As the title states, I’m an after-hours security guard for a medium-sized downtown office building. Not in a terribly dangerous city. Just average. Glamorous, I know. On top of that, I’m either losing my mind or in the midst of some really strange shit.
A few nights ago, my boss gave me some security tapes that he wanted me to “look over.” Apparently, the guard that I rotated shifts with had quit. But… it was a bit unconventional. He didn’t give anybody any prior notice. It appears as if he’d simply left in the middle of his last shift and we haven’t been able to contact him since.
On the same night, there had been a break in. Seemingly nothing stolen or damaged. Just the front glass door, which was now shattered. Now, I knew about the break-in beforehand. But not about the guard. It was weird, but this is kind of a shitty job, so it wasn’t anywhere near shocking. My boss wanted me to try and identify who had done it, and said that “The cops are lazy and it would take weeks for them to even look at it.” His quote, not mine.
Sure, it was an annoying request, but it’s on me for not finishing college. It was a pretty quiet night when I got around to it. My boss told me to look it over on my own time, but that wasn't happening.
At around 2AM, I finally began watching. It took a lot of fast-forwarding until I finally got to something. We were right. The old security guard (Chris) literally got up and left at exactly 2:17 AM that night. Even weirder was that he left all his shit behind. He just walked away.
Okay, I thought. Shit happens, whatever. I kept watching until the break-in at 3AM. Some medium-built dude dressed in a stereotypical burglar outfit - ski mask included, took a baseball bat and smashed through the front glass door. I’m pretty sure that Chris never even locked it behind him when he left, so that was a waste. Also, our alarm didn’t go off, because we didn’t have one. (Cut costs wherever you can, eh?) It’s a wonder that I still work here, given the fact that some guy could literally break in, stab me to death, and the cops wouldn’t even know about it ‘till the morning. But that’s besides the current point.
The intruder walked in and entered the stairwell, so I tracked him. A bit of a complicated process, but I finally found him on the 6th floor. That’s when he took out what looked like a wire. I felt my skin crawl a bit upon seeing that. There’s only a few reasons as to why a person would carry wires around in their pockets and one of them stands out as being particularly unsavory.
He started making his way down the corridor, in a manner that I can only describe as methodical. Purposeful, even. As if whoever he was stalking was not yet aware of his presence.
Moments later, the door to a room up ahead of him flung open. He reacted quickly, ducking into an adjacent hallway as somebody else came out.
And let me tell you that I was not prepared for who it was.
It was… me. A near-replica. I say near because the guy’s face looked borderline emaciated, while his clothes barely clung to his limbs. I was more of a muscular build myself. But I’d been skinny before. I knew what I looked like. And that was it.
My copy was wearing what looked like some kind of white, heavy-duty jacket. Almost looked like something a soldier would wear in an arctic climate. On top of that, there was a large streak of red covering his chest. Probably doesn’t take a detective to figure out what it was, given the circumstances. He also appeared to be exhausted, with one bony hand holding the wall whilst he was doubled over, exhaling like hell.
Eventually, he started moving, stumbling towards the intersecting hallways where the mystery man was presumably waiting for him, hands clasped around the wire. I found myself instinctively reaching for my phone to call 911 when I realized that this was not happening in real-time. But even if it was… how was I supposed to describe the situation?
As my copy passed by, the mystery man pounced on him. But it seemed as he was anticipating it. My copy, that is. A vicious struggle ensued. Despite my copy’s frail appearance, he still managed to hold the upper hand against the mystery man for a while. Let me tell you, I sure as hell can’t fight like that. The combination of the military-grade jacket and the hand-to-hand training that this guy clearly practiced yielded a few possible avenues of explanation. But I was going to need a lot more info in order to really understand what was going on here.
Despite being pounded on for a good few minutes, the mystery man eventually landed a lucky uppercut that staggered my copy. He quickly took the opportunity, rushing and forcing the wire around his neck until he went limp.
That struggle ended. What followed was… interesting. He dragged the body back to the room that my copy had come out of and shut the door behind him. I fast-forwarded up until today. Nobody else came out. Nobody went in.
There was nothing that I could do for the rest of my shift, but just sit there, absolutely floored. The next day, my boss asked me what I’d seen. I told him a fabricated version of what had happened. That some dipshit high school kids in masks broke the door for fun. Nothing we can do about it beyond installing an actual security system.
He said he’d “look into it.” Sure he will.
Now, I considered just forcing myself to forget about it. That would’ve yielded more sanity. But some things are too bizarre to overlook.
During my next shift, I decided to take a look at the 6th floor myself. I assumed that it’d just be a bunch of cubicles up there, but I was obviously interested in one specific room.
Once up there, I started walking around. It almost felt surreal being in a place where something so strange had just happened. In fact, it got me questioning whether or not I’d just lost my mind for a few minutes, and if anything on that tape was even real.
But I got my answer when I saw the stain on the carpet. It was barely noticeable, but I knew what I was looking for. A speck of blood from the struggle. I wasn’t sure whether it was from my copy or the mystery man.
I kept going down the corridor, trying to locate the room that my copy had come out of. From the footage, it was pretty evident that it had to be the 4th door on the right. I tried the handle. Locked. And then I tried something that would most certainly cost me my job. But I rationalized it by realizing that if anybody was ever even going to watch the tapes… it was once again going to be me.
I kicked the door down and headed in. It was a conference room, but one that looked to be under renovation. There were dry paint cans, an unfinished carpet job and drywall covering the walls. But… nothing unusual. Yet. There was bound to be something here.
For the first few hours that I stalked the room, I could not find anything noteworthy. The other way out of the room was a stairwell exit, so it was reasonable to assume that he simply escaped through there. I was about to give up when I stumbled upon something hidden under one of the desks. A device of sorts. Maybe. Couldn’t really tell you. Despite being rather small, it was incredibly heavy. A cylindrical shaped metallic item. It was smooth all around, save for a few buttons that did nothing when I pressed them. And a dried, bloody thumbprint. Wonder who that belonged to.
I stood there, trying to decipher the particulars of the item for an indistinguishable amount of time. But an abrupt noise jarred me back to attentiveness. Footsteps in the hallway. Footsteps getting closer. I was not doing my job.
A few ideas regarding the identity of the intruder ran through my head. Obviously, none of them were good and one of them was really bad. In any case, I made a beeline for the stairwell. And I took the metal thing with me.
I didn’t go back to the building until around 5:40 AM. 20 minutes before the end of my shift. To my surprise… the new glass door that we’d installed was still intact. But I definitely knew that I’d heard steps out in the hallway. Maybe they found another way in. Maybe I’m just going insane.
I’m still holding the device in my hand. What am I gonna do with it? No fucking idea. But I do know what I’m doing next. Time to pay a visit to the old security guard. Chris has to have some kind of answer here.
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Credits
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