Night Tram

The heater clicked all night but never caught. By morning, the air inside Arman’s apartment was colder than the hallway. The ashtray beside him was full of butts pressed in, almost like coins at the bottom of a wishing well, and on the windowsill, a mug of something that used to be coffee had grown a thin white film. It pulsed faintly when the wind pushed through the cracked pane, rising and falling with every sour breeze.

Arman didn’t throw it out. He hadn’t thrown anything out in a while. He rolled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, sat on the edge of the mattress, and stared at the mug. A few more days and he could give it a name.

Puffles, maybe. If he had a phone, he’d create a TikTok page for it. People nowadays consumed anything that fit a five second attention span. Puffles surely wouldn’t take up much more than that. Just some shaky footage of the moldy patch pulsing in the cold breeze. Some silly sound to go with it.

‘Day 4 of mold pet Puffles vibing in the window.’

If he filmed it right, maybe Puffles would go viral and someone would send money. He smirked without showing teeth. The blanket slipped from his shoulders when he stood on damp socks. If that was from last night’s sweat or from when he stepped into something sticky on the kitchen tiles last night—well, he had no clue. But he also didn’t care.

Arman had long stopped caring about anything.

He headed straight for the pot on the stove, ignoring the fridge. He knew too well that it contained nothing but a wrinkled lemon, a pack of crusty mustard, a bag of grated cheese that had compacted into a single object, and various half-finished Karina-sponsored lunches he was ‘keeping for later’ but which he would never touch.

He lit the gas stove for warmth, boiling the old pot of leftover coffee as he stood and warmed his hands, staring out into the street. On the table, next to the coins he’d stacked and re-stacked last night, lay a crumpled note. Karina’s handwriting; soft, slanted, and annoying.

You don’t have to say anything. Just come eat. I can make lentil soup. I left the door open a crack.

He hadn’t gone. He thought about it now, though. Briefly. Thought about the soup. Thought about the way her apartment always smelled like thyme and boiled tea towels. The thought passed.

His jacket was still damp from yesterday, but he pulled it on anyway. Change rattled in the pocket. Not a lot, but enough to feel like maybe something was possible today. One pull. One spin. Five to seven agonozing seconds to change everything. He turned off the stove and stood still for a moment, arms limp at his sides, listening to nothing.

Through the window, the city stretched like a grey tongue lapping at itself. A thick, uneven smear of buildings, glass, exhaust, and people. Billboards glared from rooftops, flickering half-phrases about weight loss and getaway deals. Neon signs blinked in unfamiliar alphabets. Between them all: air dense with noise. Sirens bleeding into each other. There were no trees. No grass. No place to sit unless you paid for something first. The only birds left were the ones that had learned how to eat cigarette butts and land on hot concrete. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw a star. Or the moon, really. Light pollution didn’t even feel like pollution anymore. It was just how the sky looked.

He had no reason to go out there. His two-hour cleaning shift wouldn’t start until tonight and the coins in his pocket weren’t enough for a full spin at any of the newer places. Maybe a few pulls at the rusted machines, but only if they didn’t jam. But he couldn’t stay here either.

Karina might come back. Might ask him things again. Might offer to drive him back to the clinic. Might open the windows without asking, set a thermos of soup on the counter, write another note in her neat, pitiful handwriting.

And he couldn’t take that.

He shoved the coins deeper into his coat pocket, suddenly in a rush, suddenly somewhat stressed that she might show up in the next couple minutes. He jammed the door shut behind him and didn’t bother locking it. Not like there was anything worth stealing. Not unless someone wanted a stained mattress, sweaty sheets, a rusting stove, and the companionship of Puffles the Mug.

The hallway light flickered overhead, buzzing like it was trying to die but couldn’t quite finish the job. Someone had left a plastic bag by the stairwell, leaking something red onto the concrete. Not blood. Tomato sauce maybe. Or rotten fruits. It didn’t really matter. Nothing that lived in this building ever went anywhere good.

He shoved the thought aside and stepped into the crowded street.

Wet pavement, sour diesel, damp wool, not exactly the nicest smells in the morning, but so was he. People walked with their heads down, necks hunched, earbuds jammed in like they were afraid of accidentally hearing each other. A man argued with no one at the bus stop, a dog gnawed away at a dead bird, its tiny stomach filled with plastics and cigarettes. No one looked up. No one made space.

And in the middle of it all, splitting the sidewalk was a length of tram rail. The corner of it caught the heel of his boot and nearly twisted his ankle. He cursed, hopped once, then kept walking. He stepped over another rail, this one so warped it had cracked the concrete around it. The third rail sloped unevenly across the sidewalk like someone had tried to dig it out and given up halfway. Rust bled from its sides into the concrete, forming a cracked, reddish smear that looked too much like dried blood to ignore and too common to be worth reacting to.

He stepped over it, glancing at it longer than he should. Arman remembered being told once, when he was younger, that the rails used to lead somewhere good. To rivers. To forests. To edges of the city where stars still lived and the air didn’t taste like wet metal. But that was a different city. This one had no place for rivers or forests or stars.

He passed a chunk of curb where someone had spray-painted over a plaque. Beneath the chipping black letters, you could still barely read: Tram Line — Decommissioned, 1993. The paint made it look like a mouth had been sewn shut. Which was a good fit because nobody talked about the Night Tram anymore. Not in full sentences or out loud. But the rumor still circled. Muted things kids said behind playground fences or drunkards gossiped about inside stairwells that reeked of piss and aerosol.

He didn’t believe in it, of course. Not really. The Night Tram was just one of those stories that stuck around because the city had nothing better to offer. You couldn’t scream into the forest anymore; the last tree had been cut down when he had started school. And you couldn’t throw your grief into the river anymore because that one had been paved shut long before he had been born.

So people had gotten inventive. You didn’t tell the forest or the river spirits. You told the dying coal in the stove. The creaking graveyard gate. The angel statue in the museum; the one that had its eyes stolen and where red rust seeped out when it got too wet in the building. Or you told the Night Tram. Just that the Night Tram, or any kind of tram for that matter, had been decommissioned years ago as well.

He stepped over another set of rails, these ones barely visible. A crushed soda can had been wedged between the rails like some half-assed offering. Arman stopped and stared at it. Before he knew it, he fumbled in his pockets for a coin and tossed it against the can. He laughed when it went spinning straight into the narrow opening, as if hiding from him in there.

“Just my goddamn luck.” he muttered, shaking his head. Then again, maybe he was having some luck. Maybe today would finally change everything. Perhaps this was a sign to just go for it. To play a new machine. He gave the can a little kick with the toe of his boot, but it didn’t budge. Jammed between the rails, half-crushed, the slit just wide enough to swallow one coin too many. His coin.

Not that it mattered. Still, it bothered him.

He crouched, tried to fish the coin out with his index finger, but all he managed was to cut himself faintly on a sharper piece of metal. He scoffed and stood up, heading for the bar at the end of the street, his heart picking up pace the closer he got to the cracked leather seats in front of the slot machines. The place reeked of old fry oil, liquor sweat, and those plug-in air fresheners that did nothing.

There weren’t many people inside. A few hunched over drinks. One guy snoring against the jukebox. Arman ignored the bar stools and headed for the row of slot machines lining the back. He chose the second from the end, the one with the chipped chrome handle and screen burn that made every cherry look like it was on fire. He fed it a few coins, pulled, and leaned back.

777, a lemon, a broken horseshoe.

Nothing.

Nothing again.

Again.

Again and again.

He slipped into the rhythm easily. Coins, pull, blink. Sometimes the machine buzzed. Sometimes it clunked. Most of the time, it took away his smile. Once it had him on the edge of his seat, only to ruin his hope entirely. At some point, a drink arrived on the side table. He didn’t remember ordering it, but he drank it. Then another. The ice had mostly melted in the last one, and the bar had gotten dimmer. He only noticed how much time had slipped when he saw the janitor wheeling out a mop bucket.

Shit. His shift.

Arman pushed his glass away as if that might rewind something. He stood too quickly, the room tilted, and when he fumbled for some coins to leave by his seat, his hand found none.

He left before anyone spoke to him, heart pounding, face flushed.

Outside, the air felt colder than it should have been for that hour, though what hour it was, he couldn’t say. The streetlights were on, but so were the shop signs. And the sky was always bright in a way. Lit up by neon signs and street lights too bright for anyone’s liking. The pavement shimmered with thin puddles that reflected the ugly underbelly of buildings instead of stars. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets but they felt colder on the inside than the air outside did.

The streets had thinned while he’d been inside. The usual rush dulled to a kind of late-night shuffle. A few stragglers. Delivery bikes humming down streets. A woman arguing with someone through her phone screen. A cat dragging something limp across the concrete.

The bar was behind him, and somewhere farther behind that was his job. He imagined the manager sighing when his name didn’t light up on the check-in screen. Maybe marking him off on the clipboard. Maybe not even that. They probably had already started looking for someone new, someone hungrier.

He wasn’t really sure where to go. At home, there certainly would be Karina. At work, there certainly would be problems. And another bar would very certainly be a whole different problem.

So Arman went past shuttered storefronts, graffiti curls, alleyway smells. He stepped over a fallen shoe without looking down to see if there was still a foot in it. A rail. Another rail. Left. He slowed, turned a corner as he stepped across more and more rails.

And then, there it was. A tram car.

Not one of the sleek new buses with cold LED lights and ads for protein drinks, no. This thing had bones. Thick metal, chipped paint, flickering lights. The doors were open, and there was a faint metallic tick echoing from it, like it had only just pulled in.

His first thought was: This has to be a prop. A stunt. Some immersive ad campaign maybe. Some viral performance art dropped into the city to stir conversation. But then again, what kind of stunt chose a street so far off? At this hour? Him?

Arman glanced around. No camera crew. No influencer with a ring light.

He stepped closer, stealing a second glance at the massive car. The metal was rusted where it met the curb, the paint along the bottom scraped. It had a smell too. Dust and engine grease. But under that, something vaguely floral. Like the dried flowers Karina used to press into shapes before making tea with them for him.

He peered inside, half expecting her to sit there. A muted glow seeped from fixtures overhead, casting long shadows between the rows of seats. No driver. No passengers. The seats were mismatched; some leather, some fabric, one was a bus bench that had been jammed in sideways and duct-taped to fit.

He lingered in the doorway, then boarded the car. The doors hissed shut behind him. He spun, startled, but the motion was soft. He backed into the nearest seat as the tram began to move. Overhead, the lights pulsed once, then dimmed. From the far end of the tram, a sign flickered to life.

NIGHT TRAM

Arman stared at it. The words twitched between fonts. Serif, sans-serif, then something handwritten and cursive that looked like it had been scratched in with a pin. The panel buzzed softly, like a fly was trapped behind it. Then it fell dark again.

The tram sped up, but there was still no driver. Arman darted off his seat and into the front, but there were no control panels. No buttons. No brake. No wheel. No lever. And yet, the tram moved. He stepped back, breath rising in faint clouds, hairs on his neck rising. The floor vibrated underfoot now, the tram swayed with every curve, and Arman found himself struggling to stand. So he stumbled back into the nearest seat, gripping the metal pole next to it tightly.

The tram kept gliding forward, unbothered by where the rails were in bad shape or where it was going at all. Through the windows, the city unspooled in impossible ways. Streets he didn’t know folded into ones he vaguely remembered, and a corner shop he swore had burned down last year flickered past, its neon “OPEN” sign sparking out a few seconds too late.

The tram slowed again and Arman got up, deciding it was best to get off before it drove him into a ditch. He lingered in the doorway, looking for a button to open them. Or a handle. But nothing like that seemed to exist. When the tram finally came to a halt, he spotted someone outside.

A woman. Or the outline of one.

Hair pinned up in a messy swirl, hands clutching a plastic bag. Her face was too blurred to make out. She stepped forward, Arman heard the doors hiss open, but the doors in front of him remained locked.

The woman never boarded. Or so it seemed.

When the tram lurched back into motion, Arman stumbled into his seat by the sheer force of it, briefly passing the reflection of the tram in a display window outside. There was a second silhouette now, right behind his own. He turned, but the seat behind him was empty.

He didn’t move at first. Didn’t breathe, even. Just stared at the vacant seat behind him, the cracked vinyl catching the low light in a way that made it look wet. It was empty. He knew it was. He could see that it was empty.

And yet…

Arman turned slowly back to the window. The tram glided past another glass storefront, this one a pawn shop with bars welded across the display, and in its dirty reflection, the silhouette was still there. Still seated directly behind him. He whipped around again.

Empty.

He stayed facing the back of the tram for a while, as if daring something to happen. A cough. A shift in the seat cushions. But nothing happened. When he turned forward again, the tram slowed down once more and someone stepped in.

A boy, maybe thirteen. Wearing a hoodie two sizes too big and headphones twisted around his neck. His eyes were shadowed under the hood, but his mouth was slightly open, like he was mid-conversation. Arman bolted up, seeing the doors being wide open, but despite the brief distance to them, they had shut by the time he had reached them. It had been a matter of seconds, but his feet had felt like molten into lead. Breathing was hard. So was the pounding in his chest.

The boy didn’t glance at him. And by the time Arman had turned to look where the kid was sitting down, the boy had vanished, leaving only a reflection in the glass somewhere in the back.

Arman swallowed hard. Instead of returning to his seat, he walked down the narrow aisle, one hand grazing the tops of the seats to steady himself. When he reached the row where the boy should have been, he stopped.

Empty.

He leaned across the seat, staring into the window beside it. The glass showed the boy clearly. Hoodie. Headphones. Knees bouncing once, twice. But the seat? Nothing. No boy.

Arman went to the row behind his old seat. The glass beside it showed the woman. Not as clear as the boy was shown in the other window, but enough to notice her. Briefly, he looked at his own seat and slowly, he took his place once more. Turning his head, he glanced into the window right next to it, watching the city bleed in and out of existence outside, but there was no sign of him. No reflection. No silhouette.

For a moment he thought it was just the angle. So, to fix that, he leaned closer to the glass.

Nothing.

The city slid by in streaks of sodium orange and sickly white, the seats filling with each stop, reflections everywhere, but where Arman should have been, there was a gap. He looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers. Felt the pull of his knuckles. The dryness in his skin. He pressed his palm flat against the window but no print formed. The glass remained untouched. More shapes began to appear in the windows along the aisle. One in a hospital gown. One in a stained work uniform. A man clutching something to his chest. None of them turned their heads. None of them acknowledged one another. And yet, in the glass, they were close. Shoulder to shoulder.

The tram slowed again. This time, the stop looked familiar.

His building.

The cracked stairwell window. The plastic bag by the entrance. The faint red smear on the concrete. The doors slid open in front of him. His heart began to pound.

He had to get up. He had to leave. He needed to—

The reflections around him leaned forward, expectant. The boy’s reflection turned his head slightly. And for the first time, Arman saw his face clearly.

It was him.

Thirteen. Hoodie too big. Headphones around his neck. Mouth open mid-sentence. The version of him that still thought rails led somewhere good. The woman’s reflection shifted. Not him, but Karina.

The stained work uniform.

Him.

The hospital gown.

Arman shot to his feet and went into the row behind him, feeling for the woman.

“Karina. Karina we need to get off. This is—” But the window didn’t show a reflection anymore. Not hers, at least. And not his own either. The glass had gone dark. The overhead sign flickered again, but this time it didn’t show words. It showed numbers.

03:17
02:42
02:09

A countdown.

The air inside the tram shifted; thickened. That faint floral smell deepened, turned sweet and rotten at once. Like flowers left too long in the water. The windows began to fill with scenes. In the pane beside him, he saw his apartment. Not as it had been this morning, but days later. The mug on the sill blackened. The ashtray overturned. The heater still clicking.

Another window lit up. Karina’s apartment. Soup congealed in a pot. A note on the counter. Different handwriting.

I tried.

The hospital gown flickered again in the glass across from him. He saw himself in it now, clearer. Pale. Lips cracked. Machines beeping somewhere out of frame. No visitors. The boy appeared in the far window, but not seated. Standing on the rails. Waiting.

And the numbers kept falling.

01:58
01:22

The tram moved away from his building and soon, the city thinned. Buildings stretched apart. Streetlights flickered out one by one as the tram passed them. The rails beneath hummed, glowing faintly red, as if heat was building below. The windows no longer showed the street. They showed rails.

Endless rails.

He needed air. He needed—

—out.

Arman staggered as the tram sped up. The reflections turned their heads to the front, where the driver’s cabin now wasn’t empty anymore. A figure stood there now, back turned. Tall. Shoulders narrow beneath a long, black coat that dripped as though perpetually rain-soaked.

Arman’s ears rang. Beneath the hum of rails, beneath the rattle of metal, there was another sound. A low murmur. The boy’s reflection stepped closer to the glass. “You know what this is” he said but Arman didn’t know.

“I don’t.”

The boy tilted his head the way he used to when his parents had lied to him. The figure at the front lifted one hand. Long fingers. White glove. The air grew thinner. The rails outside were no longer beneath asphalt. They cut through a marsh of black water and skeletal trees. The sky above had no stars, only a dull red glow. Arman tried the doors again but they would not budge.

“Am I going to hell?”

00:14

He thought of the soup. Karina’s handwriting. And that pitiful look the boy was giving him.

“Is that all I’ve grown into? Seeing hell everywhere?”

The conductor’s gloved hand hovered between two levers that did not exist. Arman turned to the window again. The marsh outside pulsed faintly. The skeletal trees swayed, though there was no wind. He stepped away from the glass.

“I’m not ready.” he whispered. The boy’s voice came again, though his mouth didn’t move. “No one ever is.”

00:08

He smelled burning fabric. Antiseptic. Old engine oil. Grave dirt.

“I wanted more for me. This can’t be how I end.”

So did I, Arman thought, but the words didn’t come out. I wanted to get better. I tried. He clenched his fists. Skin pale, knuckles white. The marsh outside shimmered, the tram jolted like it had slipped a gear, as if it was about to plunge somewhere beneath the rails. He stumbled down the aisle, grabbing seats, knocking into invisible knees, brushing against the invisible shoulders of passengers, looking for a way out.

“Let me off.”

The conductor did not turn. Arman staggered to the front again. The rails ahead split into two blazing lines that curved in opposite directions: one sinking into black water, the other climbing toward a faint, colourless horizon. Arman wanted to go neither way. But a glimpse later, he knew he didn’t have to. He lunged toward the emergency hammer mounted beside the front window. He hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it hadn’t even been there. But he reached for it, pulled it off the wall, and swung it into the nearest window.

The glass didn’t shatter.

00:06

He gritted his teeth, raised the hammer once more, and slammed it forward with everything he had. The tram jolted violently, red sky shattering into streetlights, marsh collapsing into pavement. The boy looked at him one last time.

“You can’t ride life halfway.” he said.

And then Arman was on his back, staring up at sodium streetlight, the rails beneath him rusted and cold. He rolled onto his side and vomited. He lay there for a long moment, cheek pressed to damp concrete, breathing in the stink of the city until he pushed himself up on shaking arms. His head pounded and his coat was soaked through with sweat, clinging to his spine. He staggered to his feet.

He half expected to see the rails split again, to feel the air thicken, to hear the numbers counting down inside his skull. But the only countdown was the blinking crosswalk light at the end of the street.

He looked down at his hands. They were scraped.

Real scrapes.

Behind him loomed his building. He could go up. Crawl back into the apartment. Let the heater click and never catch. Let Puffles thicken and bloom. Let the notes from Karina gather on the table. That was one rail.

The other—

He turned his head slowly. Karina’s building was three blocks down, past the shuttered bakery and the pharmacy with the permanent “Renovation Sale” sign. His legs carried him forward, one block, then another. The city did not soften for him. It did not grow trees or reveal stars. It remained a suffocating concrete hellhole. Sirens still bled into each other. Neon still blinked in foreign alphabets. But his chest hurt differently now.

He reached Karina’s building and raised his hand to knock, let it hover there. He could still turn back. Pretend none of it happened. Tell himself it was the alcohol. Stress. Or he could stop riding halfway. So he knocked. Soft at first. Then again. Louder. The door opened a crack, just like the note had promised, and Karina’s face appeared in the gap.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t have a clever line. He just stood there, breathing hard, eyes red, and said, “I don’t want to disappear.”

Boarding the Night Tram is easy.
But getting off takes something most people don’t have left.