YOU HAVE JUST ARRIVED AT THE BUS STATION IN A BIG CITY. Your cousin is supposed to meet you at the gate and take you to the airport. You enter the poorly lighted, cavernous building and look around. No cousin.

It is 1:15 a.m. The passengers and driver on the bus with you have disappeared. You hurry toward the elevator and ascend. Other than a bored attendant at the wrong end of a long corridor, this area is empty, too.

You drag your suitcase along the uneven tiles of the terminal floor. Your footsteps thump under the grinding cacophony of the case’s wheels. Grind. Thump. Grind. Thump. The doors seem to be miles away. As you approach, you recoil at the greasy fingerprints on the door’s panels left by generations of derelicts and creeps.

You shoulder your way out. An odd silence greets you from the street. Your eyes drift to the brooding skyline on your left. One ominous colossus looms behind the other. Your eyes drift right. A lone taxi driver beckons you forward. A single eyebrow spans his forehead. He has sinister eyes. Deep scars are etched into his cheeks. He barks, “Nine dollars. Off the meter. Anywhere in the city.” His hands are too big for his small, muscular frame. Big enough to crush a coconut. Big enough to crush a skull. You think, “He will drive me to an abandoned pier, murder me, and steal the wallet from my cold, dead body.”