The Taxi Only Comes at Midnight

I first noticed it two weeks after moving into Apartment 7B.

Every night at exactly 12:00 a.m., a black taxi pulls up to the curb outside my building. Its headlights cut through the mist like twin blades. The engine hums low, steady, as if it’s been waiting for centuries to be heard. Then it just... waits.

I assumed it was someone’s late-night ride at first. Maybe a neighbor working a graveyard shift. But no one ever comes out to greet it. No driver steps out. No door opens. And at exactly 12:10 a.m., it drives away, vanishing into the empty street like smoke.

It happened again. And again. Always the same.

So last night, I did something I wasn’t sure I had the nerve for.

I got in.

---

It was cold inside the taxi. Colder than it should’ve been. The kind of cold that creeps beneath your skin and makes your bones remember sadness.

The driver didn’t speak. I couldn’t even see his face, just the faint outline of a cap and gloved hands on the wheel. A quiet, vintage jazz tune played on the radio — something from another era, soft and warped like an old memory.

I cleared my throat. “Where are we going?”

He didn’t answer.

The city outside the windows looked… off. Familiar buildings in the wrong places. Streetlights blinking in patterns that didn’t feel random. The people we passed—if they were people—moved like they were stuck between frames of film, stuttering through time.

I pressed my hand against the window, and it felt like glass and something else — something humming and alive.

After what felt like hours but could’ve been minutes, the taxi stopped.

---

We were in front of a small diner with no name, glowing faintly under a flickering neon sign that just said: OPEN.

I stepped out. The door creaked behind me as I entered.

The air inside was warm, filled with the scent of coffee and pie and something softer — like nostalgia. There were people in the booths, talking in hushed tones, none of them making eye contact. The waitress behind the counter looked up and smiled like she’d been expecting me.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I wasn’t told where I was going.”

“Doesn’t mean you didn’t need to be here.”

She poured me a cup of coffee without asking. I took a sip. It was perfect. Not just good—perfect. Like every warm drink you’ve ever needed during your coldest hour.

Then a voice behind me whispered my name.

I turned.

It was my mother.

But she had died five years ago.

She looked the same. Younger, maybe. Healthier. Her eyes held no pain.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, reaching out like we’d just seen each other yesterday.

I couldn’t speak.

“I only have a few minutes,” she said. “The taxi waits for no one.”

We talked. I don’t know how long. She didn’t explain how or why. Just smiled. Told me she was proud of me. Told me to let go of the guilt. That her leaving wasn’t my fault. That I could stop punishing myself now.

I cried.

When I turned to wipe my tears, she was gone. And the waitress was at my side again.

“Time to go.”

---

The taxi was waiting where I’d left it.

This time, as we drove, the streets felt calmer. The glitching figures were gone. The lights seemed to flicker more warmly.

When we pulled up to my building again, the driver finally spoke.

“Next time, bring someone who needs to say goodbye.”

I blinked. “There’ll be a next time?”

He didn’t answer. But as I stepped out and turned around, the taxi was already gone — dissolved into the misty night like it had never existed.

---

It’s been five nights since.

The taxi still comes at midnight.

And now, I wait too.
Just in case someone else needs that ride.