The desk is stacked high—loan files, cash-count slips, receipts with sticky notes that all sayurgent. My hands are typing fast, but every time I look up, the stack’s taller. The printer in the corner keeps spitting paper that no one bothers to grab.
“Steph? Jess?” I call.
No answer.
The lobby’s empty. Desks abandoned. Phones ringing and ringing until they choke out into silence.
The overhead lights hum too loudly, buzzing like they’re about to blow.
I stand. My chair screeches against the tile.
“Hello?” My voice echoes. Way too loud. “Who’s there?”
The glass walls of Dave’s office glow faintly. His blinds are half-closed, shadows flickering through the slats. My feet move on their own. Closer. Closer.
When I push the door open, he’s there.
Dave.
Sitting behind his desk like nothing ever happened. His tie is crooked, his cologne hangs in the air, and his pen scratches across paper like it’s just another Monday morning.
He looks up when I step inside. That same smug grin. The one he always wore when he dumped his work on me with a “be a team player, Mary.”
My stomach knots. The air tastes like copper.
“Dave…” My voice cracks in my throat. “What—? But… but you’re… you’re dead.”
He doesn’t blink. Just leans back in his chair, laces his fingers over his stomach like he’s settling in for a chat.
“Funny thing about that,” he says. “Nobody ever files the paperwork.”
I stumble back a step. The walls feel closer.
“This isn’t real. You’re not—”
“Not what?” His grin stretches wider, too wide. His teeth are rimmed red now, like he’s been chewing on his own tongue. “Not your fault that I’m dead? Not the reason I screamed my last breath while you stood there and did nothing?”
The fluorescents overhead flicker, popping once, and I swear the shadows crawl closer.
“Stop,” I whisper. “Stop talking.”
His pen drops from his hand, clattering against the ledger. He lifts his head fully now, and that’s when I see it: thick red streaks sliding from his eyes, slow and heavy. Tears of blood carving down his cheeks.
I gag on air. My feet won’t move.
“Am I dead?” he whispers, voice wet, gurgling. “Or am I still right here… watching you choke on guilt?”
The blood drips onto the paper, soaking the ink until the numbers bleed into nothing.
I shake my head hard. “No. No, you’re not here. You can’t be here.”
But he leans forward, elbows on the desk. “Then why do you keep seeing me?”
That’s when the gunshot cracks the silence.
I scream and hit the floor hard, palms smacking concrete. My ears ring. For a second, I can’t breathe.
When I lift my head, Dave is still slouched behind the desk. No hole in his skull. No gun in sight. But the blood keeps coming.
