The Witness

You know that feeling when you wake up and you're not quite sure where you are?

Multiply that by a thousand and you've got passengering.

One second I'm watching TV in my apartment. The next I'm standing in a garage that smells like motor oil and something metallic I recognize but don't want to name.

There's a woman duct-taped to a chair.

She's crying. Begging. The words don't matter because whoever I'm in isn't listening. They're looking at a toolbox on the workbench. Considering options.

They pick up a hammer.

I'm not going to describe what happens next in detail. You don't need it. I don't want to relive it.

What I will tell you is this: the person I was in was calm. Methodical. They'd thought this through. Every step had a purpose. Every movement was efficient.

It took eleven minutes.

When it was done, they washed their hands at the utility sink. Checked the time on their phone. Started cleaning up.

No panic. No hesitation. No remorse.

Just a task completed.

The next ten hours were worse in a different way.

They wrapped everything in plastic. Cleaned with bleach and something else, some kind of enzyme cleaner I'd never heard of. Loaded the body into the trunk of a sedan. Drove for an hour to a stretch of woods I couldn't identify.

They'd already dug the hole. Days ago, probably. It was waiting.

The burial took forty minutes. They filled it in, scattered leaves and branches to match the surrounding area. Natural. Invisible.

On the drive back, they stopped at a Wendy's drive-through. Ate a burger while driving. Hummed along to the radio.

When they got home, they showered, climbed into bed, and fell asleep in under three minutes.

I counted every second until the twelve hours ended and I snapped back into my own body.

I called the police immediately.

Anonymous tip. Didn't mention passengering. Just said I'd overheard someone talking about a body in the woods off Highway 7, past the old quarry turnoff.

Took them four days to find it.

Took them another two to identify the victim and connect her to a recently filed missing person report.

Week after that, they arrested him. DNA evidence from his car trunk. Search of his house turned up the murder weapon. His alibi fell apart under questioning.

Daniel Morse. Forty-three years old. IT consultant. Divorced. Lived alone.

Life sentence. No parole.

I watched the sentencing on the news and felt...something. Relief, maybe. Justice. The weight of knowing I'd done the right thing.

That's what I told myself, anyway.

The thing about passenger memories is they're supposed to fade.

Within days, you lose the details. Within weeks, it's like trying to remember a dream. You know it happened. You remember the emotional weight of it. But the specifics blur and dissolve.

That's what's supposed to happen.

But I kept replaying it. Over and over. Not the violence itself. That part did fade, actually. Became more abstract. Less visceral.

What stuck was everything else.

The preparation. The way he'd laid everything out beforehand. The cleaning supplies already assembled. The hole already dug.

The calm.

That's what I couldn't shake. The absolute, crystalline calm of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and why.

I started researching. Told myself I was processing trauma. Working through it. Understanding what I'd witnessed so I could move past it.

I read about criminal psychology. About organization versus disorganization in violent offenders. About how careful planning reduces panic, reduces mistakes.

I watched documentaries. Read case files from famous cases. Learned about forensics. About what investigators look for. About the mistakes people make.

The memories from my twelve hours were fading, but I was building something else. A framework. An understanding.

I told myself I was just curious. Just trying to make sense of what I'd experienced.

Three months after Daniel Morse's sentencing, I passengered again.

Random Tuesday afternoon. I was in someone's living room, watching their kid's soccer practice. Boring as hell. Nothing memorable.

But it reminded me that passengering is random. Unpredictable. You could be anyone, anywhere, for twelve hours.

I started thinking about it differently after that.

Not what Daniel Morse had done wrong (he got caught, after all), but what he'd done right.

The pre-dug hole. That was smart. The enzyme cleaner. The choice of location, far from where he lived but not so far it seemed suspicious.

But he'd made mistakes too. The car trunk. That's where they got him. Should've used a vehicle that wasn't registered to him. Something disposable.

And the victim. He'd chosen someone who'd be reported missing quickly. Someone with family, friends, and a job where people noticed when she didn't show up.

You'd want someone more isolated. Someone whose absence wouldn't trigger immediate alarms.

I wasn't planning anything. I was just thinking it through. Academically. Theoretically.

The way you might think through a chess problem. Or a crossword puzzle.

The memories from those twelve hours were almost gone now.

I couldn't remember the woman's face. Couldn't remember the exact layout of the garage. Couldn't remember what kind of car he'd driven or what the woods had looked like.

But I remembered the feeling. The calm. The certainty.

Sometimes I wonder if I'll passenger into someone else someday. Someone who'll teach me something new.

Or maybe someone will passenger into me.

They'll spend twelve hours trapped behind my eyes, watching me work. Learning my methods. My improvements.

And when those twelve hours are up and they snap back to their own body, they'll have a choice.

Report me and do the right thing.

Or take what they learned and make it their own.

Most people would report it.

That's what good people do.

But some of us?

Some of us see an opportunity.

Her name was Lisa.

Next time I'll do better.