Latest / Creepy Stories to Fall Asleep To / I'm a Night Watchman at a Mortuary.

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I'm a Night Watchman at a Mortuary. · Creepy Stories to Fall Asleep To

0:00
I've been working nights at Riverside Mortuary for three
0:02
years by then. That's long enough to get used
0:06
to pretty much anything. And I thought I had the chemical
0:10
smell of embalming fluid that used to make my eyes water.
0:14
Barely noticed it anymore. The silence that felt like it
0:19
was pressing down on me those first few weeks.
0:23
Kind of peaceful, actually. I figured I had the place
0:27
figured out. The building itself was this old
0:31
Victorian thing on the edge of town, all dark brick and iron
0:35
gates that probably looked intimidating to most people.
0:39
Shawn Casey, my boss, like to say it had character.
0:44
I just called it old. Three stories with the business
0:48
stuff on the 1st floor, storage and prep rooms in the basement,
0:52
and Shawn's apartment up top where I never went.
0:55
The whole place felt like it was built to last forever, which I
0:59
guess made sense for the death business.
1:02
My routine was pretty simple. Show up at 11:00 PM, walk my
1:07
circuit every hour until dawn, preparation rooms, Chapel,
1:11
administrative offices, then back to my desk in the front
1:14
lobby where I'd read or mess around on my phone.
1:18
Not exactly exciting, but the pay was decent and nobody
1:22
bothered me. That was the main thing tonight.
1:27
Started wrong. From the minute I got there, my
1:31
key stuck in the front door lock.
1:34
I'd use the same key for three years, turned it in that same
1:37
lock probably 1000 times, and it always went smooth.
1:43
Tonight it felt like the metal was grinding against something.
1:47
I had to wiggle it and push hard before it finally turned.
1:51
Probably nothing, but it bugged me a little.
1:55
Inside was worse. The temperature had dropped
1:59
maybe 20° from what it should have been.
2:02
The heating system was working fine.
2:04
I could hear it running, that low hum it always made, but my
2:09
breath was coming out in little puffs like I was outside in
2:12
January. This was November in Montana,
2:16
sure, but the building was heated, had been every single
2:20
night I'd worked there. I pulled my flannel shirt
2:24
tighter and started my first round.
2:27
The prep rooms looked normal. Stainless steel tables, cabinets
2:31
full of supplies, that weird blue lighting.
2:34
Sean insisted on using everything in its place.
2:39
The Chapel was fine too, rows of chairs facing the front where
2:43
they'd set up for services. Nothing out of place there.
2:48
I checked doors and windows out of habit.
2:51
All locked, same as always. The administrative offices were
2:55
empty and cold, but that wasn't unusual.
3:00
Sean kept those locked up tight when he wasn't around.
3:03
Everything was secure until I got to the embalming suite.
3:07
That's where Sean did the actual work, down in the basement.
3:12
I usually just stuck my head in, made sure nobody had broken in
3:15
through the back entrance, then moved on.
3:19
Tonight I walked all the way inside because something felt
3:22
off. I can't really explain what,
3:25
just this feeling that something was different.
3:29
The room was set up the same as always, 2 examination tables,
3:33
one against each wall, cabinets full of chemicals and tools, a
3:38
sink in the corner. The smell was stronger down
3:42
here, that sharp medicinal scent that cut right through your
3:45
nose. One of the tables had a body on
3:48
it. That wasn't unusual by itself.
3:52
Sean often left bodies prepped for the next day's work, but
3:57
this one made me stop walking. I recognized the face.
4:01
It was mine, not like a resemblance or someone who
4:05
looked similar. My face.
4:09
My exact face, down to the scar above my left eyebrow from when
4:13
I crashed my bike into a tree when I was 12.
4:17
Same angular cheekbones, same pale skin, same brown hair that
4:21
never stayed where I wanted it to.
4:24
The body was wearing my clothes, too.
4:27
The exact flannel shirt I'd put on that evening.
4:30
Blue and green Plaid with a small tear near the left cuff
4:34
from where I'd caught it on a fence post last month.
4:37
Same jeans with a faded spot on the right knee.
4:40
Even the same boots, scuffed brown leather I'd been wearing
4:44
for two years. I just stood there for maybe 30
4:47
seconds, not really processing what I was seeing.
4:52
My brain kept trying to make it make sense.
4:55
Maybe it was someone who looked like me.
4:58
Maybe I was more tired than I thought and seeing things wrong.
5:02
But then I saw the toe tag. White paper tied around the big
5:06
toe with string procedure for everybody that came through.
5:11
I'd seen Sean fill out hundreds of them over the years.
5:15
This one had my name on it. Phoenix Tran, my birth date,
5:20
March 15th, 1995, and today's date listed as time of death.
5:27
Today, as in a few hours ago. I reached out and touched the
5:32
tag just to make sure it was real.
5:36
The paper felt normal under my fingers.
5:39
The ink was Sean's handwriting, that careful script he used for
5:43
all the official paperwork. The body, my body was cold.
5:49
I could feel that without touching it, the way cold
5:51
radiates off something when you get close enough.
5:55
But I touched the hand anyway. Just the fingertips.
5:58
Definitely dead, definitely cold.
6:02
Definitely me. I stepped back and tried to
6:06
think. This wasn't possible.
6:09
Obviously it wasn't possible, but there it was, right in front
6:13
of me, my own corpse tagged and ready for whatever came next.
6:19
My hands were shaking a little, not for the cold anymore.
6:24
I looked around the room, trying to find some explanation.
6:28
Maybe this was some kind of joke.
6:31
Sean had a weird sense of humor sometimes, though this seemed
6:35
pretty extreme even for him. Maybe it was some kind of
6:38
training thing I didn't know about, but the body looked too
6:42
real for that. The skin had that waxy quality
6:45
dead people got. The clothes were definitely
6:48
mine. I could see the exact pattern of
6:51
wear and tear I knew by heart. And the smell.
6:56
Dead bodies had a particular smell, even when they were fresh
6:59
and embalmed. This one had it.
7:03
I backed toward the door, keeping my eyes on the table.
7:08
Part of me wanted to run upstairs and call Sean, wake him
7:11
up and ask what the hell was going on.
7:14
Another part wanted to just leave, walk out of the building
7:17
and never come back. But I didn't do either of those
7:21
things. I just stood there in the
7:24
doorway, staring at my own dead face and trying to figure out
7:28
how something like this could happen.
7:31
The heating system kicked on again, that familiar hum filling
7:35
the silence. My breath was still misting in
7:38
the cold air. The fluorescent lights buzzed
7:42
overhead, casting that harsh white light that made everything
7:45
look a little unreal. I kept staring at the body, at
7:49
myself, dead on a table with a toe tag that said I died today.
7:55
I mean, the detail was insane. The scar above my left eyebrow
8:00
from when I crashed my bike into Missus Patterson's fence when I
8:03
was 8. The tear in my flannel shirt
8:06
that I got caught on the loading dock gate about two months ago.
8:10
Even the faded spot on my right knee from when I spilled bleach
8:14
doing laundry last year. Everything was perfect.
8:18
Too perfect. Sean wouldn't do this.
8:21
No way. The guy's been running this
8:23
place for 20 years, and he takes his work seriously.
8:26
Like, really seriously. He gets upset when people make
8:30
funeral director jokes. There's no chance he'd authorize
8:34
something this twisted. Even if he could somehow pull it
8:36
off, which he couldn't. Nobody could.
8:41
But there it was. Me dead.
8:43
Me with a toe tag in Sean's handwriting.
8:48
I needed to call someone. Police, probably.
8:50
Or an ambulance. I don't know.
8:54
What do you even say? Hey, I found my own corpse at
8:58
work. They'd think I was having some
9:00
kind of breakdown. I pulled out my phone and hit
9:03
the emergency call button. These are on the screen, lit up,
9:08
but where the signal bars usually were, it just showed
9:11
nothing. No bars, no no service message,
9:16
just empty space. That bugged me.
9:20
This building gets perfect reception.
9:23
I've made calls from the basement before, no problem.
9:27
Hell, I stream music during my shift sometimes.
9:31
I held the phone up, moved it around, nothing.
9:36
The screen showed it was 11:51 PM, but no signal anywhere.
9:42
Figured I'd check the security footage, maybe I could see
9:46
something that would explain this whole situation.
9:50
I headed back upstairs to the front office, my boots echoing
9:53
in the hallway. The cold was getting worse.
9:57
I could see my breath every time I exhaled.
10:01
The security monitor sits on the desk next to the main computer.
10:05
4 camera feeds on one screen. Front lobby, back entrance,
10:09
basement, hallway, and preparation room.
10:13
I looked at the timestamp in the corner of each feed. 11:47 PM.
10:20
All four cameras. That was weird.
10:23
The feeds should show different times, since they cycle through
10:26
their recording loops at slightly different intervals,
10:30
but all four showed the exact same timestamp. 11:47 PM.
10:37
The exact moment I'd walked into that embalming suite and found
10:41
myself lying dead on the table. I clicked on the playback
10:44
controls, rewound the footage. Maybe 10 minutes.
10:49
Watched myself walking backward through the building in fast
10:52
reverse, my movements jerky and strange.
10:56
Saw myself exit the embalming suite backward.
10:59
Walked backward up the stairs, sit backward at my desk.
11:03
Then I let it play forward again.
11:06
The feet jumped. Skipped right back to 1147 PMI.
11:11
Tried again, same thing. No matter what I did, no matter
11:16
how far back I rewound the footage, it always jumped
11:19
forward to that same moment. 11:47 PM.
11:24
Me standing in that doorway, staring at my own corpse.
11:29
That's when I started to panic a little.
11:32
Not full panic, but that tight feeling in your chest when
11:36
things stopped making sense. I kept clicking through the
11:39
controls, trying to access earlier footage from my shift.
11:44
The system should have hours of video stored, but every attempt
11:48
brought me back to the same timestamp. 11:47 PM.
11:54
Then I heard a door slam somewhere in the building.
11:57
The sound came from below basement level, probably a heavy
12:02
door slamming shut, the kind of sound that echoes through the
12:05
whole building. I grabbed my flashlight from the
12:08
desk, this big mag light that weighs about 2 lbs, and headed
12:12
for the stairs. My radio crackled.
12:16
I pulled it from my belt and tried to reach the dispatch
12:19
center. Security to base.
12:21
Do you copy? Static.
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Just white noise and crackling. I tried again.
12:29
This is Phoenix at Riverside Mortuary, requesting backup.
12:33
More static. The radio worked fine earlier
12:37
when I checked in at the start of my shift.
12:40
Now it sounded like I was trying to communicate through a
12:43
blender. The basement felt even colder
12:46
than before. My breath was coming out in
12:50
thick puffs now, like I was standing outside in January.
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I clicked on the flashlight, even though the hallway lights
12:57
were still working. Something about having it in my
13:01
hand made me feel a little better.
13:04
I walked toward the preparation room where I'd found the body.
13:08
The door was standing wide open. That stopped me cold.
13:12
I'd left that door closed, I was sure of it.
13:16
When I backed out of the room after seeing myself on that
13:19
table, I'd pulled the door shut behind me.
13:23
It didn't slam it or anything, but I definitely closed it now.
13:26
It was open, completely open. I stepped into the doorway and
13:31
shined my flashlight around the room.
13:34
The examination table was empty. No body, no me.
13:40
Just bare stainless steel under the blue fluorescent lights.
13:45
But there were footprints on the floor, wet footprints leading
13:49
from the examination table toward the back of the room,
13:52
where another door LED deeper into the basement, toward the
13:56
crematorium. I knelt down and looked at the
14:00
prints more closely. They were bare feet, about my
14:04
size, but the liquid wasn't water.
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Too dark, too thick. It looked almost black under my
14:12
flashlight beam, and it had this weird consistency, like motor
14:17
oil, but thinner. Each footprint was perfectly
14:20
formed. You could see the outline of
14:22
toes, the arch, the heel, and they led in a straight line from
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where the body had been lying toward the crematorium door.
14:32
That door was closed, but the wet footprint stopped right in
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front of it. That's me, I guess.
14:39
Always got to know what's behind the door.
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The trail led to another set of stairs going down deeper
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basement level I'd never seen before in three years of working
14:49
here. Sean never mentioned it.
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The footprints kept going. Still wet, still that weird dark
14:58
liquid that looked like motor oil, but thinner.
15:01
I hit the light switch at the top of the stairs.
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Nothing. Flipped it a couple times, still
15:08
nothing. Figured maybe the bulb was out,
15:12
so I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight.
15:15
Nope. Dead.
15:17
Not the battery. The whole thing was just black,
15:20
wouldn't turn on at all. That was new.
15:22
Good thing I had my mag light. The wooden steps creaked under
15:26
my boots. Old building, you know.
15:30
Everything creaks. But these sounded different,
15:33
sharper, like they were complaining about something.
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I kept the flashlight beam aimed down at those prints.
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They were perfect. 2 perfect. You could see every toe, the
15:45
exact curve of the arch, and they were still wet after, what,
15:50
10 minutes? 15 That didn't make sense
15:54
either. The basement smelled like
15:57
concrete, and that chemical smell from upstairs, but
16:00
stronger, more concentrated. And underneath that, something
16:06
else, something sweet and wrong that made my stomach turn a
16:10
little. About halfway down, I stopped.
16:15
The footprints were there, but I could hear something moving at
16:18
the bottom of the stairs. Not footsteps, exactly, more
16:23
like shuffling, like someone dragging their feet.
16:28
I almost turned around then, should have turned around, but
16:34
the flashlight beam caught something moving and I had to
16:37
look. It was standing at the bottom of
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the stairs. My corpse, my body, whatever the
16:44
hell it was just standing there with its head tilted to the side
16:49
at an angle that would have snapped my neck.
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The eyes were open, staring right up at me, and they weren't
16:57
dead eyes anymore. They were focused, watching me
17:01
like a cat watches a bird. That part bugged me more than a
17:05
little. I froze on the steps, couldn't
17:09
move, couldn't breathe. The thing at the bottom just
17:12
kept staring, and I kept staring back.
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Its mouth was slightly open, and I could see its chest moving up
17:20
and down. Breathing.
17:22
Dead bodies don't breathe. That's like Mortuary Science
17:26
101. Then it smiled.
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I ran, dropped the flashlight, spun around, and ran back up
17:35
those stairs faster than I'd moved since high school.
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Track. My boots slipped on the third
17:40
step and I caught myself with my hands, scrambled up the rest of
17:44
the way, and kept going through the basement hallway up to the
17:49
main floor, straight toward the front door.
17:53
I could hear it behind me. Not footsteps, that shuffling
17:58
sound, but faster now, getting closer.
18:02
The front lobby felt like it was a mile away.
18:06
My lungs burned and my legs felt like rubber, but I kept running.
18:11
Hit the front door at full speed and grabbed the deadbolt.
18:15
It turned. The handle moved, but the door
18:19
wouldn't open. I yanked on it, pulled with
18:22
everything I had. The deadbolt was definitely
18:26
unlocked. I could see it retracted all the
18:28
way. The handle turned smooth as
18:31
butter, but the door might as well have been welded shut.
18:36
Come on, I said out loud, first time I'd heard my own voice
18:40
since finding the body, and it sounded wrong.
18:44
Too high, too scared. I looked around the lobby.
18:49
There was a metal folding chair by the reception desk that we
18:52
used for overflow during busy days.
18:55
I grabbed it, held it over my head and threw it at the front
18:59
windows as hard as I could. The chair hit the glass and
19:03
bounced off. Didn't even make a sound, it
19:07
just hit and fell to the floor like I'd thrown it at a
19:10
mattress. I tried again, same thing.
19:14
The glass didn't crack, didn't scratch, didn't even vibrate.
19:19
The chair just bounced off silently and clattered to the
19:22
floor. That's when I saw it at the end
19:25
of the hallway. My doppelganger was standing
19:29
there, maybe 50 feet away, but it wasn't walking normal.
19:34
It moved like someone was pulling strings, attached to its
19:37
arms and legs, jerky, uncoordinated, like a puppet.
19:42
When the puppeteer's drunk, it got closer and I could see its
19:46
face better. Same scar above the eyebrow,
19:50
same everything. But the expression was wrong,
19:54
too focused, too aware. When it got about 10 feet away,
19:59
it stopped, tilted its head again, and that impossible
20:03
angle. Then it opened its mouth.
20:08
This is the 14th loop, it said, but it was my voice layered with
20:13
something else, like someone had recorded me talking and played
20:17
it back through a broken radio. There were echoes in static
20:21
underneath, and it sounded like multiple versions of me talking
20:25
at the same time. I didn't say anything.
20:29
Couldn't You've died 13 different ways already tonight,
20:35
it continued. Same broken radio voice.
20:39
Each time you wake up at 11:00 PM, start your shift again, try
20:44
to figure out what's happening. And each time you die, the thing
20:48
that looked like me took a step closer.
20:51
Shawn Casey's experimental preservation technique created a
20:55
temporal wound in the Mortuary. You're trapped in recursive
20:59
death cycles. Every time you die, the loop
21:03
resets. But we remember.
21:06
All of us remember. I opened my mouth to ask what
21:10
the hell that meant, but no sound came out.
21:15
This time will be different, it said, and smiled with my face.
21:21
This time you're going to understand.
21:24
I didn't think, just dove sideways toward the Chapel doors
21:28
and threw myself inside, slamming the door behind me.
21:33
My hands were shaking so bad I could barely turn the lock, and
21:37
I knew that flimsy thing wouldn't hold for more than a
21:40
few seconds. The Chapel was dark except for
21:43
some light coming through the stained glass windows from the
21:46
street lamps outside. Rows of wooden pews stretched
21:50
out in front of me, and I grabbed the closest one and
21:53
started dragging it toward the door.
21:56
The thing was heavy as hell. Solid oak probably weighs 200
22:01
lbs, but adrenaline's a weird drug, you know?
22:06
I got it moving. Something slammed against the
22:09
door from the other side hard enough that I felt the vibration
22:13
through the floor. Then again, the door frame
22:18
started creaking. I dragged another Pew over and
22:21
wedged it against the first one, then another.
22:25
By the time I had three of them stacked up against the door, I
22:28
was breathing hard and my flannel was soaked with sweat.
22:31
Despite the cold, these banging stopped.
22:35
That's when I noticed the smell. The Chapel always smelled like
22:39
old wood and furniture Polish, with maybe a hint of the flowers
22:42
they kept on the altar for services.
22:46
But now there was something else, something sweet and
22:50
rotten, like fruit left too long in the sun.
22:54
It was coming from the front of the room.
22:57
I turned around and saw the altar.
23:01
The flowers were wrong. I mean, they were the same
23:05
flowers that had been there when I started my shift.
23:08
White lilies and some kind of purple things I didn't know the
23:11
name of arranged in two big vases on either side of the
23:14
wooden cross. But now some of them looked like
23:18
they've been dead for weeks. Brown withered petals falling
23:23
off and littering the altar cloth.
23:26
The weird part was, it wasn't all of them.
23:29
Some flowers in each vase were still perfect.
23:32
Bright white petals, green stems like they'd just been cut.
23:37
But right next to them would be these completely dead ones,
23:41
black at the edges and curled up like burned paper.
23:45
I walked closer, my boots echoing in the empty space.
23:49
The pattern didn't make sense. You'd expect the flowers to wilt
23:53
evenly, right? All of them getting old
23:56
together, But these looked like someone had gone through with a
24:00
blowtorch and only hit certain ones.
24:04
When I got to the front of the Chapel, I could see the altar
24:07
from above. That's when my stomach dropped.
24:12
The dead flowers spelled something out.
24:15
Numbers 11471147. The same timestamp that kept
24:23
showing up on the security cameras the moment everything
24:27
froze. I stared at those wilted flowers
24:31
arranged in perfect numeric shapes, and something clicked in
24:35
my brain like a lock turning. It wasn't when I arrived at
24:39
work. The loop wasn't starting at
24:42
11:00 PM when I walked through the front door.
24:45
It was starting at 11:47 when I first saw my own body on that
24:50
examination table. That was the moment everything
24:53
went wrong. The anchor point.
24:57
My phone had died at 11:47. The security footage stopped at
25:01
11:47. Even now, trapped in this Chapel
25:05
with that thing outside, I bet if I had a working clock it
25:08
would say 1147. Which meant maybe, just maybe,
25:13
if I could prevent myself from ever walking into that embalming
25:17
suite. If I could avoid seeing my own
25:19
corpse in the first place, the whole thing would never start.
25:24
The loop would never begin. I was still staring at the dead
25:28
flowers when I heard breathing behind me.
25:32
Slow, deliberate breathing. In and out, in and out.
25:38
I turned around. It was standing in the middle of
25:41
the aisle, maybe 20 feet away, still wearing my face, still had
25:46
its head cocked at that broken angle, but the pews I'd stacked
25:50
against the door were still there, hadn't moved.
25:55
The door was still closed, unlocked.
25:58
How did you get in here? It smiled with my mouth.
26:04
This is my building now, Phoenix.
26:07
I don't need doors. The voice was still mine, but
26:10
wrong, like listening to a recording of yourself played
26:13
back through a broken speaker. All the tones were right, but
26:18
there was something underneath, something hungry.
26:23
You figured it out, didn't you? It said, taking a step closer.
26:28
The flowers. Very good, but you're thinking
26:31
too small. Another step.
26:34
I backed up against the altar, felt the wooden edge against my
26:37
lower back. You think if you don't go into
26:40
that room, this all stops? But Phoenix.
26:46
It tilted its head the other way.
26:48
I heard vertebrae crack. We've been through this 13
26:53
times. You've tried everything.
26:56
I haven't tried leaving. I said.
26:58
My voice came out as a whisper. Oh, but you have.
27:04
It laughed, and the sound echoed off the Chapel walls like
27:07
breaking glass. Loop #7 you never went inside.
27:12
Drove straight home. Know what happened?
27:15
You woke up the next morning with your throat slit, found
27:19
yourself in your own bathtub, still wearing your work clothes.
27:24
It was close enough now that I could see the details of its
27:26
face, My face, every line, every freckle, even the small scar
27:33
above my left eyebrow from when I crashed my bike into Missus
27:36
Patterson's fence when I was 8. Loop #9 You called in sick,
27:42
stayed in bed all night with the covers over your head.
27:45
Know where you woke up? Right back in your car at 10:58.
27:48
Because, Phoenix. It reached out with my own hand.
27:53
You can't escape what's already happened.
27:56
Its fingers touched my throat, ice cold, like it had been
28:00
sitting in a freezer. The skin felt wrong too, too
28:05
soft, like it was starting to decompose.
28:08
This time is different, though, it whispered.
28:12
This time you're going to stop fighting.
28:15
The fingers tightened, just a little pressure at 1st, and then
28:19
more. I grabbed its wrist and tried to
28:22
pull the hand away, but it was like trying to move a steel bar.
28:26
The thing was impossibly strong. You want to know what's really
28:32
funny? Its face was inches from mine
28:35
now. I'm not even the one killing
28:38
you. You are every single time.
28:42
It's your own hands around your throat.
28:45
I'm just the part of you that remembers.
28:48
The pressure increased. I couldn't breathe, couldn't
28:51
swallow. The Chapel started getting dark
28:55
around the edges, and I could hear my pulse hammering in my
28:58
ears. See you at 10:58, it said.
29:03
My windpipe collapsed. Everything went black.
29:07
I gasped awake in my Honda Civic, jerking forward against
29:11
the seat belt so hard it burned across my chest.
29:15
The radio was playing some classic rock song I didn't
29:18
recognize. My throat felt like I'd been
29:20
screaming for hours. The dashboard clock said 1058.
29:25
PMI was parked in the lot outside Riverside Mortuary,
29:30
engines still running, my keys dangling from the ignition.
29:35
Through the windshield I could see the Victorian building
29:38
sitting there looking perfectly normal, lights on in the front
29:42
office, everything exactly like it should be, except I could
29:47
still feel those ice cold fingers around my neck.
29:51
I sat there for maybe 30 seconds, touching my throat,
29:55
trying to convince myself it had been a dream.
29:58
But the pain was too real, too specific, and I could remember
30:04
every detail. The wilted flowers, the broken
30:07
neck, the way it had smiled with my own mouth.
30:11
Fuck this. I put the car in reverse and
30:15
backed out of the parking space. Didn't look at the building,
30:20
didn't think about Sean wondering where I was or what
30:23
kind of trouble I'd get in for. No showing my shift, just drove
30:29
in the rearview mirror. I watched Riverside Mortuary get
30:32
smaller and smaller until it disappeared behind a line of
30:36
trees and something strange happened.
30:40
As I drove away, I felt this sensation like a rubber band
30:45
snapping, like something that had been stretched tight
30:49
suddenly let go. The radio static cleared up.
30:54
The street lights got brighter. Even the air felt different,
30:58
less thick. Somehow.
31:01
By the time I got home, it was like waking up from a fever
31:05
dream. Everything's sharp and real
31:07
again. I never went back to that job.
31:11
I found out about the fire three days later.
31:14
Was scrolling through the local news website while drinking
31:17
coffee that tasted like burnt rubber.
31:20
You know how it is when you can't sleep for days straight.
31:23
Everything tastes wrong. The headline caught my eye.
31:27
Historic Mortuary destroyed an overnight blaze.
31:31
Riverside Mortuary gone. The article said the fire
31:35
started at 11:47 PM, exactly 1147.
31:41
I read that line probably 6 times before it sank in.
31:44
Same time stamp from the security footage.
31:47
Same time the flowers spelled out on the altar, the anchor
31:51
point. I called the fire department.
31:54
Don't know why. Maybe I wanted to hear someone
31:57
official tell me it was real. Total loss.
32:00
The guy said his voice sounded tired, like he'd been answering
32:04
the same questions all morning. Started in the basement level,
32:09
spread fast. Old building, you know, a lot of
32:12
wood and chemicals down there. Anyone hurt?
32:16
I asked. Found one body building owner,
32:20
Shawn Casey. That's when it got weird.
32:24
Well, weirder. The fire investigator I talked
32:28
to later, this woman named Rodriguez, who had coffee stains
32:32
on her uniform and looked like she hadn't slept either.
32:35
She told me things that didn't add up.
32:38
Sean's body was in the embalming suite.
32:42
Been dead for at least a week, she said.
32:44
Maybe longer advanced decomposition, but the security
32:49
footage from the day before the fire showed him leaving work at
32:52
his usual time around 6:00 PM. How's that possible?
32:57
I asked. She shrugged.
33:00
We're still looking into it. I never followed up.
33:04
Figured some questions don't have answers you want to hear.
33:08
The thing is, I kept digging anyway.
33:11
Couldn't help myself. Found out Sean had been ordering
33:15
weird chemicals for months. Stuff that wasn't in any
33:18
Mortuary supply catalog. Industrial solvents, rare earth
33:23
compounds, things with names I couldn't pronounce, his supplier
33:28
said Sean claimed he was working on an experimental preservation
33:32
technique. Revolutionary, he called it.
33:37
Going to change the whole industry, but that's all I ever
33:41
learned. But the technique actually was
33:44
whose body he'd been working on before mine showed up on that
33:48
table. None of that came out.
33:52
The fire destroyed everything. Files, computers, all his
33:56
equipment. Just ash and melted metal when
33:58
the smoke cleared. Sometimes I wonder if that was
34:02
the point. Maybe the fire wasn't an
34:05
accident, maybe the building knew it was sick and burned
34:08
itself clean. That sounds crazy, I know how
34:12
that sounds. But you didn't see what I saw.
34:17
You didn't feel those cold fingers around your throat.
34:21
The psychological stuff hit me later.
34:24
Took about two weeks before I could sleep through the night
34:26
again. Had to change jobs because every
34:30
time someone mentioned security work my hands started shaking.
34:35
Ended up stocking shelves at a 24 hour grocery store.
34:40
Different kind of night shift. Fluorescent lights and muzak
34:44
instead of dark hallways and silence.
34:47
Better trade off than you'd think.
34:49
The worst part isn't the nightmares, it's the timing.
34:54
Every night at 11:47 PM, no matter where I am or what I'm
34:58
doing, I feel it. Those fingers closing around my
35:02
throat, just for a second, just long enough to remind me I'll be
35:10
watching TV or reading a book or talking to someone, and suddenly
35:14
my windpipe feels like it's collapsing.
35:18
I can't breathe, can't swallow. Then it passes and I'm fine
35:23
again. But I always check the clock
35:26
afterward. Always 1147.
35:29
Been happening for eight months now.
35:31
Every single night. My doctor says it's PTSD trauma
35:36
response, gave me pills that make me drowsy and told me to
35:40
avoid stressful situations like that.
35:43
Helps when the stress lives in your head and shows up on
35:45
schedule. What he doesn't understand is
35:49
that it's not just a memory. It's not just my brain messing
35:53
with me. It's real.
35:56
Somewhere out there, in some timeline that got twisted and
35:59
broken, I'm still trapped in that building, still dying over
36:05
and over while my corpse hunts me through those halls.
36:08
The fire might have destroyed the physical building, but it
36:12
didn't fix the temporal wound, It just sealed it off.
36:16
Like putting a lid on a pot that's still boiling.
36:20
I know this sounds insane. Trust me, I've considered the
36:24
possibility that I had some kind of breakdown.
36:28
Maybe I never left the building that night.
36:31
Maybe I'm in a psychiatric ward somewhere, drooling on myself
36:35
while nurses check my vitals. But then I think about the
36:39
specifics. The way the footprints looked on
36:42
that floor, wet and perfect and wrong.
36:46
The sound my doppelganger's neck made when it tilted its head,
36:50
the exact temperature of its fingers.
36:54
You don't imagine details like that.
36:57
Not unless you felt them. And there's this thing that
37:00
happens sometimes late at night when the grocery store is empty
37:05
except for me and the overnight manager.
37:08
I'll be restocking the cereal aisle or whatever, and I'll
37:11
catch movement in my peripheral vision just for a second.
37:17
Something that moves wrong too fast or at the wrong angle.
37:22
When I turn to look, there's never anything there, but the
37:27
air feels colder for a minute, like someone opened a door to
37:31
somewhere that shouldn't exist. That's when I know.
37:35
Somewhere in the space between what happened and what could
37:38
have happened, infinite versions of me are still running through
37:42
those halls, still trying to escape while their own corpses
37:46
chase them through the dark, still dying in new ways every
37:50
loop while the timestamp stays frozen.
37:53
At 11:47. The fire sealed the wound, but
37:57
it didn't heal it. Those timelines are still out
38:00
there, collapsed but not destroyed.
38:05
And every night at 11:47 I feel the echo of their hands around
38:10
my throat. Makes me think about how close I
38:13
came. One wrong decision, one moment
38:16
of hesitation, and I would have been trapped there forever.
38:21
Just another ghost in a building that shouldn't exist, dying in
38:26
ways that don't make sense. The knowledge sits with me like
38:30
a weight I can't put down, that there are versions of me who
38:34
never made it out, who are still making it out and failing over
38:39
and over while their own corpses smile at them with familiar
38:43
faces. Sometimes I wonder if they can
38:47
feel me too, if somewhere in those broken timelines, they
38:52
catch glimpses of the version that escaped, the one who drove
38:56
away and never looked back. I hope they can't.
39:00
I hope they don't know what they're missing.
39:03
But mostly, I hope the fire was enough, that whatever Sean Casey
39:07
unleashed down there burned up completely and won't spread to
39:11
anywhere else. Because if it does, if that
39:15
temporal wound opens up again somewhere new, I don't think
39:19
I'll be lucky enough to escape twice.
39:22
The scars are permanent now. Every night at 11:47, I'm
39:28
reminded of how thin the line is between the world that makes
39:30
sense and the one that doesn't. How easy it is to slip through a
39:35
crack in time and get lost in a place where cause and effect
39:39
breakdown and your own death becomes just another thing that
39:42
happens on repeat. That's the real horror, not the
39:47
corpse or the cold fingers or even the endless dying.
39:52
It's knowing that infinite versions of myself are still
39:56
trapped in that recursive nightmare, and there's nothing I
40:00
can do to help them. Nothing, except remember how
40:04
close I came to joining them and be grateful every morning that
40:08
I'm still here to feel afraid.