The Midnight Shift Worker Who Only Spoke In Rhymes
I have worked the night shift at the Riverside Bakery for three years now. The rhythm of the night is something that gets into your bones. It is just me, the steady hum of the industrial mixers, and the warm, golden smell of proofing dough. The darkness outside makes the bakery feel like a lonely island, a safe little bubble where the rest of the world stops existing. I liked it that way. I liked the silence. Then, my boss, Mr. Henderson, decided we needed more help. That was when Silas walked through the heavy steel doors. He was a thin, tall man with deep-set eyes that seemed to constantly scan the corners of the ceiling, like he was tracking something moving just out of my sight. Right away, I felt that something was off. He moved with a nervous, jerky energy, constantly checking his watch or smoothing down his apron. I thought he was just nervous about a new job, but by the second night, I realized it was something else entirely. Silas did not talk to me like a normal person. He only spoke in rhymes. When the flour bags were running low, he did not just tell me. He looked at the pallet and said, The dust is thin, the bin is bare, please bring the bags, from over there. I blinked at him, waiting for the punchline. I waited for him to grin or let out a chuckle, but he just turned back to his station. He never laughed. He never broke character. For three weeks, this was my life. Every request, every observation, every simple greeting came out in a rhythmic, sing-song cadence that grated against the quiet hum of the ovens. It was profoundly creepy. It made the air in the bakery feel heavy and thick, like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. I tried to talk to him, really talk to him, during our breaks. I asked him where he lived or what he did before he came to this bakery. Every time, he would pause, tilt his head, and answer in verse. If I asked him about his past, he would say, A house of stone, a house of wood, I leave behind, where once I stood. It felt like he was keeping a secret, or perhaps hiding from something that he could not name. It started to wear me down. I found myself snapping at him just to see if I could get a normal, angry sentence out of his mouth. But he just took my irritation in stride, answering with another poem that made no sense at all. Even the delivery drivers, who usually just drop off supplies and leave as fast as possible, noticed it. They started lingering by the back door, whispering to me while Silas worked in the back. They were confused and more than a little unsettled. They would ask me what was wrong with him, and I never had a good answer. They eventually started avoiding him entirely, leaving the crates by the loading dock instead of bringing them inside. I kept waiting for the joke to end. I waited for the day when he would finally drop the act, look at me, and say, Man, I am just messing with you. But that day never came. The pressure of the night, the repetitive nature of the baking, and the constant, rhythmic rhyming made me feel like I was losing my mind. The bakery did not feel like a safe island anymore. It felt like a stage set for a play I had not signed up to perform. I spent my shifts wondering if he was genuinely troubled or if he was some kind of strange performance artist sent to test my sanity. Then, one morning, the silence was finally restored. I walked into the flour room to check on the morning prep and saw his station was empty. His apron was folded with military precision, placed neatly in the center of the wooden prep table. Beside it, the final rack of sourdough bread sat unfinished, the loaves unbaked and beginning to lose their shape. I checked the bathroom, the office, and the loading dock, but he was gone. He had not taken his coat, his keys, or his pay envelope. He just evaporated into the morning air. Nobody ever told me why he left, or if anyone had actually hired him in the way I assumed. When I asked Mr. Henderson, he just shrugged and said he did not know much about the man either. Silas never came back. Sometimes, when it is 4:00 AM and the bakery is perfectly silent, I still think about him. I look at that empty spot on the floor and I can almost hear his voice, drifting through the smell of yeast and burnt flour, reciting some nonsensical poem about the moon or the dough. I wonder if he was playing the longest, strangest prank in history, or if he was truly a lost soul. To me, it feels like a dream that I had for three weeks—a strange, rhythmic nightmare that simply washed away the moment the sun came up and the rest of the world started to wake up again. I still do not know who he was, but I know that the silence in the bakery has never felt the same since he left.