Ascension: Purgatory

Prologue: Life

The alarm blares away on my nightstand, and I eventually manage to slap the stop button and pick up my phone to check the time. Yup. 6:00am. Just like always...

I fail to rub the sleep from my eyes as I walk like a zombie to the bathroom and once again do the bare minimum to get ready. I stare at my tired face in the mirror and say for the thousandth time, "I'll shave this gross beard off." But I don't. It would just take too long. Looking outside, I sigh at the blanket of white across the peaks of all the houses. For some reason I always feel like extra flaming hot garbage in the winter. How ironic...

I sift through a bowl of cereal for breakfast, lamenting about my life during an activity that should be filled with much more joy. I mean, they're lucky fucking charms. Unfortunately, I've never felt very lucky.

I pull my bag over my shoulder and grab my keys, heading out to my little 2020 Toyota Yaris. The most expensive thing I've ever owned. Well, I own a small fraction of it currently. Those car payments are a bitch. But it's sort of required if you want to be a driver for one of these shitty apps.

Getting inside, I sit alone with my thoughts for a few minutes as I wait for the car to heat up and the ice to melt off the windshield. Once that's done, I put the car into reverse and back out of the driveway of the tiny little house that my parents own. They make me rent a room in it because my life is going nowhere so they might as well at least get something out of it or whatever... I don't care, it's pretty cheap.

Activating the app, I drive around for a couple minutes, not realizing that my mind is only half on the road. I get a couple of passengers throughout the day. A man with a cat in its carrier. A mother with her two screaming kids. A man in a suit that looks old and ill-fitting. It's all a blur, really. Nobody really talks to me, and honestly, I wished those two kids talked to each other and their mom a whole lot less.

Around the end of my day is when I finally fully wake up. The reason for that is quite simple. I tell myself that whoever this Gina is will be my last passenger for the day, as I'm just too tired. But when I pull up to the curb, and an unbelievably stunning woman with round glasses and long, wavy, dyed-white hair approaches the car, my eyes go wide with surprise! I mean, I've picked up attractive girls before, but this girl is on a whole other level! She's dressed in a tight sweater and a wool trenchcoat with jeans and heels, but despite being covered, I can still tell that this girl is absolutely stacked! Not only that, but she has probably one of the prettiest faces I've ever seen. Like when you see girls and you're like, there's no way someone can have that perfect of a face. But here she is... Right in front of me...

I try to keep it together as she opens the passenger door for some reason! Not the back door! What is happening?! Nobody ever gets in the passenger seat!

"Hi! I'm Gina." She introduces herself happily, "I'm guessing you're my driver? Jameson?"

I gulp, and somehow, I manage to tell my brain to shake out of its fugue inside my own head, so this girl doesn't see it. "Yeah! Jameson, at your service!" What, dude? What the hell did I just say? At your service?! What am I fuckin driving Miss Daisy here?!

Thankfully, she just laughs, but it doesn't at all seem like she's laughing at me. Maybe she thought I was trying to be funny? And not just an awkward weirdo? Maybe I can somehow play this angle... "So, should we go, then?" She asks, still chipper as ever.

"Oh, yeah! Sorry, sure! Let's go." And I turn to the road and slowly accelerate.

After only about half a minute of driving, Gina asks, "So, been driving for the app long?"

I'm just purely surprised that she's so willing to talk. Most people don't want to say two words to me when I drive them, and honestly, I'm completely ok with that! But I certainly don't mind talking to a beautiful woman if she wants to talk to me. "I uh- yeah, about 6 years. What about you, been riding for the app long?"