- 2 days ago
Working the night shift alone in an industrial warehouse, a man believes he’s interrupted a break-in — until the suspect is caught outside by police. But what’s left inside with him moves without footsteps, breathes without lungs, and smiles without lips. The deeper into the building he ventures, the more the familiar world bends toward something it wants him to see… and follow.
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00I used to believe that working the night shift in the warehouse kept me honest.
00:05With no audience around, it didn't matter if a pallet slipped, a carton burst,
00:11or if I took too long completing the paperwork. Nobody noticed except for the lights, the concrete,
00:19and the occasional moth fluttering against the bulbs. Being alone is easy when the building
00:26is predictable. However, being alone becomes unbearable when it starts to make unfamiliar
00:34sounds. The latch hadn't clicked. That was my first excuse when I noticed the front door ajar,
00:43allowing a sliver of midnight to seep in. I closed the door and turned the deadbolt,
00:50then pressed the push bar once, feeling the reassuring weight of metal as it returned me
00:56to my private sanctuary. The familiar hum rose and fell. The heater coughed. A forklift charger blinked.
01:06The symphony of the warehouse resumed. Then the wet steps started. Not heavy. Not the heel-toe rhythm
01:14of boots. A slick press. A thin peel. Like a barefoot coming off a wet tile. One, two, three.
01:23The timing was wrong. Too slow for anyone who didn't want me to hear. I stepped to the mouth of the back
01:30hallway and peered down the long fluorescent gullet of concrete. The lights were on a motion sensor.
01:37Only the first two glowed. Beyond them, the corridor was grey and unlit. A tunnel with no
01:44end until you walked into it. Hello? I said. My voice surprised me in its smallness.
01:54The wet steps stopped. The silence that followed wasn't silent. It was the hum, but it was also
02:01listening. I knew how stupid it would be to move toward it. So I drove away. I stepped into the supply
02:09room, pulled the door shut, and turned the thumb-turn lock until it couldn't turn anymore. Then I put my
02:18shoulder under the metal handle. The handle felt cold in a way that made me think of breath.
02:259-1-1, I whispered, after mistyping my passcode twice. There's someone in the building.
02:36The operator was calm in a way that made me feel like I was performing for her.
02:42Stay on the line. Officers are en route. Can you describe? A slow twist on the handle.
02:50It moved a fraction, as if someone's fingers needed to learn the shape of it.
02:58I clamped it down. What you're experiencing, she finished.
03:03Footsteps, I said, and for some reason clarified. Bare feet, like that mattered. Do you have a place to
03:12barricade? A kick against the door. Not a break-it-down kick. A testing kick.
03:20An experimental knock with bones. I swallowed, tasted battery from adrenaline.
03:28Yes. Stay there. The breathing built gradually, like whoever was outside was discovering the act
03:36while doing it. Inhale, too long. Exhale, too steady, as if they were mimicking me,
03:44trailing my lungs by a half-beat. I tried to breathe irregularly to throw it off, but I immediately
03:52felt ridiculous and exposed, as if I'd handed my rhythm to something I couldn't see. Red and blue bled
04:00under the door's thin window at last. Voices, real ones, filling the hollow between racks and walls.
04:09The breathing stopped. The handle slackened. I told the operator the police were here,
04:16open the door, and stepped into a sudden brightness that made my eyes water.
04:21They swept the aisles. Officers spoke into radios that crackled. Someone shouted near the loading dock,
04:31and minutes later they marched a man across the receiving floor toward the front. A man with a
04:37backpack and boots laced so tightly they bent at the ankle in a tidy hinge. He looked ordinary even in
04:47handcuffs. He didn't look like the breath coiled outside my door. Copper wire, an officer told me.
04:55He cut a section of fence out back. Tools on him, nothing else. No weapon. Your doors lock automatically.
05:05I locked them, I said, hearing the neediness in that. I did lock them. Good. You okay?
05:16I nodded, then shook my head, and then nodded again, because neither answer felt entirely true.
05:23The officers left me with a case number and a promise to patrol the area for another hour.
05:29A pair of taillights slid away. The building swallowed its color again. I told myself I should
05:36leave, but the order of rituals anchored me. Plugged the forklift, count the cartons, stacked the bills of
05:43lading. I did each poorly. Each time I turned, I expected to see wet prints on the ground.
05:52When I finally found them, it was almost a relief. They were small. Not Charles Small,
05:59but not the size that made sense for a man of that height.
06:04Wet half-moons ahead of the back hallway, gleaming where they had just been.
06:09They went straight for the corridor and then, a few steps in, veered sharply left between two rows of tall
06:18metal racking. I shouldn't have followed them, so I did. The racking made a canyon. My shoulders knew the
06:26territory better than my eyes. My work shirt brushed the labels and the paper rasped. Halfway down,
06:35the motion light behind me timed out. The darkness didn't fall. It advanced, as if it had been waiting
06:43to catch up. I reached overhead for the manual pull chain and stopped. Because I heard my name. It
06:50wasn't loud. It wasn't whispered. It arrived in the air like a thought I hadn't formed yet.
06:57Evan, said the corridor. Or the concrete. Or my future. I froze with my hands still up,
07:05fingers reaching for a chain I could no longer feel.
07:08Who's there? I asked the dumbest question I've ever asked. Don't, said a woman's voice behind me,
07:17steady with warning. He's still around. Just come back. Come back to the office.
07:24I turned so fast my shoulder hit the racking and set off a ripple of paper labels whispering.
07:30The office door was forty feet away and empty. The supply room door was farther still and closed,
07:38but the voice had been exact. Tone, texture, the small catch on the K of back. It was my sister's
07:47voice. Fear is sharper when it's accurate. My sister calls me after her night shift sometimes,
07:55the same as mine, asking if I want leftovers or if I've heard from mum. Sometimes she leaves
08:02voicemails I listened to later in the car. That voice in my warehouse had the friction of her busted
08:09Bluetooth, the flattening of certain consonants her mic always murdered. It was her, but it wasn't.
08:19Okay, I said out loud to nobody, as if I was repositioning a box and not my reality.
08:25I walked toward the office, telling myself I was only being smart, but I kept my eyes on the left-hand
08:33aisle where the footprints had turned. If the office lights would cooperate, if I could flood the place
08:40with plainness, I could make the new song stop. Inside the office, the clock above the door read 2.41.
08:51I locked the office door, breathed, and breathed again, testing if I could hear someone testing me.
08:58The warehouse hummed like a mouth closed on words. My phone lit. J-E-S-S, my sister. I stared at it for
09:10two rings. I answered on the third. Hey, I said, trying not to sound like I had just heard her inside my
09:19building. Everything okay? Silence punched the line. Not empty. Alive with room tone. The kind of hush that
09:29is made of a thousand tiny noises. Then. Evan? There it was. The Bluetooth was flat. The precise weight
09:40she put on my name was the exact second she decided whether she was annoyed with me or not.
09:44My relief came rushing and reckless. I laughed, small and desperate. Yeah, I said. Sorry. Bad night.
09:57I thought. I didn't know how to finish that sentence without sounding insane.
10:03Front door, she said, like an answer to a different question. You locked it?
10:09I, yeah. Don't open it, she said. Don't ever open it again.
10:18The line went dead. I stared at my phone. I called her back. This customer is not available. I texted.
10:27You okay? The message sat stubbornly unsent. I told myself towers hiccuped, servers stumbled.
10:34Then I looked at the front door camera feed on my office monitor. A man waited outside. Not the one
10:43from earlier. Taller. Thin in a way that made the night seem like clothing hung on him. He stood with
10:51his head tilted, as if he was reading the notice about deliveries on the glass. He lifted one hand and
11:00held it over the metal push bar without touching it. Some part of my brain wanted proof of my sanity more
11:08than it wanted safety. I unlocked the office door and stepped out onto the receiving floor. The monitor
11:17was mounted above the time clock. From here, I could hear the faint speaker crackle that bled through when
11:26the camera's mic came to life. The man outside didn't knock. He didn't try the handle. He just turned his
11:34head twenty degrees and smiled. Only the idea of it, like a mask of a smile hovering slightly off his skin.
11:43I spoke before I could stop myself. I can see you. He didn't react. But behind me, down the back hallway,
11:55a foot lifted and pressed and peeled. I ran back into the office and locked it, because I was still
12:02pretending locks were a language the night respected. I checked the rear cameras. The hallway was empty,
12:10but for a dark seam at the far end. I zoomed in on the feed until the pixels became grainy.
12:18The seam was just the old freight elevator doors not meeting cleanly in the middle. Someone had once
12:26painted over the gap a dark brush line across pale metal, and the paint had cracked like a healed wound.
12:34The phone rang again. Jess. I should have let it go to voicemail. I answered.
12:43You hear it too? She asked. The voice a fraction late to itself, like a dubbed film.
12:50I keep hearing things when I'm alone. Little hellos that sound like mine. Taps. Creaks. And then the doorbell.
12:57Jess. Jess. I said carefully. Where are you right now? Home, she answered. Certainty placed neatly on the word.
13:09Then, so small, it was almost a confession. I think there's someone at my door.
13:16I wanted to tell her to call the police, to stay away from the door, to check the peephole, to get in her car, to leave.
13:26But an old, childish part of me thought if I said the wrong word, the radio would tune wrong and I wouldn't get her back.
13:35You locked it? I asked. She took a deep breath and smiled.
13:40Evan, she said. Echoing the warehouse's call, as if the thought had beautifully formed in her mind before I could tell it.
13:51The air hung heavy with anticipation as the line cleared. Not a single click echoed in the stillness.
13:59Only a profound silence enveloped everything, leaving a lingering sense of uncertainty.
14:05With determination, I picked up the heavy flashlight from the office drawer, imagining it as a beacon of light ready to illuminate the unknown.
14:17As I glanced at the front door monitor, my reflection stared back, alongside a sign that seemed to whisper reminders of the late hour.
14:26The back hallway camera captured only a sliver of the elevator and a faint shimmer in the distance.
14:35Perhaps heat or some other curious phenomenon we hadn't yet uncovered.
14:40Each moment felt filled with possibility.
14:44Okay, I told the building. Enough.
14:48I unlocked the office door again.
14:51My key felt like a toy, a ritual I did for myself.
14:55The warehouse breathed around me.
14:58This time, I heard it.
15:00The hum was a chest.
15:02The racks were ribs.
15:03I walked to the back hall and forced the motion lights to wake in choppy zones as I moved.
15:09Dead.
15:10Then flicker.
15:12Then cold white.
15:14Then dead again.
15:15Halfway down, the footprints waited.
15:19Wet.
15:19Recent.
15:20Each one a clean oval with a little crescent of water at the toe.
15:25Where the pressure ended.
15:27They pointed at the elevator.
15:29They stopped at the seam.
15:31I played the beam of my flashlight up and down the gap.
15:35Old paint.
15:37A strip of darkness.
15:39I listened.
15:41I didn't hear breathing.
15:42I heard learning.
15:44Don't, said a voice behind the elevator doors.
15:47My sister again, the same broken Bluetooth consonants.
15:53Don't open it.
15:55I'm not, I said uselessly, touching the seam with two fingers, like that counted as defiance.
16:03Good, said the voice.
16:06Then, flattening into a perfect, smooth studio tone that was not my sister.
16:13Thank you for letting me in.
16:15The elevator doors sighed inward a quarter inch on their own, as if metal had discovered a softer state.
16:23Air slid out, damp and cold, like a basement exhaling its contents.
16:30I jumped back without thinking, and swung the flashlight up.
16:34The beam made a fat oval that caught the number stenciled above the elevator.
16:39One.
16:41And the paint ripples turned to skin under the light.
16:44Then paint again when my brain protested.
16:48I stumbled.
16:50My shoulder hit the wall.
16:51A dark oval smeared there.
16:54My hand was wet.
16:56I raised the flashlight and saw the print I'd left.
17:00An exact match to the others.
17:02But upside down.
17:04The arch and toes in the wrong place.
17:06Because my hand had been made to be a foot, for a second, in the flashlight's logic.
17:13I wanted to laugh.
17:14I wanted to cry.
17:16I tried to peel my hand off and throw it down the hall.
17:21I went with the fourth option.
17:24I ran.
17:25The front door was so bright it looked like daylight.
17:29I slammed the crash bar and stepped into the slice of night that tasted like road salt and old rain.
17:35The parking lot lay still.
17:38The chain-link fence at the back cut the world into diamonds.
17:43Somewhere far off, a semi downshifted with a long sigh.
17:48I looked for the tall, thin man and found only motion.
17:52My reflection in the glass.
17:54The dark self that windows reveal when they decide to keep you.
17:58I stood there for too long.
18:02Watching the nothing like it might sprout a face if I willed it hard enough.
18:07Then my phone buzzed in my palm.
18:09Unknown.
18:11And I knew I would answer.
18:13Because that's the sort of night it was.
18:16Evan.
18:17A woman's voice.
18:18Soft.
18:19Careful.
18:21Not my sister.
18:22My mother.
18:23My mother, as she sounded only in voicemails left late at night, apologized for the hour first and the message second.
18:32Honey.
18:33I had the strangest dream.
18:35Your father was knocking.
18:37And I opened the door.
18:39And it.
18:40The line glitched.
18:42No sound.
18:43Then too much.
18:44And in the static a shape formed that wasn't a word.
18:47It was a smile.
18:49Not as a mouth.
18:50But as an arrangement of timing and cadence.
18:53As if a sentence had been taught to bend like lips.
18:57I'm coming.
18:59I said.
19:00Before I realized I'd spoken.
19:03To the door.
19:04She asked.
19:05Her mother's question wrapped around a stranger's mirth.
19:10No.
19:10I said.
19:11And hung up.
19:13And immediately wanted to call back.
19:15To step through.
19:16To obey.
19:17To be good.
19:19I slid my phone into my pocket like it was someone else's hand.
19:23And felt the weight of the building behind me change.
19:27When I turned.
19:29The front door stood slightly open again.
19:32Breathing the night.
19:34I shouldn't have gone back inside.
19:36I did.
19:38Fear will make you test the cage even after you've learned the bars breathe.
19:43The office lights flickered as if they had blinked in surprise at my return.
19:50The monitors stuttered and then stabilized.
19:54On the back hallway feed, the seam of the elevator doors was gone.
19:59They had met perfectly and decided to pretend they always had.
20:03On the receiving floor camera, a dark oval of water bloomed and faded and bloomed again five feet from the office door.
20:14As if a foot were learning to be a foot right there in the air where the lens couldn't see texture.
20:19The office door handle turned under my hand without me.
20:25I yanked it open, stepped inside and locked it because I had run out of rituals and only had this one left.
20:33The clock above the door said 3.33.
20:39Because of course it did.
20:41Because time is the story too.
20:42I sat at the desk, put my head in my hands and listened.
20:49First, the building's hum, steady and sure, as if to say I was always this way.
20:57Second, the faintest scuff of skin on concrete, learning to be certain.
21:02Third, my own voice, through the thin wall, practicing my name with a stranger's patience.
21:10Evan, it said, a little more like me each time.
21:15Evan, Evan, Ev.
21:19The office phone rang.
21:21I didn't want to answer.
21:22I answered.
21:24The caller ID said, front desk, a thing we do not have.
21:28A thing that belongs to buildings with reception, flowers, and security guards who watch and are watched.
21:35Yeah, I said, and heard my voice doubled.
21:40The phone's version and the room's half a syllable apart.
21:45There's a man at the door, said the voice on the line.
21:49My voice.
21:50The precise fatigue I'd carried into the shift.
21:54The thin joke I make when I'm spooked and pretending I'm not.
21:58He says he works here.
22:00He says he forgot his key.
22:03I swallowed.
22:05And the taste was of metal and dust.
22:08What does he look like?
22:10Tall, said my voice.
22:13Thinner than he should be.
22:15He keeps smiling like he wants me to know he knows how.
22:19Don't open, I said.
22:22Or maybe pleaded.
22:24Silence pressed the handset like a palm.
22:26You already did, my voice said.
22:30As gentle as my mother, as practical as my sister.
22:34As fond as I am with friends who stay too late after a shift.
22:38You did when you looked.
22:39The line clicked to nothing.
22:43The office door's lock felt looser, as if it had unlearned being a lock.
22:49Something on the other side tried the handle politely, like a neighbor.
22:53Please, I said, though I didn't know to whom.
22:59And from the hallway, so close I could hear the soft sound a mouth makes forming a bee,
23:05came a word I didn't expect from whatever this was.
23:10Beloved, it said, and smiled with the lights.
23:15I put my palm against the metal.
23:17The other side put its palm against mine.
23:21The surface was cold and wet, and matched me too perfectly.
23:27Okay, I said to the door, to myself, to the long seam down the middle of my life.
23:34Okay, I see you.
23:38The breathing aligned.
23:40The hum became a chest around me.
23:43The lock turned.
23:45The morning shift found the office empty, the front door closed, and the lights humming to themselves.
23:53They would later tell each other stories about me that I'd quit without warning.
23:58That I'd gotten a better job.
24:01That I'd finally fallen asleep on the receiving floor and gotten locked out.
24:07Weeks later, when the right rain came, they would notice wet footprints in the back hallway
24:14that began at the elevator and ended nowhere.
24:18My sister called me that evening, her Bluetooth murdering consonants as usual.
24:24I let it ring, then ring again.
24:26On the third call, I answered, and listened to my voice tell me I was safe.
24:33That it was just a stormy night, and that it was time to come home.
24:39Okay, I said, because sometimes that's what you say when the person at the door already sounds like you.
24:47The line breathed.
24:49The door did too.
24:50Let me in, I said, before I could decide whether I meant the door, the phone, or myself.
25:00Something on the other side smiled without moving its mouth.
25:04And from somewhere I could not place.
25:07Hallway, glass, elevator seam.
25:10My own chest.
25:11The wet foot lifted and fell.
25:14My own chest.
25:15The wet foot lifted and fell.
25:17My own chest.
25:19The wet foot lifted and fell.
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