The key turned in the lock.

I pressed my back hard against the door, the fruit knife trembling in my hand.

Half a minute earlier, someone in the work group chat had shared another news article. It said the killer would dismember me.

Was he really going to do it?

Click.

The lock opened.

A violent force slammed into the door. I went down with it, door and body crashing backward together.

The instant the back of my head hit the floor, I saw him step inside. He was wearing the same gray pajamas as me. Without a word, he reached straight for my throat.

I was hauled up off the ground. His other hand lifted as well.

What he was holding came clearly into view. It was a semi-transparent supermarket plastic bag, stretched out of shape by the weight inside.

Dark liquid had pooled at the bottom, dripping down in slow drops, splashing onto my slippers.

My eyes widened. There were chunks of flesh inside.

The flesh had wrinkled, aged skin. Strands of gray-white hair stuck to shattered bone and dark red tissue. A veined hand dangled limply from the opening of the bag, a faded gold ring on the ring finger.

Was it Mrs. Calder from next door?

I didn’t dare confirm it. I shut my eyes instead.

"How is it? Not bad, right!" He forced me to look at his "work".

Just for that instant, I used the last of my strength and stabbed upward, not at him but at the plastic bag.

The knife tip punctured the plastic and plunged into the flesh inside. Warm liquid sprayed out, soaking his hand and splattering across my face.

He froze, then abruptly let go.

I collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, my throat burning with pain.

He stood in front of me, lowering his head to look at his blood-smeared hand.

"Ugh…" Then he turned and walked out, even pulling the door closed behind him. His footsteps faded down the hallway.

I lay there for at least five minutes before crawling toward the door.

I looked out through the peephole to see that the corridor was empty.

On the floor outside my door was a small puddle of filth of blood mixed with bits of tissue and half of a severed finger that was wearing a faded gold ring.

I rushed into the bathroom and vomited.

When there was nothing left but bile and acid, I turned on the tap and scrubbed my face desperately.

When I looked up again, the person in the mirror was dripping with water, eyes bloodshot, and deep purple fingerprints clearly visible around the neck.

But alive.

I… hadn’t died?

With shaking hands, I dialed 911 and incoherently reported the dismembered body parts.

The police arrived quickly. Two young officers listened as I spoke, examined the injuries on my neck, and grew serious.

They went to knock on the door of Unit 703. There was no response, so they contacted the landlord and used a spare key to open it.

I stood in my doorway, watching them go in.

A few minutes later, Officer Lucas Ward came back out, his face pale. He spoke into his radio, requesting backup and a forensic team.

Then he looked at me. His expression was complicated.

"You…" He chose his words carefully. "Did you have any conflict with her?"

"No!" My voice was hoarse. "Someone broke into my apartment! Attacked me! And then carried—"

"We reviewed the hallway surveillance," the other officer, Officer Nathan Cross, said as he walked over, holding his body cam footage up for me to see.

In the black-and-white video, at 3:02 a.m., the door to Unit 703 opened.

Mrs. Calder, who was still in her nightie, came out holding an empty milk carton, as if heading out to take the trash down.

She walked to my door and then stopped. Then she began slamming her head against it seven or eight times.

After that, she turned and walked away. She did not go back to Unit 703, but toward the stairwell.

"What happened next?" I asked.

"There are no cameras in the stairwell," Officer Ward said. "But three minutes later, your door opened."

No.

That wasn’t me.

3:17 a.m.

"That’s when my apartment was broken into!" I grabbed Officer Ward’s arm. "Someone was impersonating me! He attacked me, and he killed—"

"Mr. Vale." Officer Ward gently freed his arm. "We’ve checked your apartment. There are no signs of forced entry. Doors and windows are intact. Inside, there are only your fingerprints and hair. No one else’s.

"There are biological remains on the floor," he continued, "and they match what was found in Unit 703."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Officer Cross said heavily, "Based on the surveillance footage and the evidence we currently have, the last person to have contact with the deceased, and the one who carried… body parts into a public area, was you."

"No… that’s impossible… I was almost strangled to death! Look at my neck!"

They had clearly seen the marks on my throat. Unfortunately, in the face of concrete evidence, every argument I made sounded futile.

"We need you to come back to the station and cooperate with the investigation," Officer Cross said. "And the news website page on your computer… We’ll need to examine that as well."

I sat in the police car, staring out at the empty streets before dawn. My mind was a mess.

While I hadn’t died, Mrs. Calder had died in my place.

Had the rules changed? Or had the slot for death been transferred?

Because there was no direct evidence and the injuries on my neck were real, I was allowed to leave at daybreak, but only on the condition that I remain available for questioning at any time.

When I returned home, the stains on the floor outside my door had been collected as evidence, but a faint, fishy stench still lingered.

I stood in the hallway, staring at that door. Just yesterday at this time, Mrs. Calder had been complaining that I was too loud. Now she was a pile of mangled flesh lying in the morgue.

I turned and went back inside, locked the door, and slid down against it until I was sitting on the floor.

My phone vibrated.

"Backup slots are full. In the next cycle, death cannot be transferred."

The next day, the sun came up, and the world went on as usual.

Except for Unit 703.

There was still no movement.

I washed my face and looked at myself in the mirror. The scratch at the corner of my eye was still there. It was thin, narrow, and capped with a faint scab.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

The hallway was quiet. Unit 703’s door was tightly shut. Mrs. Calder’s milk carton was still lying at the bend of the stairwell, the surface dirty and coated with dust.

I forced myself to suppress the fear and knocked on the door of Unit 703.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

No answer.

I knocked again.

Across the hall, the door to Unit 701 creaked open. A middle-aged woman poked her head out, trash bag in hand. She glanced at me, then at the door to Unit 703, and lowered her voice.

"Don’t bother knocking. No one’s home." She curled her lip, her eyes full of disdain. "That old hag brought it on herself. Good riddance."

I stood outside Unit 703 for a while longer, then turned back to my apartment and shut the door.

I sat down on the bed and pulled out my phone. There were dozens of unread messages in the work group chat.

"I heard something happened again last night."

Below it, Eric Dawson sent a grinning emoji, then added, "All you night-shift owls stay safe @everyone."

I stared at the emoji, my fingers tightening around the phone.

At 9:00 a.m., I went to the courier station.

Quietly, I made my way to the small records room behind the building. It was crammed with unresolved complaint forms and old delivery logs from past years.

I found the cabinet from three years ago, glanced toward the door to make sure no one was around, grabbed a screwdriver from the tool room, and pried it open.

The cabinet was stuffed with folders, sorted by month. I flipped to September from three years ago.

My fingers slid across the yellowed pages and stopped on a single complaint form.

Complainant: Connie Calder

Courier complained about: Noah Vale

Reason: Package missing; courier suspected of opening parcels and stealing contents

Outcome: Courier terminated; customer compensated for losses

In the signature section below, Mrs. Calder's name was scrawled crookedly.

The courier’s signature line was blank, but beside it was a photograph. It was a grainy surveillance still.

A man in a courier uniform was carrying a cardboard box out of a building. His face was blurred beyond recognition. Below the photo was a handwritten note: "Employee refuses to admit fault. Evidence conclusive. Case transferred to police."

I stared at the image.

The uniform was the old style used by our station which was phased out three years ago.

The man’s height and build looked very much like mine. However, three years ago, I hadn’t even been in this city.

I kept flipping.

There were several supplemental statements tied to the same incident, all written by Mrs. Calder. Each one was harsher than the last, demanding that the thief be severely punished.

In the end, the company paid Mrs. Calder $ 2,000, and she agreed to no longer pursue the matter.

The settlement date was September 15, three years ago.

There was also a newspaper clipping. "Courier Noah Vale Fired After Customer Accuses Him of Package Theft.

"Mr. Vale insists on his innocence, but surveillance footage shows him carrying a parcel away from the customer’s residence.

"It is reported that after losing his job, Mr. Vale’s mental state deteriorated. He repeatedly returned to the customer’s residence to demand an explanation, but was turned away each time."

…

"As of press time, Mr. Vale has been missing for over a week. His family has expressed concern."

There was no accompanying photo, but the article mentioned the name of the apartment complex.

Unit 704, Building 7, Hawthorne Ridge Apartments.

Had "I" already died long ago?