The Last Fare - By Karthik Shaswath Raghav

Written By: Karthik Shaswath Raghav

Category: Short story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Karthik Shaswath Raghav presents "The Last Fare," a riveting short story entry in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Through a narrative rich with suspense and unexpected turns, Raghav takes readers on a journey where the ordinary quickly spirals into the extraordinary. This story, situated in an urban setting, touches on themes of hidden truths and the unseen lives of familiar faces.

About the Work

"The Last Fare" weaves a tale of suspense and intrigue, capturing the reader with its vivid imagery and dynamic characters. The narrative unfolds through the eyes of Cal Mercer, a seemingly unremarkable cab driver whose life takes a dramatic turn. Raghav skillfully crafts a story of deception and unexpected alliances, using a vibrant cityscape as the backdrop for a journey into the darker sides of human nature.

The Last Fare

Original Submission by Karthik Shaswath Raghav

The Last Fare

Written by: Karthik Shaswath Raghav

Chapter 1: Eleven Years of Red Lights

"Forty minutes!" the woman in the back seat screamed. "I've been in this cab for forty minutes, and my flight's gone! What kind of driver are you?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Cal said. "The roads are flooded, there's nothing I can..."

"Don't you 'sorry ma'am' me! Do something! Anything!"

He didn't do anything. He never did. At the terminal she threw the fare at the windscreen, slammed the door hard enough to rattle the mints in their tin, and stormed off into the rain without a tip.

Cal watched her go. It was the most anyone had said to him all week, and it was shouting.

Cal Mercer had driven nights in Port Calloway for eleven years, and nothing had ever happened to him. No wild fares, no "follow that car." Just wet streets, red lights and a meter ticking away like a clock in a waiting room.

He was forty-one, thin, polite, and the kind of man people forgot while they were still looking at him. His ex-wife used to say so. He kept a tin of mints in the cup holder and the radio low, because the radio was the only thing that ever talked to him.

"...the Harbour Bridge closes this weekend for repairs. Police say the Lantern Line investigation is ongoing. Rain through Thursday..."

Cal turned it down. "Rain through Thursday. Great."

He parked outside Central Station at 11:40 and watched the drops race down the windshield. Even they seemed to be going somewhere.

"Is this it?" he said to the empty cab. "Is this the whole thing?"

His phone buzzed. A booking: Marlow Street, 12:05. Destination, to be confirmed.

He almost declined. Then he thought, why not? It was the last ordinary decision he would ever make.

Chapter 2: The Man in the Camel Coat

The man waiting on Marlow Street didn't stand in the rain. The rain seemed to stand around him.

He was big in a quiet way: broad shoulders under a camel coat, black hair slicked back, a gold ring, a scar through his left eyebrow. Olive skin, sharp jaw, the kind of face whose grandfather definitely came from Naples. He slid into the back seat like he owned the leather, and the cab suddenly felt smaller.

"Evening," he said. The accent was thick and warm. "I'm Dante. You?"

"Cal."

"Cal. Good. Short names don't waste time." His eyes found Cal's in the mirror and stayed there a second too long. "You parked well back there. That was a tight spot."

"Eleven years of practice."

"Eleven years." Dante smiled. "And you're still not bored?"

Cal laughed, a bit too fast. "Is it that obvious?"

"Your hands look fine. Your shoulders look tired." He leaned back. "Take me to Dock Nine. Then we're going under it."

"Under it?"

"There's a service tunnel below the old cannery. The shutter opens when it sees my car. Don't worry."

Every instinct Cal had built up in eleven years said, sorry, mate, I'm off shift. But the meter was running, and for the first time in a long while, so was his pulse.

"Dock Nine," he said. "Under it."

Chapter 3: Under Dock Nine

The tunnel swallowed the cab whole. Wet concrete, yellow bulbs spaced too far apart, the engine echoing back at them like a second, angrier engine. Cal crept along at fifteen miles an hour, sweating through every one of them.

"Relax," said Dante. "You drive like there's a dozen eggs in the back."

"I've never driven anywhere that didn't have a street name."

"Then tonight's educational." Dante took a mint from the tin without asking. "Go on, ask me. You've wanted to since Marlow Street."

Cal swallowed. "So, what do you do? For work, I mean."

"I run a few clubs."

Cal looked in the mirror: the scar, the ring, the coat that cost more than his cab. Then he gave him the flattest, most knowing look he could manage, the look he'd seen on a hundred policemen at a hundred checkpoints.

"Seems like a lot of clubs, sir."

The cab went quiet. Dante held his stare for three full seconds, and Cal's stomach dropped through the floor.

Then Dante burst out laughing, big and delighted. "Eleven years in the front seat and he notices! I like you, Cal. Remind me never to lie to you."

Cal laughed along, thin and nervous. He didn't notice that Dante never actually answered.

Far behind them in the tunnel, a pair of headlights came on.

Chapter 4: Maddy

The first shot took out the back window.

Glass sprayed across the seat like thrown diamonds. Cal screamed, a thoroughly undignified scream, and ducked so low his chin hit the wheel.

"Get down!" Dante was already twisted around, coat flapping. "Shit. It's Maddy."

"WHO?" Cal yelled. "Who's Maddy? Why is Maddy shooting at my cab?"

"Just drive!"

"I can't, I'm a taxi driver!"

"Then drive like one! JUST DRIVEEE!"

Cal stamped on the accelerator and the old cab howled like it had been waiting years for permission. Another shot rang off the bumper. In the mirror a black pickup surged out of the dark, and in its window Cal caught a glimpse of a man in a grey hood, hollow-eyed, jaw clenched, arm perfectly steady.

"Left!" Dante shouted. "Left, left, now!"

Cal wrenched the wheel. The cab clipped a stack of crates, burst through a rubber curtain, and shot out of the tunnel into the rain-soaked docklands, where the neon turned every puddle into a mirror.

The radio was still going, cheerful and calm. "...a man was taken to hospital after a disturbance near the docks. And a reminder, the Harbour Bridge closes this weekend..."

Cal had officially stopped being bored.

Chapter 5: A Taxi Can Fly

As chases go, it was a bad one. Cal took corners he shouldn't have. He drove through a fish market, a car wash and one very confused wedding party. A taxi that had spent eleven years politely idling was suddenly sliding sideways under a railway arch with a pickup sixty feet behind it.

"Bridge ramp!" Dante barked. "The one with the barrier!"

"It's closed for repairs!"

"Then you'd better be quick!"

The cab hit the ramp at seventy, launched across a gap in the half-built road, and landed with a crunch that tore off both mirrors. Behind them the pickup braked hard at the edge, headlights glaring, a small dark figure standing in the open door watching them go.

Then the city swallowed them.

Cal parked in an empty carpark two districts over and sat there shaking, both hands still locked on the wheel. Then the shaking turned into laughing, and the laughing turned into a whoop.

"Did you see that?" he gasped. "I jumped a bridge. In a Corolla!"

Dante was laughing too, dabbing a small cut on his forehead. "Eleven years, Cal. That's the first time you've actually driven."

He peeled off a thick wad of notes, far more than the fare, and dropped it in Cal's lap. Cal stared at it. Every part of him was humming.

"Sir," he said quietly. "Can I join you?"

Dante studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled, warm and slow and impossible to read.

"Come with me," he said. "I'll show you what I really do."

Chapter 6: The Family Downstairs

The clubs were underneath a derelict boxing gym in the oldest part of the harbour. Dante led him down a spiral stair, through a steel door, and into a roar.

A ring sat in the middle of a huge cellar under one swinging lamp. Two men were beating each other bloody while a hundred people screamed. The air smelled of sweat, smoke and money.

"Fight clubs," said Dante, spreading his arms. "Not the dancing kind. The kind where you find out what you're made of."

Cal watched the fighters, and something dark and quick stirred in his chest. "I'm in. Whatever you need."

"Everybody says that." Dante grinned. "But know what this is first. It's illegal, every bit of it. No licence, no referee, no ambulance waiting outside."

Cal looked up. Bolted to the rafters were three cameras, small red lights blinking.

"They broadcast every fight," Dante said. "Dark web streams. People all over the world log in, watch and place bets. Illegal betting, Cal. That's where the money comes from."

"So they can see me?"

"Everyone can see you. That's the fun of it." Dante clapped his shoulder. "Now come and meet my people."

Bruno "The Anvil" Okafor was a mountain with a soft voice, who wrapped Cal's hands like a father tying a kid's shoes. "You hit like someone who's never been allowed to," he said. "We'll fix that."

Roxanne Vega, the club's cut-woman, stitched fighters between rounds and noticed everything. She tilted Cal's chin to look at him. "Driver, right? Drivers always check the exits. Don't look so surprised, so do I."

Nina Park ran the bar and the books, a quiet woman with ink on both arms who said almost nothing. When she handed Cal his first beer, her eyes stayed on his hands a little too long, as if she was memorising them.

And Little Tito, nineteen, the club's runner, grinned at everyone and worshipped Dante like a saint.

"Welcome to the family," said Dante.

Cal looked around at them all. Someone had said "family," and for the first time in his life he didn't want to leave.

Chapter 7: The Meter Keeps Ticking

Four months changed him.

Bruno trained him at dawn and his thin frame filled out with muscle he never knew he had. He learned to take a punch, then to throw one. By month two they were calling him "The Meter," because he kept ticking long after other men quit. By month three he was on the Saturday card, streamed live to thousands of anonymous bettors, and the whole cellar chanted his name.

Roxanne stitched him up after every fight. "You enjoy this a bit too much," she said once, pressing gauze to his eyebrow.

"Is that bad?"

"Dunno yet." She held his eye. "Ask me later."

Tito tailed him like a puppy. Bruno taught him to keep his guard up. Nina watched from the bar and said nothing. And Dante clapped him on the back after every win. "Best thing I ever found in the back of a cab," he'd say.

The radio played in the gym every morning. "...police raided a suspected fight venue in the east end, no arrests... the transit strike enters its second week... and the Lantern Line investigation continues..." Nobody looked up. Nobody except Nina.

But there was one habit Cal couldn't break. Some nights, after the crowd went home, he slipped round the back of the loading bay and made a phone call. Short, quiet, always the same number, always the same dark corner, always when he thought nobody was watching.

Someone was.

Chapter 8: One Phone Call Too Many

It was Tito who told.

"Boss," he whispered one Tuesday, twisting his cap. "It's Cal. He keeps sneaking off to call someone. Late at night."

Dante didn't move. For a long while he just looked at the wall.

"Police raided the east end last month," he said finally. "Somebody gave them the address."

"I don't think it's him, boss. He's family."

"Everyone's family until they're not."

The next night Dante found Cal stretching by the ring. "I need you to drive me tomorrow. Back to the main club, like the first night. Just you and me."

"Sure." Cal smiled, then saw Dante's face, and the smile slipped. "Boss? You okay?"

"Fine, my friend." Dante's voice was soft as velvet. "Everything's exactly how it should be."

The next evening the rain hammered the roof as Cal drove through an empty city. Dante sat in the back, silent and still, watching the back of his neck. Cal turned up the radio to fill the quiet.

"...the transit strike continues... a warning about illegal fight clubs spreading across the east side... the Lantern Line killings continue, and police say they are close... and tomorrow's forecast..."

In the mirror, Dante's eyes flicked up at the word "killings" and stayed there.

"You alright, boss?"

"Just drive, Cal."

He drove. And for the first time, Dante didn't look like a gangster in the mirror. He looked like a hunter counting seconds.

Chapter 9: Lights Out

The club doors were unlocked. Cal frowned. Inside, the cellar was completely dark, no music, no chatter, no ring lights.

"Boss? Where is everyone?"

Behind him, a switch clicked.

A dozen torch beams snapped on at once, and a dozen gun barrels glinted in the light, every one of them pointed at his chest. Bruno. Roxanne. Tito. Nina. Faces he'd trained next to, bled next to, laughed next to, all of them cold and calm and professional.

"What the... what is this?" He backed away. "Boss? What's going on?"

"I think you know."

"I'm not the mole!" The words cracked as they left him. "I swear! I've never talked to a cop in my life. Please, believe meeee!"

Dante stepped into the light. He wasn't smiling like a gangster anymore.

"Hahaha," he said, almost kindly. "You really think I'm a club owner?"

Before Cal could answer, a sound rose outside, thin and far away at first. A siren. Then another, then a dozen, wailing down the harbour road and getting closer.

"Ambulance," Cal muttered. "No, no, wait..." The pitch was wrong. The rhythm was wrong. Blue light pulsed through the grating at the top of the stairs. "Police."

The colour drained out of his face. He looked haunted, like a man hearing his own name read out in a crowded room. Slowly, he turned back to Dante.

"Dante Rossi," said Dante. "Assistant Commissioner of Police. And we know you're the Lantern Line killer."

The floor dropped out from under Cal.

"Four women dead," Dante went on, quietly. "All of them took a taxi home the night they died. We narrowed it down to nine drivers. One was so forgettable that nobody could even describe his face. He'd never confess, so we handed him a thrill and watched."

"That's insane," Cal said. "You've got nothing on me."

"We've got plenty." Dante nodded. "Nina."

Nina stepped forward with a tablet. "Four women, four bookings through your dispatch app. Every one was picked up by your cab, and every ride was marked cancelled six minutes later. Your GPS goes dark each time and comes back on at the old rail yard."

"Coincidence."

"Then explain this." Bruno held up a clear evidence bag. "A silver bracelet, a hair clip, a lipstick, a ring. Found in your spare-tyre well while you were sleeping off Saturday's fight. Each one belongs to a victim, and your prints are all over them."

Roxanne lowered her gun an inch. "And those late-night calls, Cal. They weren't to a cop. They were to a dead woman's voicemail, from a burner we've been tracking since your first week. You were listening to her greeting."

"Four months," Nina said, her voice finally breaking. "We watched you for four months."

Cal looked from face to face. Friends, he'd thought. Family. And every punch, every laugh, every lesson had been a stage built around him.

For a moment the old pleading was back in his eyes. Then something in his face went smooth and still, and slowly, horribly, he smiled.

"Took you long enough," he said.

Chapter 10: The Last Fare

They cuffed him on the cellar floor. The metal was colder than any rain that had ever hit his windshield.

Bruno took his trophy belt. Tito wouldn't look at him. Roxanne read him his rights, and as she did she murmured, "I told you to ask me later."

The operation had a name, though few outside the department would ever hear it. The files called it Operation Last Fare. Every journey ends somewhere, Dante told the press. Even a taxi's.

The trial was short. There was a voicemail recording, four keepsakes found under the spare tyre in the boot, and a confession Cal gave with a shrug. The detectives asked him why, three separate times. "Because it was fun," he said every time, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Life, said the judge.

What nobody in the courtroom knew was that someone else had been waiting for that verdict. The morning after the tunnel, Dante had sat across from a hollow-eyed man in a quiet room and, instead of arresting him, listened.

"Don't do anything stupid," Dante had told him. "Wait. When it's over, I'll give him to you."

On his third night in custody, the radio in the guard post murmured down the corridor. "...a man has been sentenced today for the Lantern Line killings..." Cal lay on his bunk and, for the first time in months, felt nothing at all.

His cell door slid open. A tall man in a borrowed guard's jacket stepped in, hollow-eyed, scarred knuckles. Cal knew that face. He'd seen it once before, in the window of a black pickup, in the rain.

"Maddy," Cal whispered.

"Matthew Hale," the man said. "Maddy to the people who loved me. My sister Clara got into your cab on the fourteenth of March."

"I..."

"I followed you for six months. Saw your plate outside her building the week she vanished. I shot at you in that tunnel, and Rossi knew exactly who I was. He didn't arrest me. He told me to wait." He drew a pistol with a long silencer on the barrel. "Today's the day."

Cal looked at the gun. Then at the man. And something strange happened. He started to laugh.

"What's funny?" Maddy asked.

"Clara," Cal said, wiping his eyes. "Was she the blonde one? Blondie? She really seemed to love my touch."

Maddy's arm moved before he finished. The barrel cracked into Cal's nose and blood ran down his lip. His head snapped back, and he only laughed harder, spitting red onto the floor.

"Alright," he said at last, still grinning. "Fine. Make this over with."

There was a soft cough, like someone clearing their throat in a library. Cal's laugh stopped halfway. He slid down the wall, still smiling, and the meter finally stopped.

From that day on, the radio in the taxi stayed silent, the cab sitting in the police yard with its mirrors gone and its engine cold. And the city, which had listened every night for news of the Lantern Line, was silent as it should be.

The End.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, hosted by Hashtag Kalakar, is a prestigious event celebrating the power of words across genres. This platform encourages writers from around the world to showcase their talent and creativity, offering a stage for diverse voices and inspiring narratives. Participants contribute unique pieces that resonate with readers globally, highlighting the transformative impact of storytelling.

We extend our sincere thanks to Karthik Shaswath Raghav for sharing "The Last Fare" with us as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Raghav's story invites readers to explore the depths of suspense and the complexities of human behavior. We look forward to more inspiring works from him in the future.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.