The Driver Who Found Out His Last Passenger Every Night… Was Always the Same Person, Though Their Face Changed

At midnight, New York City seemed to float in a deceptive calm. From behind the wheel of his silver sedan, Ethan watched the traffic lights pulse against his windshield like the heartbeat of something tired. He’d been driving for a rideshare app for three years, but lately, something strange had been haunting him: his last passenger every night was always someone different — and yet, not.
It all started on a rainy night in January. The app pinged a pickup request in a quiet street of Brooklyn. A young woman stood there — black hair, red lips, a coat that smelled like expensive perfume. She spoke little, but her eyes pierced right through him.
“Could you take me to Greenwood Cemetery?” she asked calmly.
Ethan hesitated. Nobody went there at 2 a.m. But he accepted. The woman said nothing else. When they arrived, she paid in cash, smiled faintly, and disappeared through the shadows of the main gate.
The next night, same time, another request. Same pickup point, same destination. But this time, it was a man — tall, bearded, with a gray scarf. What unsettled Ethan was how the man’s voice, his gaze out the window, even the trembling of his hands, were identical to the woman from the night before.
And that’s how it began. Every night a different person — an old lady with a cane, a teenager with headphones, a pregnant woman, a man in a suit. All silent during the ride, all staring at the moon, and all saying the same thing when they left: “Thank you, Ethan.”
At first, he thought it was coincidence. A weird glitch in the app. But one night, after dropping off a passenger at the cemetery gate, he noticed the air was colder than usual. And on the back seat lay a fresh bouquet of flowers.
“When did you put that there?” he murmured to the mirror.
No response. The app had frozen. No sign that anyone had even been there.
From then on, Ethan started keeping track. Names, faces, times. All different, but connected by something unseen. He discovered each passenger had died in a car crash — the same day, but in different years. And somehow, all of them were connected to him.
One night, a new ride request came from Mount Sinai Hospital. Ethan hesitated but accepted. When he arrived, a nurse approached his car.
“Are you here for Mr. Ethan Cole?” she asked.
He swallowed. “Yes, that’s me.”
The nurse frowned. “But… that man just died ten minutes ago.”
The engine shut off by itself. In the rearview mirror, Ethan saw a figure sitting behind him. This time, the face didn’t change. It was his own.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” his reflection said.
The car began to move on its own. On the app’s screen, a new destination appeared: “Unknown.”
And for the first time, Ethan didn’t feel fear. Only peace — as if he finally understood where he’d been driving all along.
At dawn, his car was found parked in front of the cemetery, empty, engine still warm, a folded note on the passenger seat:
“Thank you for taking us home.”