undead

Late at night, when it is cool outside and the streets are quiet, I go running. Sometimes I get a late start and I am out running very late indeed.

My path takes me by a cemetery. And very often, around 11 or midnight, I see a single taxi parked in front of the gate. The lights and engine are on, and the driver is sitting inside. It is hard to tell, but I think he is asleep, or resting.

It is very quiet late at night, and my thoughts tend to drift as I run, and as often as not they drift to whose taxi it is, and what brings him out the cemetery each night at midnight. If he goes alone, why does he go? And if he is waiting for someone, for whom is he waiting?

Maybe he is on the night shift, and waits for a call somewhere he expects not to be disturbed. But why wait in front of the cemetery?

Maybe he is homeless, and parks his taxi in an unvisited, out-of-the-way place so he can get some sleep. But then why would he leave his lights on?

Maybe he is the getaway car for a thriving industry of grave robbers. But if there's a thriving industry of grave robbers, how come the medical school makes everyone crowd around the same old corpse because of a constant cadaver shortage?

Maybe he's one of those ghost hunters, and the back of his taxi is filled with magnetic field detectors and stuff and he's just sitting there, watching the readings and ready to jump out with a video camera on a moment's notice. But why would he always stay in the car?

Maybe his passenger is a broken-hearted widow or widower, who comes each night to the grave of their beloved. Maybe he has read Poe's Annabel Lee too many times, and so all the night tide he lays down by her side, his darling his darling his life and his bride in her tomb by the side of the sea. But we're a bit far away from the ocean.

Maybe he's waiting for the zombie uprising, when the dead rise from their graves and shamble towards the bright warm neighborhoods of the living, and figures he can make a few extra bucks carrying the ones who are too cool to shamble. But why would he expect zombies to have money on them?

The mystery deepens.