The padlock didn’t just snap, it groaned, shedding a decade of rust on Elias boots like dried blood. Inside 505 smelled of mothballs & things better left forgotten, a tomb of cardboard boxes stacked high enough to scrape the corrugated ceiling. He clicked his flashlight on cutting through the stagnant air until it snagged on something in the far corner- not a box, but a figure.
Elias froze, a cold prickle of sweat blooming at his hairline. Standing amidst the dust was a wax version of himself, staring back with glass eyes that held a terrifyingly familiar spark. He was utterly unnerved, the figure wasn’t just a likeness it was wearing the exact same navy windbreaker he’d brought only yesterday, right down to the frayed thread on the left cuff.
His breath hitched. Pinned to the navy nylon of the statue’s chest was a yellowed scrap of note paper. Elias reached out his fingers trembling as they brushed the cold waxy skin of the figures hand.. The ink dark& frantic, the loops of the ‘L’ & the sharp cross of the ‘T’ unmistakably his own (It read. Don’t let them see you leave)
The ink on the note was still damp, smudging under Elias thumb. A sudden, heavy silence fell over the Unit, the kind that makes your ears ring. Elias stepped back, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. That’s when he saw it. When he’d first clicked on the light, the statues hands had been at it’s side. Now, the right hand was lifted,- just an inch-it’s wax fingers hooked as if reaching for the lapel of Elias’s actual jacket.
He blinked, rubbing his eyes, but the hand didn’t move back. It stayed there, suspended in the dusty air, trembling with a faint,rhythmic vibration. It wasn’t just warm, it had a pulse.
The flickering overhead bulb in the hallway gave one final, dying buzz before plunging the Unit in to total darkness. In the black, Elias didn’t hear a struggle, he heard the sound of sliding skin, like a heavy coat being turned inside out. A sudden, agonizing cold seeped into his marrow, starting at his toes & climbing up his shins until his knees refused to bend. He tried to scream, but his jaw felt heavy, his tongue thickening into a weight of tasteless gray wax.(Snap)
The light hummed back to life, casting a harsh, clinical orange over the unit. Elias was still there, but he was looking at the world through glass eyes that couldn’t blink. Across the small space, the figure in the navy windbreaker adjusted it’s collar, smoothed the frayed thread on the left cuff &tucked the yellow note into it’s pocket
The ‘statue’ turned it’s boots crunching on the rust he had shed only minutes before. It didn’t look back as it slid the heavy metal door shut, the bolt sliding home with a definite metallic click. Elias was left in the dark, silent monument to a life that was no longer his.
GWN 