Last Bus

The bus came through my neighborhood every night at 11:47.

I knew because I heard it before I saw it. The low engine hum. The soft rattle of windows. The sigh of brakes somewhere down the road. Even when I wasn’t looking for it, my body recognized the sound.

It never stopped.

There was no bus stop on my street. No sign, no bench, no schedule posted anywhere. It just passed by, carrying strangers who were going somewhere else.

Until the night it slowed down.

I was standing on my porch, keys in hand, locked out of my own house. My phone was dead, and the air had that quiet heaviness that only comes late at night. No dogs barking. No cars passing. Just the streetlight flickering like it might give up any second.

Then I heard the bus.

But this time, the engine softened. The headlights washed over my lawn and lingered there, like the driver was considering something.

The bus stopped in front of my house.

The doors opened with a tired hiss.

For a moment, I didn’t move. My first thought was that this had to be a mistake. The second was that maybe it had always been meant to stop, and I’d just never noticed.

The driver didn’t look at me. He stared straight ahead, hands resting loosely on the wheel. His uniform looked older than it should have been, the fabric faded like it had been washed too many times.

“You getting on?” he asked, voice flat but not unkind.

I hesitated. “Where does it go?”

He shrugged. “Depends.”

That should have been my answer right there. A normal person would have stepped back, waited for the bus to move on, found another solution to a locked door.

Instead, I stepped forward.

The inside of the bus smelled like rain and dust. There were only a few passengers scattered throughout, sitting alone. None of them spoke. None of them looked at me.

I chose a seat near the middle.

The doors closed. The bus pulled away.

We drove through streets I recognized at first—corner stores, dark parks, familiar intersections—but slowly, things began to change. The buildings grew farther apart. The streetlights became fewer. The road stretched longer than it should have.

No one pulled the stop cord.

I watched the passengers carefully. A woman with her hands folded in her lap stared at the floor like she was counting something invisible. A man near the back held a briefcase that looked far too clean for this time of night.

Finally, I stood and walked toward the driver.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I think you passed my street.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“Then can you turn around?”

He shook his head. “Not until someone gets off.”

I glanced behind me. “But no one’s getting off.”

The driver’s eyes met mine in the mirror for the first time. They were tired, but not surprised.

“People get comfortable,” he said. “They forget they’re allowed to leave.”

I returned to my seat, my heart beating faster now. I tried the stop cord. It didn’t make a sound.

The road outside faded into something darker. No buildings. No signs. Just endless pavement and a sky without stars.

A voice spoke beside me.

“I got on thinking it would fix something,” the woman said softly. “It didn’t.”

The man with the briefcase looked up. “I was late,” he added. “I thought maybe this bus could take me somewhere better.”

The realization settled slowly, like fog.

This bus wasn’t about destination.

It was about delay.

I stood up again, this time without asking permission. I walked to the doors and pressed my hand against the glass.

“I want to get off,” I said.

The driver smiled, just a little. “Then knock.”

I did.

Once. Twice.

The bus jolted to a stop. The doors opened, revealing a quiet stretch of road under a pale streetlight. Nothing else. No buildings. No path forward.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s enough,” the driver said.

I stepped off. The doors closed behind me. The bus pulled away, its lights shrinking into the dark.

I stood there until the street around me shifted.

Suddenly, I was back in front of my house.

The porch light was on.

My keys were still in my hand.

The next night, at 11:47, I listened.

The bus passed my street like it always had.

It didn’t stop.