The Regular at the Last Stop Diner
Working the night shift at the Last Stop Diner is a strange, liminal experience that messes with your sense of reality. Most people are asleep, but my world starts when the sun goes down. My shift starts at midnight and goes until eight in the morning, right when the early commuters start shuffling in for their breakfast scrambles. During those dark hours, you see a specific kind of clientele. There are the college kids pulling all-nighters, truck drivers with heavy eyes needing a caffeine hit to keep their rigs moving, and the lonely souls who are clearly avoiding going home to empty houses. Most of them are normal enough, just tired people looking for a bit of comfort food. But then there are the others, the ones who do not fit into the rhythm of the city. Take the Man in the Tan Coat, for instance. He has been appearing in my diner for exactly two weeks now. He walks through the glass door at exactly 3:00 AM every single night, without fail. He does not even check the clock; he just glides in as if he is synchronized with the universe. He always heads straight for the back booth, the one where the vinyl seat is ripped right down the middle and the laminate table wobbles every time you lean your elbows on it. He never even glances at the laminated menu. He sits down, removes his tan coat, and lays it neatly over the back of the chair. I walk over with my coffee pot, and he orders the exact same thing every time: black coffee and two slices of dry, unbuttered toast. He never touches the toast. It sits there, cold and hardening, while he stares unblinkingly out at the rain-slicked parking lot. On that first night, I felt a bit sorry for him. I thought he was just another lonely guy struggling with insomnia. I tried to be friendly, cracking a little joke about how the coffee is strong enough to wake the dead. He turned his head slowly, and his eyes were way too bright for 3:00 AM. They had this intense, piercing quality that made me want to look away. He asked me, in a voice like dry leaves skittering on pavement, if I thought the darkness was getting crowded. I was so caught off guard that I just stammered something about the diner being quiet. I retreated behind the counter and scrubbed the same spot for ten minutes, my heart thumping against my ribs. Since that night, he has said something cryptic every single shift. Last night, he asked if I heard the hum. He claimed it was vibrating through the floorboards. I told him it was just our aging refrigerator, which groans like a dying beast half the time. He just gave me a thin, cold smile that did not touch his eyes. It was a smile that made my skin crawl. That is the hardest part about working the night shift. You get used to the isolation, you start to like the silence, but when someone weird shows up, it makes your nerves fray. The real problem is that my coworkers, Mike and Sarah, absolutely do not see him. I have tried talking to them about it, but they just look at me with pity. When I point toward the back booth, they look, shrug, and say the booth is empty. They think I am hallucinating because I am drinking way too much caffeine or because I am burnt out from the hours. They tell me to go easy on the espresso, but I know he is there. I hear the distinct metallic click of his spoon against the ceramic mug. I see the wisps of steam curling up from his coffee, dancing in the harsh overhead light. He is real to me. Sometimes I feel like I am the only person truly awake in this entire town. Everyone else seems to be stuck in a deep, collective dream. I have started brewing an extra pot of coffee specifically for him, just in case, even if I end up drinking the sludge myself when the sun comes up. I have developed a weird, irrational fear that if I stop preparing for him, he might decide to walk over to the counter. I do not want to see what is under that heavy tan coat, and I do not want him any closer to me. I have stopped trying to tell my coworkers about it because I do not want to be the crazy person on the staff. So, I keep my mouth shut, scrub the tables, and watch the digital clock on the wall tick closer to 3:00 AM. I keep the neon lights buzzing and the dining room as bright as possible, hoping to chase away the shadows. But no matter how many lights I turn on, the darkness seems to be creeping further into the corners, inching closer to my station every single night.