The morgue didn't creak. It breathed.
Every drawer, every pipe, every inch of tile exhaled a cold that settled beneath Elijah's skin. Like the place was alive. Like it was dreaming.
And Elijah… he was the dream.
Or maybe the nightmare.
Because tonight, the dead were no longer asking.
They were confessing.
---
He didn't clock in.
Didn't bother.
The digital punchpad outside the mortuary door blinked 00:00—frozen, just like the temperature inside.
Valerie had stopped asking questions. After the last night's lockdown, she'd filed an incident report, but no one read them. They never did. Not in hospitals like this. Not in graveyards with payroll.
He walked in with a duffel bag full of whiskey, his old field notebook, and a voice recorder. He placed the recorder on the autopsy table. Clicked it on.
> "This is Elijah Vane. Night shift technician, Morgue 7. No patient in today's slot. Awaiting communication… if any."
He didn't have to wait long.
Drawer 6 clicked open.
The same drawer that had once held a child's lie.
Now it held a truth Elijah wasn't ready to hear.
---
A woman's body. Mid-40s. Blonde hair slicked back in dried blood.
The tag read RENEE VALE.
The tag shouldn't exist.
Because she died years ago.
And Elijah was the one who filed her.
He stared.
The body was… fresh. Too fresh.
Like she'd just walked in.
Like she had never left.
> "I lied," she whispered.
Her eyes opened.
No cloud. No cataract.
Just clarity.
> "I said it was my husband. I said he pushed me. It wasn't true."
Elijah stepped closer, voice recorder trembling in his hand.
> "Renee, I—your file said—"
> "I know what the file said. I know what I told the nurse. I know what you wrote down. But you didn't write what I whispered while you stitched me shut, did you?"
Elijah froze.
That night came back like floodlight:
Her body wheeled in after a fall.
A broken neck.
The husband accused. Arrested. Convicted.
But he always denied it.
And in the quiet of stitching, Elijah remembered a sound.
A breath.
A whisper he ignored.
> "Tell them… I slipped."
---
The tape recorder caught static.
Then clarity:
> "I lied to punish him."
> "He didn't kill me."
> "But your silence did."
Elijah tried to speak, but the drawers rattled.
One by one.
Drawer 3.
Drawer 2.
Drawer 8.
Then the cooler doors.
The whole morgue thrummed like a hive full of secrets.
And then… Drawer 1 opened.
Inside: a man's body. Emaciated. Mouth sewn.
But as Elijah leaned in, the sutures unraveled.
On their own.
> "I'm not here for truth," the corpse hissed.
> "I'm here to confess."
---
His name was Harold Grieves.
Convicted serial killer. Electric chair. 2007.
Elijah didn't prep that body—but he knew the name. Grieves had killed six nurses. All in silence. All undetected until it was too late.
But now, Grieves wanted to talk.
> "They buried the wrong voice, Elijah. I wasn't the one who started it."
> "There were others. In the basement. Long before I came."
> "I was just finishing their work."
Elijah stared.
He reached for the recorder.
But it was gone.
Replaced by something… wet.
A human tongue.
Still twitching.
He screamed.
But the room didn't echo.
Instead, the whisper from the drawer said:
> "You like listening, Elijah. But what if we start talking back?"
> "One voice becomes two. Two becomes ten. A chorus of what's been forgotten."
> "Confessions don't purify."
> "They infect."
And then he saw it.
The veins on his own arm.
They were black now.
Crawling up his wrist.
Whispers etched beneath his skin like tattooed sins.
The truth was writing itself into him.
Like a ledger.
Like he was becoming the book.
---
He ran.
Burst through the doors.
Past Valerie, who looked up and dropped her sandwich.
"Elijah! What the hell?"
He didn't stop.
Couldn't.
Not until he reached the old chapel across from the hospital. A place where no one came anymore.
He knelt.
Shaking.
Tried to pray.
But only whispered.
And the wind outside whispered back:
> "Confess us…"
> "Confess them all…"
> "Make the world remember…"
---
Later, when he returned to the cold room, everything was clean.
No corpses.
No drawers.
No tongue.
Just one thing left behind:
His notebook.
Opened to a fresh page.
With a message in handwriting that wasn't his:
> "You're the confessor now."
> "Tell every story, or we'll tell yours."