Many Deaths

Being a hairdresser was sometimes a lousy job, but Sybill had it down to an art form. Waking up before the sun, taking a run, returning to her one bedroom flat and treating herself with a cup of chamomile tea in a chipped cup she never replaced, getting ready, and being at her salon by the time the streets filled with the honks of cars.

This day was nothing different, except maybe for the poor cat who got hit by a car, minutes after she'd finished putting up the displays. Sybill winced- it wouldn't survive, that much was clear- and went back to her work.

The morning regulars were her favourite- chatty retirees, overworked professionals, and that occasional student looking for prom or just a trim. They didn't think before speaking, and the secrets they spilled were always tucked away in her mind like the strands of hair swept under her workstation.

The day was peak rush hour, but the crowd died down by evening, and the last client had left by eight. Pulling down the blinds, turning off most of the lights, setting down the displays, dusting off a few wigs, and she'd be done. Putting her feet up on the dressing table with her back towards the door, she plugged in her headphones and settled with a last cup of coffee. Going home could wait.

Maybe, that is exactly what she should have done that day.

The next sound to distract her from the music blasting in her ears was a sharp crack, followed by the unmistakable, loud sound of a mirror shattering. Turning around, for a moment, she didn't believe her eyes. The kids at the end of the road were rowdy, yes, but this? This was terrorism.

A stone lay far too innocently on the ground. One of the wall-wide mirrors had exploded into innumerable shards across the table and floor, and whatever calm she’d been feeling evaporated instantly. Yanking out her headphones, she stormed to the door, a loud string of curses and threats already forming on her lips- to find it already open.

Sybill frowned. She remembered locking the door, and she hadn't heard it opening. And coming to think of it..........

The glass of the door wasn't broken. Yet she was alone in the salon.

Or so it seemed, only for a moment, before she realised the figure at the corner, nearly hidden from the light of the single bulb still turned on, did not look like a mannequin- unless mannequins breathed.

Cold, numbing fear began to creep up her spine. Still, she reached beside and gripped one of the shards. It felt cold, sharp, cutting into the soft skin of her palm.

"Who's there?" The question forced past her throat.

It didn't move. Cautiously, she took a single step closer- but still, no movement came. Almost feeling that this was a huge prank, she took another step.

She didn't even get the time to scream.

The last thing she ever saw was the single, lonely bulb filtering through whisps of blond hair.

The morning sun crept through the dirty windows of Mystic Curiosities, making long shadows across the messy shelves. Xavier woke up in his small apartment above the shop, his red hair all over the place. That heavy feeling in his chest was back again—he was so damn tired, exhausted down to his bones from another sleepless night.

Nothing differed in his mornings: quick shower, hair tied up messy, glasses on. In the bathroom mirror, he looked like hell. Dark circles under his eyes from another night of staring at the ceiling. His face looked pale and drawn, features that might have been striking now just looked tired.

Downstairs, the shop was quiet and still. Xavier unlocked the front door and flipped the sign to "Open." Then he started dusting everything, like he did every morning. The old books, the shiny crystals, the little bottles filled with dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. He lit some incense, and soon the whole place smelled like chamomile and lavender—the only thing that felt like home.

He dusted everything carefully, moving around jewelry boxes and weird carved animals. When he got to the big grandfather clock in the middle of the shop, he stopped. The brass pendulum swung back and forth, and suddenly he could hear Gran's voice again.

"Time's a funny thing, Xavier," she used to say, adjusting the clock hands with her wrinkled fingers. "Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts. But it never stops moving, whether we want it to or not."

He was eight then, sitting cross-legged on the floor while she told him stories about ghosts and magic, about herbs that could heal broken hearts and stones that kept evil away. Even then, he knew they were just stories. But when she talked, her whole face would light up, and for those moments, he believed in magic too.

The doorbell chimed. Mrs. Chen walked in—Tuesday morning, right on time for her jasmine incense. Xavier put on his customer smile, the same one he wore for everyone.

"Morning, Mrs. Chen. The usual?"

"You know me too well, honey." She counted out exact change, then looked at him with worried eyes. "You look terrible. When's the last time you had a real meal?"

Something twisted in his chest. "I'm fine, really. Just busy with inventory and stuff."

"Mm-hmm." She didn't buy it, but she didn't push either. "Take care of yourself, Xavier. Your grandmother would want that."

The mention of Gran made his throat tight. "Yeah. I know."

Throughout the day, customers came and went. There was the teenager who spent twenty minutes examining crystals before leaving empty-handed, the businessman who bought sage for his wife with barely concealed skepticism, and the elderly woman who lingered by the book section, running her fingers along the spines as if they might hold the answers she desperately needed.

Xavier smiled, nodded, offered gentle explanations about the supposed properties of various items. He wrapped purchases in tissue paper with care, thanked each customer warmly, and pretended not to notice the way some looked at him—as if he were as much a curiosity as the objects he sold.

Around three, when the shop was empty again, Xavier found himself back at the grandfather clock. The afternoon light caught the brass, and suddenly he was twelve, helping Gran polish it while she hummed old songs.

"This clock's been in our family forever," she'd said, her voice soft. "It's seen births and deaths, good times and bad. When I'm gone, it'll remember me, just like it remembers all the others."

The memory was so vivid he could smell her lavender perfume, could feel the warmth of her hand on his shoulder. But when he blinked, there was only the empty shop and the steady tick-tock of the clock marking time's relentless passage.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of routine. A few more customers, more smiles, more careful wrapping of purchases. When the last customer left and the sun began to set, Xavier locked the front door and began closing up. He dimmed the lights, checked the register, and made sure the incense was properly extinguished.

Walking upstairs felt like climbing a mountain. His tiny apartment felt cramped and stuffy after a day of pretending everything was okay. He collapsed on his beat-up couch, finally letting his mask slip.

The silence was deafening. No Gran's stories, no warm presence to chase away the dark thoughts. Just him and the grief that never really went away, not even for a second.

He made dinner—instant noodles again—and ate without tasting it while staring out the window. People walked by below, heading home to families, friends, lives that actually meant something. Xavier pressed his forehead against the cold glass and wondered if this emptiness was all he'd ever have.

When he finally dragged himself to bed, exhaustion hit him like a truck. He didn't bother with lights, just started unbuttoning his shirt in the dark. Another night of bad sleep ahead, another day of pretending tomorrow.

He was reaching for his pyjamas when something cracked against the back of his skull. White light exploded behind his eyes, and he hit the floor hard. Everything went black.

When he came to, pain was everywhere. His head felt like it was splitting open, and his mouth was bone dry against some rough cloth stuffed between his teeth. He tried to move— couldn't. Rope cut into his wrists and ankles, tight enough to make his hands go numb.

The shop looked wrong in the flickering candlelight. Shadows danced on the walls between his familiar shelves, and the air reeked of burning herbs—not the nice kind from his shop. This smell made his nose burn and his eyes water.

Someone was moving in the darkness, chanting in a language that felt foreign. Each word felt like a nail being driven into his brain, making his vision blur and his stomach turn.

He tried to shift, to see what was happening, and felt something warm and wet beneath him. Horror flooded through him when he realized it was blood—his blood— flowing from wounds he didn't remember getting. It was pooling on some kind of altar carved right into his floorboards, candles arranged in patterns that hurt to look at.

The chanting got louder, more frantic. Xavier tried to scream, forgetting about the gag until the sound died in his throat. His vision started going dark around the edges, but he could see the figure approaching. A hand raised, something sharp catching his sight.

The final words echoed through the small room like a death spell, and Xavier felt cold steel punch through his ribs. The pain was massive, overwhelming, but somehow distant—like watching it happen to someone else on TV. His last coherent thought was Gran's voice, calling him from somewhere far away.

"Come home, Xavier," she seemed to whisper. "Time to rest now."

The darkness that had lived in his chest for three years finally swallowed him whole, and Xavier's eyes closed for the last time in the shop that had been his world, his prison, and finally, his grave.

Clarke's days didn't begin, they launched.

The beep of an alarm at exactly 4:45, the next half an hour spent training himself to do what he suspiciously ended up doing most in his job- run, back just with the first rays of the sun, and he was at his desk by 6, reports and informations stacked meticulously before the rest had even begun showing up.

Some thought that, given his age that required a certain gravity to be taken seriously in the job, and with being that by-the-book guy, he made a good fed. Others thought he was a pain in the ass.

Either way, he didn't have the time to care. The picture of a desolate mine field and a seemingly normal playground decorated the case file before him, and that case was unraveling faster than he could keep a track of. If some macho-murderer could have the guts to target a fed and walk away without a scratch, it was ten kinds of screwed up.

And that was not counting the dead hairdresser, who could occupy a headline herself.

The said case began began normally, with a few disappearances around the town. To be honest, even he had almost summed it down to runaways. But then, the bodies began showing up- one by one, in the exact same pattern. And the worst part was knowing the rest of the bodies were similarly buried somewhere, but they couldn’t take a guess at where.

The pictures, however, were the courtesy of a man he had seen only on the newspaper for winning a national award in photography- he didn't remember the name, and the said man had refused to give it to him- with a plea of not disclosing their source to anyone. Clarke used to pride himself on spotting exactly what was amiss within a picture, and determined, he picked them up.

The first picture, he could see at once what was wrong with it. The small, delicate hand sticking out of the ground was unmistakable- and the investigation could be launched if he only managed to convince the head of it.

The second picture, however, seemed normal. Just a few kids playing, a couple of teens taking a walk- and suddenly, it clicked. The teen boy- he had been the latest disappearance. And going by the time in the photograph, this was taken exactly ten minutes before.

Well, he thought, there's one way to know for sure.

The whole day passed by busily- everything ranging from robberies to other disappearances- some of which were actually runaways- and it was evening before he could bring the matter up with the head and get a permission. It was quick.

The playground was deserted- the now empty swings and slides looking vaguely like something out of a storybook, complete with a dead cat to the side. Clarke didn't identify himself as imaginative, but something about the place sent an odd tingle to his fingers, which found their way to the holster at his hip. It was quiet. Too quiet.

Then that quiet was broken by footsteps.

He immediately whirled around, instincts kicking into place, but there was no one. The footsteps now seemed to come from behind him- scratch that, they seemed to come from every direction.

For a moment, he contemplated on whether to take out the badge, or the ggun.Thwn again- it was generally a predator who liked to play with its prey, and whoever was stalking him now, was either intentionally or unintentionally doing the exact same thing.

Talk first, shoot later.

Screw that, he thought. The rules were not going to save him now.

Taking his best guess, he held up the gun. "Identify yourself," he asked, in that near perfected voice that people didn't usually have the mind to ignore. But neither acknowledgement nor further footsteps came.

His own breath sounded too loud in the stillness, which was sharp as a glass. He took a few steps forward, unsure of which way to go- before the silence shattered.

An ear-piercing scream tore through the stillness, and out of pure instincts, he ran in the direction. He didn't get to run too far. A hard, solid something connected with the back of his head, and then there was darkness.

________

Consciousness was slow in returning.

The first thing he registered was the pain shooting through his head at so much as trying to open his eyes. The second was the scarce air.

Desperation and panic set in at once, but his trained mind reminded him to save oxygen and slow the breathing. Being buried alive was not the death he had in mind.

There was something wrapped around him-something like a coat. Getting it off was the easy part. He tried to move over the damp earth, to reach over and crack the lid- only to find it as hard and solid as cold stone.

Despite his mind going on overdrive to focus on a way out, the panic began to set in. Think, he told himself, for the love of God, think. But what could he think of? None of the trainings had covered this, and the realization came way too clearly.

Whatever he was buried in, was not a coffin, and definitely not breakable. Not even a desperate cry of help could force past his starved lungs.

The panic was brief, however. Once it passed, it was almost like falling asleep.

He tried to find a crack- just one, just enough to let him breathe just once more- but all in vain. Whoever had buried him- dead or alive, none was much further from the other now- had made the plan foolproof almost to the point of admiration.

His deprived lungs finally gave out, comforting darkness covering him with care, and his last sight was of the clip of an all too familiar badge.