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