Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what even happened to me.

Two nights ago I was cruising around in the Culver City area after dropping off a passenger. It was about 1:45am and I was ready to quit and go home, but another ride popped up over in Palms, which was close. There was no destination entered, which maybe should have been a red flag, but I took it anyway.

I started heading over there and almost got t-boned by a string of cop cars that blasted through a red light going 9-oh to somewhere. A couple streets over I crossed paths with an ambulance. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but when I got to my destination – some empty side street in Palms – and rolled down my window, it hit me just how MANY sirens I could hear. Way more than usual. And choppers too. There’s always a few of those fuckers buzzing around, but this seemed extra. I figured there must be some kind of high speed pursuit, or manhunt, or shooting, or something.

I sat there parked at the curb for a while, waiting for this dude to come down from his apartment. The app said his name was Eric, and Eric was taking his sweet time. He lived in one of those old complexes – former military housing that was probably slapped together in the 40s and was now owned by some LA slumlord who charged his tenants $2500 per month for a little one-bedroom unit. While I was sitting there getting impatient, I saw a few people sprinting across the street about a block ahead of me, lit up orange in the glow of the streetlights. Not going for a jog either, I mean they were running as fast they could go. Like someone was chasing them. And I could hear someone hollering, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. They ran out of sight and then the street went quiet again except for that distant wail of sirens, and it was about that time when I started feeling really uneasy. Something in the air felt off and suddenly the hair on my arms was standing up on end.

My attention was fully fixed on that eerie, empty street ahead, so Eric scared the holy shit out of me when he yanked open my back door and said, “Are you Wes??”. I told him I was, and he piled into the back seat and slammed the door shut. Immediately I could tell something was wrong. He was huffing and puffing like he’d just been running, covered in sweat, but most importantly he had a blood soaked t-shirt balled up against his neck.

“Take me to the nearest hospital,” he said. Then he reached over and hit the lock button on the door… which was a weird thing to do.

I was like, “Dude, you don’t look so good,” and he goes, “No kidding, that’s why I need to get to a hospital!”

I really didn’t want to deal with this, so I said, “Hey, man, maybe we better call you an ambulance.”

“No, I can’t afford an ambulance. Just go, okay?? Hurry up! I’m bleeding here!”

The thing was, I don’t think he had even looked at me once during this exchange because he was too busy looking back at the dark windows of that looming apartment complex.

My heart was starting to beat a little faster, but I went ahead and found the nearest hospital on my maps app. It was about seven minutes away, maybe less if we hopped on the 10 freeway for a short stretch, which I intended to do.

“Come on, let’s go!” he said, and I could hear fear in his voice. I hit the gas and took off. I watched him in the mirror as he craned his head all the way around to look out the back window at the big dark brick of his apartment complex falling away behind us. Only when it was fully out of sight did he turn forward.

I took a few turns, heading for the nearest freeway onramp, and for a while we both stayed silent. I could hear him wheezing in the back seat. Every breath seemed labored. I caught glimpses of his face in the passing lights. His skin looked pale and sweat was beaded up on his forehead. He looked scared. And sick. I suddenly wished I’d had another face mask. I usually wore them while driving so passengers didn’t give me Covid all the time, especially since I was still struggling after my last infection, but the strap had broken on my mask earlier that day.

We hit a stop light. Nobody else was at the intersection, and we sat there waiting for nothing. I considered running it, but then a police chopper banked low overhead and I thought better of it.

“So… what happened?” I asked.

I caught his glance in the mirror. He looked like he had just remembered I was in the car with him. He spoke with a pained, sluggish intonation, barely moving his jaw to form the words.

“Someone attacked me.”

“Oh, shit. Who?”

“My neighbor. I woke up because I thought I heard something in my apartment. Got up and found the dude standing in my living room, completely naked.”

“What? Are you serious?”

The light turned green and I took off again. Eric didn’t elaborate for a moment, but then I think he felt my eyes on him in the mirror.

“He was bleeding too. Honestly, I knew this guy was a bubble off when I moved into the place, but it wasn’t a big deal because he kept to himself. But not tonight. No, tonight he decided to break into my place and flap his weird little peener around in the middle of my living room.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do. He was talking crazy… jabbering at me. Before I could really do anything, he jumped on me and he… he bit me.”

“He bit you??”

“Yeah. Pretty bad too. Then he ran off.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it himself. The action seemed to hurt his wounded neck and he grimaced. I dreaded how much blood he was probably getting on my seats.

I almost missed my next turn on account of watching him in the mirror. He leaned back in his seat and groaned softly. He really looked bad. I started to get worried that this guy might end up dying in my back seat, so I put on a little more speed.

A firetruck strobed through an intersection up ahead and disappeared from view as I brought the car to a brief halt at a stop sign. Something above me caught my eye and I leaned forward to look.

There was an object perched on the long goose neck of the nearest streetlight. It was one of those older streetlights, probably from the 90s, with a sodium vapor bulb that cast an orange disk on the street below. Whatever was on top of it was large, and at first it struck me as a nonsensical mass of cloth balanced impossibly up there – but a split second later, it struck me as the shape of a crouching man.

“What the hell?” I said out loud, and I could hear Eric shift in his seat behind me to look out the window.

I was already rationalizing that a man crouched on top of a streetlight like a vulture was a completely idiotic notion and that I must be mistaken, when the thing moved, and I could clearly make out the shape of a stooped head and arms and most alarmingly: eyes. Two pinpricks of reflected light, like the retinas of a wild animal. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

“Go! Go now! Go!” I jumped at the sound of Eric’s panicked voice behind me, and without thinking I hit the gas. We shot off down the street, and although I tried to pick out the figure on the streetlight in my mirror, it was immediately obscured by a tangle of jacaranda branches.

“What was that??” I asked. Hearing the fearful strain in my own voice made my heart pump even faster.

But Eric didn’t respond. Instead he was writhing around on my back seat, moaning softly.

I took another turn and spotted a sign for the freeway onramp ahead. Eric’s movements were becoming spastic. I felt him thump against the backrest of my seat. More pained moaning.

Christ, this dude’s totally gonna’ give up the ghost in the back of my car.

“Hey man, just hang on. We’re almost there! Keep pressure on it and… uh… just keep pressure on it!”

A tortured cry and a scuffling sound from the back seat, then abrupt silence. I glanced in my mirror again to see Eric’s shape in silhouette. He was sitting bolt upright now, still as a statue. I was taken aback by the abrupt change in behavior. I could hear him take a deep inhale through his nose, like someone meditating. Then he spoke.

“O-negative.”

His voice was totally calm now. Calm and low. It sent a chill up my spine. I hit the onramp and we started the short climb to the elevated freeway, putting on speed. I instantly regretted it because I couldn’t pull over as easily on the freeway if I needed to.

“Sorry… what?” I said.

“You’re O-negative. Universal donor.”

“What??”

He was right. I was O-negative, but how in the James-Randi-fuck could he possibly know that??

“Mmmm. I’ve lost a lot of blood. I could use some O-negative right about now,” he said, and his voice was all thick and croaking like he was some pervert trying to talk me out of my clothes.

“Dude, you’re freaking me out,” I said, and then this piece of shit giggled. He actually giggled. Like some…

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1ks29sj/im_an_uber_driver_in_los_angeles_something/