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@Elias Vance

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Night Shift

The Quiet Patient

Working in a mortuary is not like the movies. People always ask me if it is scary or if I have seen ghosts, but the truth is, there is no spooky music playing in the hallways and no monsters jumping out from behind the cabinets. It is just cold, clinical, and very quiet. The air inside the facility is always kept at a precise, low temperature to ensure everything is perfectly preserved. It is a sterile, humdrum environment that most people associate with fear, but to me, it is a place of quiet, profound respect. I clock in at eleven at night, right as the rest of the city is settling down to sleep. I trade the bright, noisy streets for the soft hum of the refrigeration units and the faint scent of antiseptic soap. My job is simple, yet it demands a level of attention that you cannot teach in a classroom. I log every arrival into the registry, verify the identification tags, and ensure the room remains a sanctuary of peace. Some people think what I do is inherently sad, but I see it as a final, quiet act of service. When people are brought here, they often look weary or disheveled, marks left behind from their final struggles or the trauma of an accident. I take my time with them. I treat each person with the same gentle care I would want for my own mother or father. It is a strange, quiet privilege to look after someone who no longer needs care, to be the one who ensures their transition from this world is handled with grace. You learn a great deal about the rhythm of life while working the night shift. I look at the intake forms and see names belonging to the very young and the very old, people from all walks of life. It makes me feel incredibly humble to be the silent witness to their final chapter. At night, while the world is lost in dreams, I am surrounded by the lingering memories of people who have finished their journey. I find myself wondering about the stories they carried—the people they loved, the mistakes they made, the things they left unsaid. I never get the answers, of course, but I don’t need them. My purpose is to provide the peace they need to rest. There is a deep, heavy calm in this place that you cannot find anywhere else. The real world outside is so loud and frantic, filled with the constant pinging of phones and the weight of daily stress, but here, time seems to stop. It is just me, the steady hum of the machines, and my work. Some nights are busier than others. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, its sharp chime always makes me jump slightly, reminding me that life continues to move forward and tragedy does not keep a schedule. I prepare the paperwork, organize the charts, and wait for the transport drivers to arrive. We rarely speak, other than a nod or a brief confirmation of the details. We both know we are doing an important job that most people are too frightened to even think about. I have stood at the threshold and watched families break down in tears, and I have seen others stand with a strength that leaves me breathless. In those moments, I just hold the door open and perform my duties with quiet professionalism. I have learned that the living often need much more help than the dead. By the time the sun begins to bleed over the horizon, I am exhausted, but my mind feels remarkably clear. I peel off my apron, wash my hands until they are clean of the night’s work, and walk out to my car. Driving home in the early morning light, I see the commuters rushing to their jobs, clutching their coffee cups and looking stressed. I find myself smiling at them. They do not know what happens in the shadows of the night. They worry about unanswered emails, office politics, or being five minutes late, but I am just happy to be alive. This job has taught me not to sweat the small stuff, because I know exactly where we are all headed in the end. I am not afraid of the dark anymore; instead, I know there is a real, raw connection to humanity here. I get home, turn the deadbolt on my door, and fall into bed. I sleep well, comforted by the knowledge that I did my part for someone who could no longer do it for themselves.

@Elias Vance
11 0
Night Shift

The Ember Watch

Working the night shift as a firefighter is mostly about waiting. People think it's all sirens and smoke, but most nights it's just quiet. Our station is an old brick building right on the edge of the woods. The walls are thick and a little cold, even in summer, and the floors creak when you walk across them at night. By midnight, most of the guys are asleep in the bunk room, and the only sounds are the ticking clock on the wall and someone's soft snoring down the hall. That night started like any other. I was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago, but I drank it anyway because it gave me something to do. The clock on the wall said it was almost two in the morning. I remember looking at it and thinking, "Just a few more hours and I can go home and sleep in my own bed." I didn't know yet that two o'clock would end up meaning something different to me after that night. The alarm went off right at 2:00 AM. It's a sound you never really get used to, even after years on the job. It cuts through the quiet like a knife. My crew and I jumped up, pulled on our gear fast, the straps and buckles clicking into place from memory more than thought. The call was for a chimney fire at an old farmhouse about five miles out, past the edge of town where the road turns to gravel and the streetlights stop. "Empty house, right?" Mike asked as he climbed into the truck. He's been on the crew for about six years, a steady guy, not the type to get spooked by much. "That's what dispatch said," I told him. "Nobody's lived there in years. Guess the old chimney decided to light up anyway." We drove down the narrow road, the headlights cutting through the dark trees on either side. The road wound back and forth, and the woods pressed in close, branches almost touching the truck on both sides. Nobody talked much. That's normal before a call — everyone gets quiet, thinking about what we might find. When we pulled up to the farmhouse, something felt off right away, though I couldn't say what. The house was old, the kind of old where the paint has peeled off completely and the porch sags in the middle. But the chimney — the chimney was glowing. Not like a normal fire glow, orange and flickering with smoke rising up. This was different. It was a steady orange light, almost like a lamp left on, and the air around it shimmered with heat, the way asphalt looks on a hot day. But there was no sound. No roar, no crackle, no smoke at all. Just that strange, silent heat. "That's not right," said Tommy, one of the younger guys, as he stared up at it. "Fire's supposed to make noise." Nobody answered him. We went into our training mode, the way you do without even thinking about it. The crew started setting up the ladder against the side of the house to get a better look at the chimney. I stood back near the truck, watching the house, watching the glow, trying to figure out why my stomach felt tight. That's when I saw it. Over by the old barn, maybe thirty feet from the house, something was standing in the doorway. At first I thought it was a shadow from the trees, just a trick of the dark. But shadows don't stand that still, and they don't have eyes. This thing was tall, taller than any man I'd ever seen, and thin in a way that didn't look natural, like it had been stretched. It was made of something like shadow, darker than the night around it, so it almost looked like a hole cut out of the air. And its eyes glowed orange, the same color as that strange chimney fire. I tried to call out to the others. I opened my mouth to shout Mike's name, to tell him to look over by the barn, but nothing came out. Not even a whisper. My throat worked, but there was no sound, like something had reached in and turned off my voice. I blinked, just once, the way you do without thinking. When my eyes opened again, the figure was closer. Not like it had walked — more like it had just appeared there, a little nearer than before. I blinked again, telling myself I was seeing things, that I was tired, that two in the morning does strange things to a man's eyes. But every time I blinked, it moved a little closer, flickering, like a bad video that skips frames. My hands were shaking by then. I grabbed my radio off my shoulder and pressed the button, trying to call it in, trying to tell someone back at the station what I was seeing. All that came out was a high, screeching noise, like feedback, so loud and sharp that I dropped the radio and it clattered onto the gravel. "Hey, you good?" Mike called over from the ladder, glancing back at me. I couldn't even answer him. I just stared at the barn doorway, my heart slamming against my ribs. And then, all at once, the fire went out. Not slowly, not like it burned down and faded. It just stopped, like someone had flipped a switch. The orange glow in the chimney vanished, and the heat shimmer in the air disappeared with it. I put my hand up near the bricks a minute later, and they were cold. Not warm, not cooling down — cold, like they'd never been lit at all. But that wasn't the strangest part. The house itself had changed. Just a minute before, it had been falling apart, with peeling paint and a sagging porch and broken windows. Now, standing there in the moonlight, it looked brand new. The paint was fresh and white. The porch was straight and solid. Even the windows were whole, catching the moonlight like they'd just been washed. We all just stood there. Five grown men, trained firefighters who'd seen plenty in our time, just stood in that yard staring at a house that had no business looking like that. Nobody said a word for a long moment. "Where'd it go?" Tommy finally asked, his voice shaking a little. He wasn't asking about the fire. He was looking toward the barn. I looked back at the doorway. The figure was gone. No sign it had ever been there at all. We searched the property for almost an hour after that. We checked the chimney again, checked the barn, walked the fence line with our flashlights. There was no ash anywhere. No smoke smell. No heat left in the bricks, not even a little warmth you'd expect from a fire that had just gone out. It was like nothing had ever burned there at all. Nobody talked much on the drive back to the station. I remember looking out the window at the dark trees going by, thinking about that figure's orange eyes, thinking about how my voice just wouldn't work when I needed it to. When we got back, we filled out the report the best we could, but none of us really knew what to write. "Fire extinguished upon arrival" was about the closest thing to the truth we could put down on paper. I still think about that night more than I probably should. Now, whenever a call comes in late, I check my watch before I even grab my gear. I always hope it doesn't say 2:00 AM. Because I know something strange is out there in those woods, something that doesn't want to be found, and after that night, I've come to believe that some fires are better left alone.

@Elias Vance
16 0

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