Every year John received a grungy pair of old combat boots from his father. Last year, it was a pair of desert tan coyote boots, this year it's a pair of black composite toe paratrooper boots. His father liked the high eight inch makes, and where they lacked in agility, John always gained a leg up in mobility. John was the type of young man that wished he had had the courage to join his friends in the military, and when they graduated boot camp, he was always there to watch them. One by one, he saw them deployed to war torn regions of the world. Few of his close friends made it back in one piece; few even still never returned home. Three times, John entered the marine recruitment office with the intent of taking the plunge and joining. Each time, he took a flyer, examined it mindlessly, placed it back, and left; feeling the eyes of the clerk behind the desk grilling him while he went. It was those moments, the moments where he felt that guilt, that he thought about a simple tale he had been told as a small child. The tale of the Wayfarer's Cab.
    The story goes that a taxi cab went missing from its lineup in New York, Christmas Day, eight years ago. No one was able to find the cab, police searched the borough for about a week straight, which was generous, given the city's demand for personnel. Years went by and people began to tell tales of the cab to frighten kids. Tales of how when this cab is hailed, it never arrives at its intended destination. Others would say when one climbed into the cab, they were never heard from again. To John, however, the tale never frightened him but moreso intrigued him. The optimist that he was, John wanted to believe that whoever climbed into the cab, was someone who didn't want to be found; or better yet, sought a different life outside the one plotted ahead of them.
    It was days like today; raining and bitter cold, as he tugged at the worn laces of his "new" boots, that he wished that cab would come. A day where that Wayfarer's Cab would pick him up by his bootstraps and take him to a different life. He cut off the light in the bedroom of his small one bed, one bath apartment in East Hoboken, stepped to the door and took a deep breath. 

One day. He told himself.