Episode notes
The narrator has worked the graveyard shift at the Starlight Diner for as long as they can remember. That should probably bother them more than it does—the not remembering. But the nights are long, and thinking too hard makes them longer.
The regulars make it bearable. Marla, who orders decaf at midnight and stares at headlights that never arrive. Doug the trucker, who nurses a single cup for hours. The teenager in the corner booth, hunched over a phone with no signal, hiding from something she can't outrun.
And Mr. Carroll. Every night at exactly 2:15 AM. Coffee and cherry pie. Five-dollar tip on a four-dollar check. A nod like they've shared something important.
Then the narrator finds a newspaper someone left on the counter. Mr. Carroll's face smiles from an obituary dated six months ago. Heart attack. Passed peacefully. No surviving family.
The newspaper is six months old. But Mr. Carroll walks in at 2:15, same as always, moving to his booth with measured steps, eating pie he doesn't seem to taste, looking through the narrator at something just behind their face.
One by one, the narrator searches the regulars. Car accident. Overdose. Missing for two years.
Everyone in the diner is dead.
Everyone except—
The search results load. The photo shows a face that used to be theirs. The obituary is dated eight months ago.