The first time the ice cream truck came near midnight, Nico Rivera assumed the Ice Cream Man had decided to moonlight as a food delivery driver.
It was 11:52 on the hottest night of the summer. His bedroom fan shoved warm air from one side of the room to the other, accomplishing nothing. Down the hall, Uncle Rafa's snores started low, climbed into a mechanical grind, then rattled the walls.
Nico lay on top of his sheets in basketball shorts, arms spread wide.
"If I die of heatstroke," he told the ceiling, "put a bomb pop in my casket. I want the obituary to get one detail right."
That was when the music started.
The melody drifted through his open window, faint and slow. It was the familiar ice cream truck tune, except several notes arrived late. The machine lost the melody, paused, then found it again.
Ting, ting, ting-ding.
A pause.
Tiiiing.
Nico sat up in disbelief. Ice cream trucks came through the neighborhood at four in the afternoon, when kids had money, and parents were awake enough to regret giving it to them. They did not crawl around at midnight playing funeral music.
He checked the clock again. 11:52.
The song stopped directly outside his house.
Nico moved to the window and separated two slats of the blinds. Across the street, beneath a streetlamp that flickered every few seconds, sat an old white truck. As his eyes adjusted, the truck seemed to change. Its paint had yellowed. Cartoon popsicles smiled from the side panels, but the years had peeled away pieces of their faces. One had a single eye. Another had no mouth.
The engine was silent.
The tune came out thin and broken, each note ending with a metallic snap.
The driver sat behind the wheel with his head lowered. Nico could make out a white cap and narrow shoulders. Nothing else moved inside the cab.
The streetlamp blinked off.
For one long second, the truck disappeared.
When the light returned, the driver was looking up.
The driver was staring directly at him.
Nico let the blind snap shut and stumbled backward. He stood listening to the fan push hot air over his skin. His heartbeat made the room feel smaller.
"I'm dreaming," he whispered. "Or I'm sick. That's all."
The speaker on the truck crackled.
The melody began again, slower than before.
Then a hiss, barely heard across the night air.
Niiiiiiicoooo.
End of this online sample.