The Ghost of an Empty Future (1000 words)

Trigger Warings: self harm, suicidal thoughts, pov change, dissociation

I jolt awake, finding myself at work. Blearily, I check the clock on the taskbar. 7pm.

Right. It’s a Friday. We work the closing shift.

My eyes drift up and across the room. And then I see her.
My breath catches in my throat, instantly cold, eyes sharpened into focus.
She’s me.

Well, not quite us. She looks pretty worse for wear. Look at those scars on her arms; one is still bleeding.
She’s got dark bags under her eyes, and that’s a pretty slumped posture. And –
Yikes, she’s met our gaze.

I avert my eyes.
Maybe I’m just seeing things. I wouldn’t want to stare anyone down or make them uncomfortable.
I look back at the blank desktop on the monitor in front of me.
And I rub my face, completely covering my field of view.

As my hands recede from my face, I jump.
She’s standing opposite of me now. Staring me down.

“You need to kill yourself,” she croaks out, voice cracking.

A beat.

“If you just kill yourself now it’ll make it easier for the both of us,” she weakly sobs. Her lips quiver, red eyes pleading, brows drooping.

It’s strange how ethereal she looks. Her hair is frizzed up, but it forms a halo against the harsh LED lighting of the mezzanine.

She pulls my RFID badge out of one pocket, and a knife out of the other. “If you take your 15 minutes break now, we can finish the job in the employee bathroom,” she lilts manically, a confusing flash of excitement across her face.

I look to my left, checking to see if my coworker is seeing any of this. But he’s asleep.
I grab the mouse and move it over the security camera icon -
Pain.

She’s slashed our arm. Lightly, given the shallowness of the cut. Actually. It matches that one cut on her arm.

I reach my opposite hand and run it against the cut.

It’s real. Not a hallucination. Is this some fixed point in time stuff, are we going to -

My eyes widen and I meet her gaze again. She’s tearing up, though seemingly relieved. “Let’s go.” She motions towards the side door.

I grasp the armrests of the chair.

Never go to a secondary location.
But she’s me.
What does that matter? The cut is real. She’s a threat.
If this isn’t a hallucination, then -

I push up and out, rising to a stand. I brush my hand against my RFID badge, jumping slightly as I hear the beep from the door lock.

Okay, so her badge is real too. Real knife, real badge. Maybe she’s real too?

I slide into the hallway, following her. She looks back over her shoulder, and, seeing me, nods. “The sooner we get this over, the quicker our suffering ends.”

I stop in the middle of the hallway, at an intersection, the last turn. “No,” I whisper.

The lights flicker. I flinch as her hand lightly brushes against my cheek. “Is there another way you’d rather do this?” she asks, looking deep into my eyes. A flurry of movement to the left catches my attention, and I pivot my head to look out the window.

“It’s snowing.”

There’s supposed to be a really bad blizzard tomorrow. Has it already started?

“We should have known. You were always drawn to the cold in ways I never understood,” she murmured. Noticing the tears forming in my eyes, she steadied her voice and shifted it to be more cheerful “Well, off we go then! We won’t need a winter coat where we’re going!”

Why are we walking towards the employee exit? We can’t do this. We need to stop! Please don’t-

The handle of the door feels cold against my skin. I twist it sharply, yielding a satisfying unlatch noise. The wind fights hard against the swinging open of the door, but the two of us get it open. For a brief moment we stand, illuminated from behind by the sterile interior lights, before the door slams back shut.

Haven’t we always wanted to go out this way?

The snow muffles all but my internal thoughts. The sense of cold fades to a dull reminder of the precariousness of being outside in this weather.

I turn to my companion. Her hair, brightened by the light spilling out of the window, billowing in the wind, perfectly frames her face. Her eyes sparkle. Yet her lips remain tensed, unrelaxed.

She doesn’t look as confident as she did before. Is this really what she wants?

She softly speaks. “We've suffered so much in our short life. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to protect us."

We nod in response and reach for her hand. Together we look out into the blizzard, hand in hand, as the cold continues to set into our bones.

She squeezes our hand and whispers, “Maybe I can try harder.”

We turn to face her. We raise our arm and caress her cheek. “You can still survive.”

She smiles, tears in her eyes, and places her hand over ours. “And if I survive, then we all do.”

We release our hands from their grasps.

Our companion presses her RFID badge against the door, and the latch yields. She struggles against the wind, but ultimately wraps herself around the door, slipping in through the narrow opening. She looks back, meeting our gaze, before letting the door close once again, latching shut.

Reality seems to fade away from us as she stumbles in the hallway, acclimating to the sensation of being alive. Of realizing just how cold she is. Of realizing just how close to the end she came.

She returns to the desk, shivering, sinking into the awaiting chair. Her coworker is still asleep. The mezzanine is still empty.

Fear suddenly grips her as she recalls that her companion(s) had been left in the snow.

How am I supposed to-

She feels another hand holding hers.

We love you.

She relaxes.