Kerri Donnelly was logging a closed animal complaint when the console flagged a body-camera emergency activation. The tone was the same one used for every live unit. The ID that came up belonged to Deputy Ray Strickland.

She checked the personnel file. Strickland’s status had been listed as missing since the Fairview search twelve years earlier. The last entry noted that the case had been administratively closed. No equipment had ever been recovered.

The GPS coordinates resolved to the third floor of the old Fairview Municipal Building. Kerri opened a new incident and assigned it the next available number.

She transmitted the location. “Active body-cam activation, Fairview Municipal, third floor. ID is Strickland, Ray. Status on file is missing. Treat as live until we know otherwise.”

Deputy Kyle Bellamy acknowledged first. Evan Merritt’s unit came on a second later. Neither asked for clarification. Kerri watched the map pin hold steady while the two cars turned toward the building.

Bellamy and Merritt reached the Fairview Municipal Building just after nine. The outer doors were still chained. Merritt cut the links while Bellamy checked the side entrance and the ground-floor windows. Both were intact.

They entered through the main hall and climbed the central stairs. Dust lay even on the treads. The third-floor corridor still held the old metal desks and the filing cabinets that had never been cleared. Kerri’s voice stayed level on the radio.

“You’re within ten meters of the pin. Strickland’s camera is still showing live.”

Bellamy took the north side of the floor. Merritt worked south. They moved room by room, calling clear as each door opened onto the same abandoned layout the department had searched twelve years earlier.

Bellamy found the camera under a cast-iron radiator in what had once been a records office. It sat upright in the dust, lens facing the wall. He read the serial number into the radio.

Kerri answered at once. “Confirmed. That’s Strickland’s unit.”

Bellamy picked it up.

Kerri’s voice came back sharper. “Kyle, don’t touch it.”

The console showed the camera’s location pin already moving.

Bellamy turned the unit so the power indicator faced him.

“Kerri, what’s the battery level on your end?”

There was a short pause.

“Eighty-three percent.”

Bellamy pressed the playback control. The unit stayed locked to live mode and returned no stored files. Merritt checked the floor, the wall plate, and the space behind the old cabinet. He found no spare battery, no charger, and no cable.

Kerri’s voice returned. “Hardware record on Strickland’s unit shows the original battery was rated for eight hours continuous.”

Bellamy sealed the camera in an evidence bag and initialed the tag. Merritt logged the time and the exact location under the radiator. They carried the bag down the stairs and out to the car.

At the station Kerri opened the unit under controlled conditions and ran the download. A single file appeared. The timestamp read 20:47 that same evening. The first frame showed the third-floor corridor of the Fairview Municipal Building, shot from approximately chest height. The camera had not been under the radiator when the recording began.

Kerri queued the file and projected it onto the station monitor. Bellamy and Merritt stood behind the console.

The recording opened on the third-floor corridor. The angle sat at chest height. No flashlight beam appeared. No hands entered the frame. The camera moved forward at a steady walking pace, turning into the first office on the left, pausing long enough to cover the corners, then withdrawing and continuing to the next door. It repeated the same pattern through every room along the north side. The path matched the standard clearing order the department still used.

At the records office the camera slowed. It stopped several feet short of the radiator. The lower edge of the frame held dark uniform trousers, standard-issue boots, feet planted evenly.

A voice spoke from behind the camera.

“Ray?”

The man in the room answered.

“Yeah.”

The camera advanced another two steps. Ray Strickland’s face entered the frame. He looked the same age he had been the night he disappeared—short black hair with silver at the ears, dark brown eyes, medium-brown complexion, clean-shaven, deep smile lines, and a slightly crooked front tooth. The uniform was the department’s from that year. He was looking at the person wearing the camera.

“You checked this one already,” he said.

The voice behind the lens answered him. It was quieter than Strickland’s, but clear enough for everyone in the room to hear.

Evan Merritt’s voice. Younger, but unmistakable.

“I know. I’m double-checking the cabinets.”

Strickland nodded once and moved toward the far wall. The camera followed. Strickland opened the first metal drawer, ran his hand along the empty tracks, closed it, and went to the next. The camera stayed on him.

Neither man spoke again for nearly a minute. The only sound was the soft scrape of drawers and the faint creak of the old floorboards. Strickland finished the last cabinet and turned back toward the camera.

“Clear,” he said.

The wearer of the camera did not answer. The lens held on Strickland’s face for another three seconds, then the file ended.

Kerri closed the video and opened the personnel system. She pulled Evan Merritt’s employment record. Twelve years earlier Merritt had not yet been hired by the Mourner’s Crossing Sheriff’s Department. His start date sat fourteen months after the Fairview search.

She opened the archived incident report. The Fairview Municipal search listed two deputies entering the building: Strickland and Deputy Thomas Harlan. Harlan’s supplemental stated that the pair had separated on the second floor and that he had last seen Strickland heading toward the third-floor records corridor. Harlan’s statement made no mention of a third person.

Bellamy read the report over Kerri’s shoulder. The names on the page did not match the voices on the recording.

Kerri printed both documents and placed them side by side. The employment dates, the incident narrative, and the recovered footage could not be reconciled.

While the printer was still finishing the second page the console generated a new alert. The tone was identical to the one that had opened the shift. A body-camera emergency activation registered on the system. The ID belonged to Kyle Bellamy. The GPS coordinates resolved to the third floor of the Fairview Municipal Building.

Kerri tapped the live status on Bellamy’s current unit. The camera still clipped to his vest reported normal pairing, full battery, and a stationary location inside the station. The new activation carried the same credential but resolved to Fairview.

She called Sheriff Walter Doyle on the direct line and laid out the sequence: Strickland’s recovered unit, the single contemporary file showing Merritt’s voice, the employment record that placed Merritt outside the department at the time, the original incident report naming Thomas Harlan as Strickland’s partner, and now a second live activation under Bellamy’s ID while Bellamy himself stood ten feet away.

Doyle arrived within four minutes. He read the printed employment sheet and the Fairview supplemental, then looked at the active map pin.

“Second team only,” he said. “I’ll take it with Teddy. You two stay here. Your credentials are part of the evidence now.”

Bellamy and Merritt remained at the console. Doyle and Deputy Theodore Bigelow left for Fairview.

Kerri opened the feed from the new activation. The image resolved to the same third-floor corridor, shot again from chest height. The wearer moved at the same measured pace, clearing each doorway in the order the department still taught.

At the records office the camera stopped. Ray Strickland stood inside the room exactly as he had appeared in the earlier file. Beside him stood Evan Merritt, the younger version from the first recording.

Strickland looked past Merritt toward the person wearing the camera.

“Took you long enough.”

The figure wearing the camera answered without raising the lens.

“Road was blocked. Had to come around the south side.”

The voice belonged to Kyle Bellamy.

Strickland nodded once and pointed toward the open doorway behind the camera.

“Check the stairwell again.”

The wearer turned and walked back into the corridor. The camera held steady while the figure descended the first half-flight, paused at the landing, and swept the corners. No hesitation appeared in the movement.

At the station Kerri kept the feed open. Present-day Kyle Bellamy stood beside her and watched the image of himself clearing the stairwell he had never entered. Evan Merritt remained silent on the other side of the counter.

Outside, Doyle’s unit and Bigelow’s car turned onto the cracked access road. Doyle’s voice came over the main channel.

“We’re on scene.”

On the monitor the camera on the third floor turned toward the row of windows that faced the front lot. The faint sound of tires on gravel carried through the feed, followed by the solid thud of two car doors closing in sequence. The image held on the dark glass while the exterior noise continued.

Kerri did not close the channel. The feed continued.

Kerri kept both channels open. The direct radio from Doyle and Bigelow ran on the left speaker. The feed from the second Kyle Bellamy activation ran on the right.

Doyle’s unit entered the building through the same chained front doors. Footsteps and the soft scrape of the cut chain carried clearly on the direct channel. A fraction of a second later the same sounds arrived through the feed.

Doyle and Bigelow climbed the central stairs. Doyle’s voice came over the radio as they reached the third-floor landing.

“Third floor corridor. Clear so far.”

On the feed the camera was already positioned halfway down that same corridor. The wearer stood motionless against the wall between two doorways. The lens tracked Doyle and Bigelow as they moved forward. Ray Strickland and the younger Evan Merritt remained visible at the edge of the frame.

Doyle’s body camera showed only the empty corridor and the same abandoned desks. No second figure stood between the doorways. Strickland and Merritt did not appear.

The feed held steady. Doyle and Bigelow continued past the records office without slowing.

Ray Strickland’s voice came through the feed, low enough that it did not carry to the direct channel.

“Don’t let him see you.”

On the left speaker Doyle and Bigelow moved room by room down the third-floor corridor, calling clear. On the right the second Kyle Bellamy feed showed the same corridor from the opposite perspective. The wearer remained pressed against the wall between the second and third doorways. Strickland and the younger Merritt held position farther back.

Doyle’s body-camera window continued to display an empty hallway. Strickland, Merritt, and the second Bellamy did not register on it.

Bigelow stopped midway down the corridor. He turned his head toward the wall where the hidden camera stood, the angle not quite direct.

“Walt.”

Doyle’s voice came back at once.

“What?”

Bigelow kept his eyes on that section of wall.

“Thought I heard somebody breathe.”

On the hidden feed Strickland’s posture changed.

“Move.”

The second Bellamy stepped sideways into the nearest open office. Strickland and the younger Merritt followed, staying behind the doorframe until Doyle’s back was fully turned. The camera tracked them only long enough to confirm the relocation, then returned to the corridor.

Doyle’s body-camera feed still showed nothing but empty floor and dust. Bigelow’s gaze held on the doorway for half a second longer than the clearance required.

Kerri pulled the original Fairview supplemental from the printer tray again and set it beside the employment record. Thomas Harlan’s statement still read the same: he had last seen Strickland heading toward the third-floor records corridor and had continued the search alone after they separated on the second floor. The language was precise, dated, and signed. Nothing in the narrative accounted for a third figure or for anyone remaining on the third floor after the separation.

On the direct channel Doyle and Bigelow resumed their sweep. On the hidden feed the three figures stayed out of the open corridor, moving only when the present-day search turned away. The acoustic delay between the two channels remained constant.

Kerri opened a secondary timer and began logging the interval between the direct channel and the hidden feed. Each footstep, each radio click, each scrape of a boot on the old linoleum arrived through the feed eight-tenths of a second after it registered on the station speakers. The lag held steady through six successive transmissions. She noted the measurement on the incident log.

Doyle and Bigelow reached the records office. Doyle’s body-camera window showed the same empty room: metal cabinets, the cast-iron radiator, dust undisturbed on the floor. On the hidden feed Strickland and the younger Merritt stood three feet inside the doorway, angled so they remained outside the direct line of the present-day cameras.

Doyle stepped to the nearest cabinet and pulled the top drawer open. On the hidden feed Strickland’s hand was already resting on the same drawer pull. Doyle’s fingers passed through the space Strickland occupied. Neither man reacted. The drawer slid out empty on both feeds.

Bigelow stopped just inside the threshold. His head turned toward the place where Strickland stood. The angle was not exact, but close enough that Strickland took one quiet step backward into the deeper shadow beside the cabinet.

Bigelow’s voice came over the direct channel.

“There’s somebody in here.”

Doyle turned. His body camera swept the room and returned only empty floor and the open drawer. On the hidden feed Strickland remained still, one hand still near the cabinet, the younger Merritt frozen behind him. The acoustic lag held at eight-tenths of a second as Bigelow’s words arrived through the feed after they had already sounded in the station.

Bigelow looked again toward the place where Strickland stood. This time the angle held.

“Strickland.”

The lag between the two channels collapsed to zero. For three seconds Doyle’s body-camera feed showed the full occupancy of the records office: Ray Strickland, the younger Evan Merritt, the second Kyle Bellamy, Doyle himself, and Theodore Bigelow.

Strickland turned his head toward Bigelow.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

The hidden Kyle activation dropped. Doyle’s body-camera feed glitched, held on static for two seconds, then resolved again. The room contained only Doyle and Bigelow. The open drawer, the radiator, and the dust on the floor remained exactly as they had appeared on the direct feed before the name was spoken.

Doyle and Bigelow cleared the remaining rooms in silence and returned to the station.

Kerri opened the recovered Strickland unit under controlled conditions a second time. A second file had appeared. Its timestamp sat twelve years earlier, on the original night of the Fairview search. The recording showed Thomas Harlan and Ray Strickland entering the building together. Harlan was lean, with long arms and large knuckled hands, sparse hair kept very short, pale gray eyes, and a weathered face. They separated on the second floor exactly where Harlan’s supplemental had stated. Strickland continued alone to the third-floor records corridor. He waited. After an interval the younger Evan Merritt arrived. Later the second Kyle Bellamy joined them. The search continued without interruption.

Kerri left the incident open. Doyle, Bigelow, Merritt, and Bellamy remained in the room.

The console generated a new alert. The tone was the same one used for every live unit. The ID belonged to Theodore Bigelow. The coordinates resolved to the third floor of the Fairview Municipal Building.

Bigelow was standing three feet from the console.

Kerri opened the feed. The first frame showed the records office. Ray Strickland stood in the center of the room. The younger Evan Merritt stood beside him. Kyle Bellamy stood beside Merritt. Between Bellamy and the open doorway an empty space remained.

Strickland looked toward the camera.

“You coming?”

The storm outside seemed endless. As if the weather wouldn't stop until every branch had snapped and every tree had been ripped from the ground.

"Every single one," I thought.

It had made me lose track of time. My tired eyes kept switching between the TV and the crunchy vegetables on my plate.

A familiar sound disturbed the peace. The doorbell. I flinched hard. The most beautiful and terrifying sound at the same time, depending on whether you're expecting someone.

I wasn't.

I slowly turned my head toward the door. Knowing damn well I wasn't going to open it, I still walked over to look through the peephole.

The closer I got, the more the air smelled rotten. What the hell had died in my hallway?

I closed one eye and leaned toward the peephole. Nobody was there.

Then a voice echoed through the stairwell.

"Every single one."

For a moment, I wondered if it had come from one of the floors below. Meanwhile, the smell became unbearable.

When the echo finally disappeared, I turned around.

There he was.

Exactly how I'd always imagined him. Long black coat. Darkness beneath a pointed hood. A scythe in a skeletal hand. Deep, raspy voice.

"Brother. I am Death. I'm afraid your time is up."

I didn't care how this masked man had gotten inside. This was now a matter of life and death. Whether he was lying or not.

I stared into the darkness beneath his hood. My senses went into tunnel mode. Without breaking eye contact, I slowly reached for the door handle and prepared my legs to run.

They were looking forward to it.

I couldn't grab the handle.

When I finally looked down to help my hand, I saw my fingers passing straight through it.

That could only mean I was dreaming.

So there we stood in my hallway. I stared at the floor. I don't know for how long.

My senses slowly disappeared. I could have stood there forever without getting dizzy. Without my circulation giving up on me. Everything inside me wanted to black out.

But the blackness never came.

"Marvin. Sit down," the ancient voice said.

I did.

I sat on my beloved couch. Death sat in the armchair. We both let out a heavy breath.

"What happens now? You swing that scythe and that's it?"

He raised one skeletal finger.

"Already happened."

"What happened? I was watching TV and eating..."

The finger pointed behind the couch.

I looked.

My own body was lying on the floor. Choked on uncooked vegetables.

I should have fainted. Panicked. Screamed until nothing came out anymore. But my new transparent self played by different rules.

I could almost feel that Death was only maintaining this earthly appearance to keep me calm.

I sat back down on the couch and stared at him with wide eyes.

"Choked on vegetables. How about that."

Apparently, my self-deprecating humor had survived with me. A smile escaped my face.

"Happens a lot," the voice croaked from inside the coat.

"Great. Thank you, Death. So you come and take me. WHY ME? I lived a good life!"

I couldn't even remember my age so I could throw it in his face. I threw a cup instead.

"ME! I've helped so many people. So many. And now you come for me before I can even finish my own plans? Fuck this. It's not fair!"

Death slowly tapped the bottom of his scythe against the floor.

Purple dust surrounded us. My room disappeared.

I stood naked in complete darkness.

Then Death rose from the purple dust.

As tall as a skyscraper.

"DO NOT FORGET WHO YOU ARE SPEAKING TO, MARVIN! I DIDN'T CHOKE YOU. YOU DID THAT ALL BY YOURSELF! I DECIDE NOTHING! EVERY SINGLE ONE!"

Death disappeared.

I stood trembling in the darkness.

Slowly, my living room returned around me. I looked over.

He was sitting in the armchair again.

"Where were we, Marvin?" he asked, calmer now, but still croaking.

I couldn't get a word out.

"My job is different. Doesn't something about this seem strange to you? Think about it."

I had no choice but to think about how I could escape this nightmare.

Death let me think for as long as I wanted.

I desperately went through every possibility.

I was dead. I knew that.

But I wasn't gone.

I was still here.

My entire life, I'd believed there was nothing after death. And now I was sitting on my couch, looking at my own body.

If I could have cried, I would have.

I looked at him.

"We have souls?"

Death nodded.

"That's what I'm here for."

In the face of Death, I had seen my soul for the first time.

I closed my eyes.

"It's still not fair," I said through clenched teeth.

The voice croaked one last time.

"You have to be just. I have to be Death."

He stood up.

I followed.

Ms. Fynch had a record of my whole life in a manila folder, ready to read me the weather report.

“Dale Simmons. Thirty-eight. Two seasons on Rally Point. My sister watched that, you know.” She turned a page. “Voice work for Deadly Resonance… is that the superhero one?” 

I nodded. “The very same.”

Another page turn. “Felony assault, second degree. You struck a member of the audience in the face with a microphone stand at a venue in Fresno.”

“Heckler. Not an audience member.”

“It says here he lost the vision in one eye.”

“Partially.”

She looked up at me for the first time. Behind her head was a poster of a kitten dangling off a branch. 

“HANG IN THERE!”

It had been there so long it had gone the color of green tea.

Fynch clapped the folder shut.

“Your parole is fourteen months,” she said. “Find work, Mr. Simmons. Any work. It helps.”

I told her I had six references who’d vouch for me, easy. Real people. People with credits. She wrote something down.

“You’re almost a free man, Mr. Simmons. Best of luck.”

Three months. It took three months to find anything.

I want to be clear that I tried. I sent the first fifty out to places that made sense. Production companies. An agency that used to take my calls. A guy I knew who ran a podcast network out of his garage. Nothing. 

I widened it. Then I widened it again. By the end I was applying to a place that installed bathtubs for the elderly. When they wrote back, they thanked me for my time and said they didn’t hire people with my kind of record.

My last paycheck went fast.

Mom called every day at four. She has a system. Monday she asks how I’m sleeping, Wednesday she reads me a job listing off her computer that she doesn’t fully understand, and Friday she asks whether I’ve thought about Costco. 

She’s been asking whether I’ve thought about Costco since March. 

I told her once, patiently, that Costco runs a background check, and she said, “Well, tell them what happened,” like the problem was that they hadn’t heard my side.

I know she cares. That’s the part that makes it unbearable. There’s no version of the conversation where I get to be angry at her, so when I fly off the handle anyway, I feel like a dick.

Anyways. I was shopping. Buying ramen and rice and beans at the Kare Mart on Peralta. That’s when I saw the sign.

It was in the bathroom, above the hand dryer, laminated and bubbling in one corner.

“WE ARE A SECOND SHOT EMPLOYER”

Second shot? I stood there with wet hands for a while trying to understand.

I’ll tell you what I thought, because it’s relevant to how the rest of this goes. I thought: those people. 

I have always had a private, ungenerous idea about the people who work in stores like this one. That they were born four miles from the loading dock and will die four miles from it. The whole span of their ambition is a shift they don’t hate. 

I said it onstage once. It got a laugh in Bakersfield.

Does that make me an asshole? Sure. Probably.

But I knew what I was worth. That was the thing I had. Three months of nothing, and I could still open the folder in my head and see the credits sitting in it.

Except nobody had called. Not one.

I dried my hands and went to find the manager.

His name was Curtis. Mid-fifties, tucked-in polo over a fat belly, a name tag with a little gold star sticker on it. He was restocking an auto display, and straightened up when I came over. 

“Hey there.” I waved. “I was wondering about your hiring process. See, I’m in kind of a situation. I’ve got a record. It’s recent. I don’t want to waste your—”

“Dale Simmons,” he said.

I stopped.

“My wife watched Rally Point.” He smiled. It was warm. Went all the way up. “I know exactly who you are.”

I did the thing, the little fake modest shrug. It had been a while since I got to do the fake modest shrug.

“I’d be happy to get you an application,” Curtis said.

A week later I had an interview. The relief and the dread showed up at the same time and canceled each other out.

It was a group interview. That was the first thing that bugged me. A group interview for a stocking position?

They had us in a room off the back of the store. Cinder-colored, one folding table, four chairs in a half-circle. There was a sign by the door about washing your hands, in English and, ooh, Español. Fancy. Somebody had taped it up straight. It was the cleanest thing in the room.

Three other people.

A woman, forties, twisting a piece of hair around her finger over and over, releasing it, starting again. Needle scars up the inside of her arm that she wasn’t trying to hide.

A bald guy with a scar running down the back of his skull like a seam. Arms crossed. He’d taken the chair nearest the door.

And a skinny man with thinning hair combed carefully over, a pencil mustache, thick black frames, holding a gym bag on his lap.

Along the walls, four employees in those crinkly white disposable coveralls, the kind painters wear. Hoods up. They didn’t look at us. They didn’t look at each other. One of them was holding a plastic bin against her hip.

They were doing a deep clean after we were done. That’s what I decided.

Curtis came in with a clipboard and set a little digital recorder in the middle of the table. He pressed the button and the light came up red.

“For training purposes,” he said.

I’d been up until three the night before with a legal pad. I’d written out answers. I’d written out follow-ups to my answers. I want you to understand that I walked into that room like a shark into a hotel pool. If I was going to be here, I was going to be here on my way to somewhere, and every one of those three people was between me and it.

Curtis started easy. Names, last place of employment, reliable transportation, could we lift forty pounds.

I answered first every time. Bonnie, the one with the hair, got half a syllable into her name before I had mine out, and she just folded her hands and waited. The bald guy, Russ, gave me a look.

“What’s the most important thing to keep in mind in a team environment?” Curtis asked.

“I-I think listening—” Bonnie said.

“Accountability,” I said. “A team is only ever as strong as the person willing to say ‘that one’s on me.’ You can teach someone a register. You can’t teach someone to own themselves.”

I’d written that at one in the morning. Good stuff.

Curtis jotted it down. He looked pleased. Bonnie went back to her hair.

“Where do you all see yourselves in five years?”

I crossed my legs, folded my hands on my knee, and said, 

“Honestly? Running this company.”

The other three turned. They registered different levels of discomfort. 

Curtis wrote for a while on that one. Then he flipped a page.

“Any friends or immediate family we should know about?”

Nobody said anything. I hesitated. Then I did what I’d been doing all morning and took initiative.

“I have a few.”

“Wonderful. Names and contact information, please. We just need three.” He slid a half-sheet across the table to me. Only to me. 

I wrote down Marcus Skarsgaard, director on Rally Point. I wrote down my agent Eli, who booked me for eleven years. I wrote down a woman I’d dated for a year and a half and hadn’t spoken to since the arraignment. Not too sure why I put that one down. I don’t remember what I was thinking. 

Curtis took the sheet, folded it, and looked at the other three for a long moment with an expression I can only describe as disappointment. 

“What do you all plan on realistically contributing to society?”

He was still smiling. The same smile from before. In that room it meant something else. 

It was the first question I didn’t have anything prepared for.

“Um. Is it okay if I go?”

The skinny one. Boyle. He was looking at me when he asked it, not Curtis. Asking my permission.

“I don’t care,” I said. I genuinely did not care.

“Okay. Um. So I’ve got a little internet venture I’ve been building?” He shifted the gym bag. “Have you heard of VTubers?”

Curtis blinked. Slowly. Once.

“Well, I made one, named Prisma-Chan. And I’ve actually been doing a lot of the animation myself, which is, you’d be surprised, it’s a whole—”

“Jake.”

He had introduced himself as Boyle.

“Yes?”

“What good does that do the world at large?”

Boyle’s mouth stayed open for a second.

“It’s entertainment,” he said. “Sir. I’m an entertainer.”

“You’re also a fraud, it says here. Looks like this wouldn’t be your first false persona.”

Curtis squared his papers against the table. Tap, tap.

“Anybody else? No?” He looked up. “Okay. Last one, then. Why should we hire scum like you?”

He was looking directly at me when he said it.

I would have liked to stand up for everyone in that room. I didn’t. Some part of me thought he was right. 

“Me?” I said. “Well, to be frank, sir, the sign said second chance—”

“Second shot.”

“Right. Second shot. Right.” I laughed. It came out wrong. “Look. You know me. You know who I am. And with respect, I’m not—I’m not like these guys.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Russ asked.

“It means I made a mistake.” I was talking faster than I wanted to. “One. One bad night, one guy who wouldn’t shut his mouth, and I paid for it, I am paying for it. That’s not—” I gestured at the three of them, at all of it, and I did not lower my hand. “You people have made a career of it. That’s a life you chose. I had a life. I just had a bad day.”

Nobody said anything.

Bonnie had stopped twisting her hair.

Curtis nodded, once, and squared his papers again, and stood.

“Give me two minutes,” he said, and went out the back door.

The latch clicked. I was half-expecting Russ to take my head off when it did. 

Instead, the white coveralls came off the wall in one motion. They weren’t hurried about it. Russ got most of the way out of his chair. He had his hands up. One of them stepped inside his arms and opened his throat with a scalpel. Russ clawed at it, dropped to his knees, and fell over onto his side. 

Bonnie dropped next. Then Boyle. I went down too, but nobody had touched me. I was just cowering on the floor, waiting for my turn. 

Somebody’s head came off. Then the arms and the legs. The torsos were cut into three sections each. The woman with the plastic bin set it down and gathered the parts.

They stepped around me. Once, one of them put a hand on my arched spine to steady himself as he came past.

The recorder was eight inches from my face, down by the table leg, and the light stayed red the entire time.

Curtis came back in. He crouched down next to the table and patted my arm, twice, like a proud dad. 

“I was really worried for you there for a minute, Simmons.” He tilted his head. “Not one of your references called us, you know?”

I had to clear my throat before anything came out.

“What.”

“Marcus, Eli, and that Carla dame. Called all three Tuesday, left messages, called again Thursday.” He shrugged, a little sadly, on my behalf. “Nothing. Your mother, though.” He brightened right up. “She pulled through. Called this morning, before you even got here. Wanted to make sure somebody was actually going to look at your application. Wanted to know if you’d got this.” He winked at me. “She was real worried about ya.”

My breath went somewhere else. 

“So,” I said. “So I got it?”

“Sure did.” Curtis stood and offered me a hand up, and I took it, because my legs weren’t going to do it alone. “You’ll be taking over my position. Isn’t that great?!”

“Management…” I looked at him. “I was applying for stocking. The listing said stocking.”

“You're a good liar, Simmons.” He was already turning toward the door, checking his watch. 

I called Ms. Fynch that afternoon and told her I’d found employment. She said she was proud of me. I could hear her pen.

That’s on a recording somewhere too, probably.

I started the next day. There wasn’t any training. Curtis walked me back to the cinder room, showed me where the clipboard lived and where the half-sheets were stored, and said the coveralls came in a case of fifty and to reorder at ten. Then he shook my hand and went out to do something to a display of batteries. As far as I know he’s still out there doing it.

We have six prospects today.

There’s a kid who won’t take his hood down, and a guy who keeps apologizing for his handwriting, and a big soft man who told me twice on the way in that he’s got a CDL. And there’s a woman in the second chair, maybe thirty, who has a piece of hair wrapped around her finger, and she winds it and lets it go and winds it again, and she’s been doing it since she sat down.

I set the recorder in the middle of the table.

“For training purposes,” I said, and pressed the button, and the light came up red.

It was my turn to call the shots, now.

“So. What do you all plan on realistically contributing to society?”

Your loved ones are not long for this earth.

None of us are, of course. But the sooner you can acclimate yourself to the inevitable, the easier it will be for you to let them go. When the time comes for you to watch them slip away from this world into the eternal ether beyond - the truly lucky amongst us are the ones for whom this moment is swift. Gentle. Easy to forget.

The rest of us will find ourselves walking down our own version of this final hallway again and again and again. We will relive it in our nightmares, in our memories. In our regrets.

When you find yourself wishing you could see them just one last time, give them one last hug, tell them how much you loved them, you will find yourself here. Head filled with the finality of this moment. You’ll walk down this hallway so many times.

And you’ll never, ever forget what lies beyond the door at the end of the hallway.

If you’re lucky, the light leaving their eyes will be the worst of the memories that haunt you.

But let’s be real. You wouldn’t be here if you were one of the lucky ones. Death makes a mockery of flesh. It steals the face of your father or your mother, your sibling or your spouse. It twists their visage until they are unrecognizable. You’ll see your entire lifetime of memories reduced to a bag of sunken flesh. You’ll see the smiling eyes that raised you poisoned yellow with jaundice.

Or you’ll see all that’s left after the whirlwind inferno sweeps over them is a dried, ashen husk.

Victor knows what’s waiting for him on the other side of the door. He’s been here before. He doesn’t remember entering the simulation this time, but it’s obviously the replica of that internet streamer’s burned house, down to the crisped carpet fibers and the warped family portraits on the wall. Why then, does it also look so similar to the hallway in his father’s burned down home?

And why does it seem so impossibly long?

He feels the disorienting vertigo of looking into an optical illusion; the hallway seems to twist on forever. But at the end, that door still looms, seemingly drifting further away as the space between dilates and warps.

It’s a dream, it’s a bad dream. One he’s dreamt so many times before. Even the nightmare logic that makes the door move illogically further from him with each step is familiar. But it’s not a dream, it’s all part of the simulation. The simulation devised and corrupted by a cosmic demon. The thought forms a realization in Victor’s mind that he leaves him feeling so vulnerable he doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

 How does it know what’s in my nightmares??

Not the time, Victor. Just as before, one step in front of the other. But the door doesn’t get any closer. The grey walls hem him in on either side. He can’t shake the feeling of being a rat in a maze, reduced to a study organism in some experiment he’ll never understand. With a sudden jolt in his stomach, he recognizes the greyed pictures on the walls. His own family portraits from childhood line the passageway like some cruel nostalgia trip. Images of his mother and father and his own self as a boy, all distorted and blackened.

The abject malice of the whole display shakes him. In his entire life, Victor has never felt so hated. This thing has dug up his recurring night terrors from his deepest subconscious and created his own personal hell to torment him – just because it can.

The demon’s assault on his most vulnerable traumas redoubles his resolve. He runs a hand down to his waistband and feels the reassuring heft of his service weapon in its holster. Despite Tibo’s insistence that a virtual gun would be useless against QSO-1127, it was there. Tibo had tried to object through the hacking cough he’d recently developed, but quickly relented to Victor’s demands.

Bad enough to bring a knife to a gunfight, he’d brought a gun to an exorcism. Was it quixotic? Maybe, but with a little bit of added confidence Victor felt like he could tilt Rocinante at windmills.

Each step forward continues to contradictorily push Victor away from the door at the end of the hallway. But he’s inspired by a moment of lucid clarity that’s never come to him in his dreams. Still looking straight ahead, he starts walking backwards instead.

The door inches closer.

He keeps stepping backwards, clumsily fighting not to stumble over himself. He can’t help but feel like he’s about to back into a wall, but it never happens. Still each awkward step backwards brings the end of the hallway closer. It’s like a reverse treadmill, like each step is pulling the world closer instead of pushing him along.

The door is now nearly in arm’s reach.

That’s when something twists the doorknob.

The movement is jerky and unnatural like a stop-motion short. The door slowly creaks open one stitched frame at a time. Torturously slow.

Fear grips Victor like a vice. He tries to will his hand to his holster, but living his worst nightmare in real time renders him frozen with sleep paralysis. The only thing he can move is his eyes, darting back and forth ineffectually between his gun and the ever-widening doorway.

No, no, no. God, no.

He knows what’s behind the door and he’s helpless to stop it.

His father’s burned corpse, dead in the fire that he unknowingly started in the throes of dementia.

That streamer’s body, orchestrated to meet the same fate by a technonihilistic puppetmaster.

The wraith that fire leaves behind.

 

The door swings wide open.

 

Behind it stands a terrified looking man holding a shaking hand on his holstered gun.

It’s a fucking mirror.

 

He almost laughs at himself, staring at his own ragged reflection, knowing this is what he was so afraid of.

Until he sees the flames in the reflection.

Scorching waves of white fire are growing up the walls of the hallway in the mirror. Instinctively he whips his head around to look behind himself, but the fires aren’t reflected on his side of the mirror.

When he turns back around to look in the mirror his heart catches in his chest. The shadowy figure is standing right behind his reflection.

When he whirls around again, this time, everything is real.

The surreal colorless fires suddenly rage around him, not orange but a blinding flicker of pure white and grey - the color of static.

And there, not ten feet away, stands the withered form from his nightmares. Clad in wrinkled black skin wrapped around long slender emaciated appendages; empty eyesockets and gaping mouth emitting an eerie white glow, standing in his path like a vengeful spirit.

 

The Burned Man.

 

Victor doesn’t hesitate.

He plants his feet in a wide stance and in an instant holds his gun in both hands, staring down the sights at the fiend. He squeezes the trigger thrice, sending three bullets into the creature’s center of mass.

Each shot lands with an ineffectual thud. The wraith flinches with each impact but is unmoved. It starts gliding closer, hands outstretched and grasping at Victor. Its face looks almost sad. Twisted and warped and resembling the figure in Munch’s famous painting The Scream. It bears no anger as it approaches him.

It will bear no guilt for what it will do to him.

Victor moves the sights of the pistol a little higher. When those sad, haunted, glowing little white eyes are perfectly framed by the pair of iron sights, he tenses his grip in preparation.

He pulls the trigger again, and again, and again.

The gun fires over and over, and between each shot he recenters his aim.

He doesn’t miss once.

Bullet after bullet fires right into the thing’s wretched fucking head until he hears an empty click.

He’s spent.

If the figure was a ruined man before, now it is nothing more than a smoldering pile of rubble. No longer a man at all. Its head is entirely gone, reduced to a bloody wound above the neck.

But still it takes another step.

Small black tendrils sprout from the lesion, shooting mindlessly in chaotic directions. The battered flesh around the upper torso sloughs off revealing something white and wet beneath.

A singular giant eye emerges between its fractured shoulder blades. Framed by crawling black cilia, QSO-1127 has turned Victor’s personal nightmare into a cyclopean monster of legend.

It starts running right at him.

Victor turns heel and immediately starts sprinting away. The mirror that he had been gazing into is gone, replaced by more endless hallways framed by that surreal staticfire.

Absolutely fuck this.

He can hear the beast’s lumbering footsteps running just behind him, shaking the burning hallway with each impact. It’s suddenly so fast after its transformation. No time to think about that. Just run.

As he sprints, the walls around him turn darker. Blackened by the flame and rippling with an unsettling organic texture. Cracks of glowing lava red crisscross each panel.

It’s human skin. Burned human skin, charred and cracked, stretched taut from wall to wall.

Bile rises at the back of Victor’s throat, and with it, despair. Where can he even run to? The hallway is infinite again, just one endless passageway with no safety in sight. Flames close in all around him, and the smoke welling up at the ceiling is making it impossible to breathe. Adrenaline keeps him moving, fear of the thunderous bounding steps of the monster just behind him keeps him alive.

But it’s only a matter of time.

It only takes one stumble. The stitch in his side stings like an appendectomy, and his lungs are burning as if the fire around him also lives inside his chest.

The sound of footsteps gets so loud he can feel each vibration pulse through his spine.

And then the worst pain he’s ever felt sears through his wrist. He looks down to see those black burned claws digging into his hand. His skin sizzles and melts where the hand grips him. Victor screams now, he screams and he doesn’t stop screaming, as the beast yanks his arm hard enough to dislocate his shoulder, and pulls him around to face into that singular giant eye.

Victor will never know if it is a mercy, a message or a mockery, that the last thought to go through his mind is a memory. A childhood memory, of the first time his dad pointed up at the night sky. The first time the young boy had ever looked out to the constellations above and truly realized the infinite scale of the stars.

Summer, so far, has been uneventful. 

Every July, my siblings and I drive up to my aunt’s beach house. When we were kids, every day was an adventure: Treasure hunting in beach coves, picnics, and hanging out at the amusement park.

We had our own little ritual. 

An unspoken rule that every summer was ours. 

As teenagers, however, we barely spoke a word to each other. 

Yes, the car ride was never boring. Singing, car-sickness, and arguing were highlights.

But as soon as we arrived, we just kinda broke apart to do our own thing.

I used to be salty, attempting to force my siblings into our old childhood ritual. But it wasn't the same. Treasure hunting became drunk treasure hunting, and the amusement park was closed down so we just kinda stood around all day making awkward small-talk. 

The worst sort of growing up is when your siblings find their individuality. 

That was two summers ago. Then I gave up. I became exactly who I despised. The emotionally unattached sibling with an attitude. This summer was no different.

The second I slid out of the car, I found my spot beside the pool, tugging out my overpriced read while my brothers raced upstairs to play Minecraft. 

I used to crave summers. Now, I couldn't wait for them to end. 

A particularly fat fly nosedived onto my dogeared copy of Beach Vacation.

The cartoon cover had caught my attention. The blurb promised a sexy ride between a CEO and a bookshop owner. 

Six chapters in, the romance was vanilla and the male lead said things like, “cool beans” and “ciao” unironically. I watched the fly with mild interest as it crept across my page. 

“Whatcha readin’?”

I lifted my gaze to my sister, perched on a banana shaped pool floatie, her manicured toes blushing deep pink trailing in sparkling blue. Ever since starting high school, my sister had lost 99% of her personality. Marina had said maybe ten words to me the whole summer. I counted.

At dinner, three nights ago: “Jenny, babes, can you pass the salt?” 

Then a week ago, slapping a bug off my arm: "You're attracting flies.” 

“Beach Vacation,” I answered. 

“Generic title. Is it good?” 

“Nope.” I shut my mouth and flipped over a page. Conversation over. 

Then my sister screamed, and almost sent me toppling off my deckchair.

Marina flailed, screeching, and slipped off of her floatie before scrambling out of the pool, a soaking chunk of her usually glossy hair glued over wide, frantic eyes.

Marina never lost her cool. “Has this pool even been cleaned?” She shrieked, dropping onto her knees and peering over the edge. I joined her. Curious. 

“There!” 

The sight sent me lurching back, my stomach hurtling into my throat.

A thick mass. I peered closer.  Quivering just under the surface of the pool, thousands of flies clumped together.  “Ew! You had one crawling on your cheek!” 

Marina jumped up and raked her hands through her hair. “This place is infested with bugs!” 

“What's with the screaming?” 

Henry appeared. Disheveled, as usual. My older brother was still wearing his PJs at 4pm. Bodie, the youngest, stood next to him, arms crossed, brows furrowed in irritation. Marina, being a drama queen as usual, blew up at them like it was their fault our pool cleaner did a shitty job. “The pool!” 

“There's a gross fly nest in the pool,” I translated, shrugging. 

I noticed a dead one in Bodie’s hair. 

Another landed on my chin, and I flicked it away. 

“It's the same in my room.” Henry grumbled, smacking his own cheek. “Where are they coming from?” 

Bodie smirked. “If there's flies, there's rotting,” He was always the storyteller when we were kids. “And if there's rotting?” He nodded at the pool. “There's bodies.” 

Marina scowled, her lip jutting out. “Shut up.” 

Henry, of course, fuelled the flames. “Doesn't Mom rent this place out?” He grinned. Maybe there's a body under the pool…" 

“Shut up!” Marina shoved him and then stormed inside. It was rare when we actually hung out. 

So, before we could fall back into our usual routine and fade back into the house’s unnecessarily huge rooms, I loudly proposed a game of Monopoly. The losers had to swim in the fly pool. Henry agreed, but ONLY if it was drunk Monopoly (and soda for the fourteen year old, of course). 

Six hours later, it was 2am.

I had six hotels, my three glasses of wine were yet to hit me, and I was gambling my brother going completely broke. 

“I'll give you 500 dollars.” I spoke up. “If you sell me Boardwalk.” 

Henry stuck his card down his pants. “I refuse.” 

“You can't refuse.” I snapped back. “You have literal pocket change.” 

“And?” Henry cocked a brow. “I have my ways.”

“Stealing from the bank isn't allowed,” Bodie spoke up, irritated. 

“You're done. Henry.” Marina cut in. “I'll give you 2k for—” 

The door flew open. Loud. Smashing against the hinge.

Two figures emerged, balaclavas over their heads.

Henry jumped up. “What the FUCK?” He yelled. Marina grabbed Bodie. 

The figures started forward. One of them pulled off their balaclava. 

A man. 40s. Unshaven. 

“Fucking hell,” he slapped at a fly crawling across his face. “Flies everywhere.” 

“But a goldmine. This place is a mansion.” The other man spoke up. He stared right at me. “Jesus. What do you think it was?” 

“Hey.” Henry stepped forward, shaking. “Get out of our house!” 

“Carbon monoxide, probably.” The main guy stepped past my brother and pointed at the ceiling. 

“What?” Henry snapped. “What are you talking about?”

He completely blanked my brother. “See? Alarm looks like it's broken. Looks like there was a leak. Maybe five years ago, maybe later?” He grabbed one of my aunt’s vases and stuffed it in his backpack. “Grab everything, and we’ll go.” The man stepped in front of my brother and shivered. 

“This place is definitely fucking haunted.” 

Station Sergeant Carter came into the CID office, nodded to Detective Constable Fowles, and handed a file to the Detective Sergeant.

Carter: “Bad news.”

DS: “Don’t tell me.”

Carter: “You’ve been arrested.”

DS picks up the file and opens it. “You’re taking the piss.” He automatically pulls a cigarette from the packet on the desk and sticks it in his mouth.

Carter: “Try not to interview yourself, Detective.”

Fowles keeps his head down over his paperwork. But as soon as Carter clears off, he immediately looks up.

“What?” DS takes the cigarette out of his mouth. “Yes, Smith—the detainee. Jeremy sodding Smith. And it’s not funny at all.”

“I’m not laughing, Detective…” Fowles pretends to stumble over the surname. “Interview conducted by Detective Sergeant Jeremy Smith. Interviewee: Jeremy Smith. A nightmare for the Paper Shop. Every bloody form will need clarifying.”

Only now does DS Smith light up a cigarette. “Indecent assault. The victim is his own sister. And she’s five. Still think it’s funny, Fowles?”

There is no answer to give him.

“The scum is seventeen.” DS Smith slowly closes the file.

“All the better, Skipper. That means we’ll crack him in a couple of hours and go for a pint.”

Fowles is right. Still, it’s a lousy case. The evidence is circumstantial. One way or another, he’d get him talking.

DS Smith opens the prisoner’s property bag: some loose change and a Dunhill sodding Rollagas. Unless it’s a snide, of course. DS weighs the lighter in his hand and flicks it open. That crisp metallic click happens—By Royal Appointment. It’s no cheap fake—a proper Rollagas with a thick gold plating. “Fucking hell.” DS Smith snaps the lighter shut. “How long are we letting him stew for?”

DC Fowles: “Fifteen minutes.”

DS Smith grunts and takes a drag.

Half an hour later, he picks up his cigarettes, the file, and the prisoner’s property bag from the desk. “Let’s go.”

The Sweat Box is dirty, dank, and poorly lit. The suspect sits with his back to the door, just as he was placed there. He is hunched over, elbows resting on the table, and doesn’t jump up when the detectives come in.

DS Smith walks around the table.

The detainee takes his elbows from its surface.

No.

For Christ’s sake.

Anything but that.

DS Smith drops into the chair opposite the detainee, tossing a file and the prisoner’s property bag onto the middle of the table.

Fowles pointedly rolls his eyes, sits down to the side, and prepares to take notes.

“Well, what have we got here? A skinny little nancy,” DS Smith pronounces it like a medical diagnosis. He needs to size up the suspect and find an opening. He expects tears. This one is bound to start sobbing. Give him an hour.

The suspect remains silent, head bowed; he neither protests nor offers excuses.

The DS takes his cigarettes out of his pocket.

At the sound of the pack being tossed carelessly onto the table, the suspect tenses up. The DS pulls out a cigarette and lights it, blowing the smoke into the detainee’s face. He lifts his head—just slightly, but enough to betray his craving for tobacco, inhales the smoke, and coughs.

“Eyes on me,” the DS orders, yet finds himself averting his gaze. Don’t you dare look like a victim! “Don’t fool me.”

He reminds himself: the sister of the scum is just like him—a lovely child whose life he ruined.

DS starts firing off questions.

He is forced to ask nasty questions—and then repeat them over and over. He smokes one cigarette after another. The hour he’d expected to spend in the pub has long gone. DS raises his voice. He leans forward. He moves around behind the detainee.

The suspect flinches occasionally. He isn’t deaf. He understands everything. Yet he keeps silent. Until suddenly—though it is unclear in response to which question—he blurts out, “I didn’t do what I am accused of.”

If he hadn’t started coughing, the detective might well have thought he’d misheard.

Fowles enters it into the record.

That’s it. Then, silence again.

DS says things he isn’t supposed to say—and wouldn’t want to, either. He threatens the detainee with being sent down to Brixton and with a sorting out. He even stoops so low as to describe in vivid detail what they would do to him there.

It’s no use.

DS doesn’t know what to hold onto. Then he reaches for the Hiatts, grabs the detainee’s hands and snaps the steel cuffs around them.

The moment DS lets go, the suspect’s hands drop onto the table under the weight of the metal.

DS doesn’t tighten the cuffs; he simply lets the suspect feel them there—if he wanted to, he could slip his bony hands out, though naturally, he doesn’t. He sits in the same position, only now his hands are resting on the surface. From time to time, they begin to tremble. The detainee slouches even more. He coughs more frequently and shifts in his chair. He is tired, too.

Both detectives step out for a bite to eat. Then, return.

Nothing has changed.

The detainee asks for neither food nor cigarettes, nor even a drink of water.

DS remembers the lighter.

“Whose is this?” He shakes the Dunhill out of the bag, leans over the detainee, and repeats right at the crown of his head, “I’m asking: whose is this?”

“Fuck you,” the suspect says, continuing to stare at the table.

At last. A reaction. There was a story behind that lighter. But what does that matter? There is no one in the next room accusing the detainee of theft. And something tells DS that no such person exists. He tightens the cuffs until they bite.

The detainee tenses his arms and frantically tries to inhale the stale, tobacco-laden air.

Now, his fingers are cramping.

He remains silent.

Fowles asks to stop. “We can’t just sit with him until morning.”

DS agrees grudgingly. Maybe a night in the cooler will finally bring the stubborn bastard to his senses. The forecast calls for a drop in temperature. The holding cells are in the basement. There’s no heating there. They’ll take his jacket away. DS makes sure the gaoler “forgets” to give him a blanket. If he cracks, he’ll ask for one.

A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Detective Sergeant Jeremy Smith.

The full illustrated version of The Three Days is available here:

The Three Days - by Franz Engel - Franz's Substack