The morning began like any other.
Heidi stacked folded towels onto the counter, her hands moving from muscle memory alone. The thick cotton was warm from the dryer, heavy and reassuring. She pressed down on the pile to square it, exhaled, and reached for the next bin.
That was when she felt it.
The sensation came first — the prickle between her shoulder blades, the unmistakable awareness of being watched. Her hands stilled. Slowly, almost against her will, her gaze lifted.
Mounted above the washers was the security camera.
Its black lens stared back at her, unblinking, aimed directly at the machine where everything had gone wrong.
Her stomach tightened.
The flashes came uninvited: wet skin, salt and metal, the pull in her chest that hadn’t felt like choice. Bright green eyes. Cumming. Teeth. Then nothing — a hard, blank edge where memory should have been.
The camera had been there the whole time.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Of course.”
The realization landed cold and sharp. Footage. Proof. Something solid she could hold onto.
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, already moving. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner?”
She abandoned the towels and headed for the stairs. The laundromat was empty, her footsteps echoing too loudly as she climbed. By the time she reached her flat, her pulse was racing.
Heidi dropped into her chair and opened her laptop, fingers flying. The old familiarity settled in — systems, files, timestamps. This was territory she understood. Control returned in small, precious increments.
She pulled up the security feed and scrolled back to the night in question.
I’ll see him, she thought. I’ll see what actually happened.
The video loaded.
The timestamp matched.
The door swung open.
She leaned closer.
She watched herself enter the frame — tired, distracted, glancing up as if responding to someone behind her.
There was no one there.
Her throat went dry.
She watched her on-screen self turn back to the washer and begin loading it. Heidi frowned, leaning closer still.
The washer was empty.
“No,” she whispered.
Her hands moved over nothing — folding air, arranging something that wasn’t there. Her lips moved as if speaking. Laughing. Responding.
The audio was silent.
She turned the volume up anyway. Static. Nothing else.
Her skin prickled.
Then her body on-screen changed.
She paused. Tilted her head. Her face softened in a way that made Heidi’s stomach drop. Her hands rose slowly, her posture shifting, responding to something unseen.
Then — impossibly — she was lifted.
Hoisted onto the washer.
Heidi sucked in a sharp breath as she watched herself arch, her head falling back, her expression dissolving into something intimate and wrong. Her hands gripped empty space. Her body moved with purpose. She watched herself writhe atop the washer, her back arching, her hands gripping nothing but air. The footage looked both intimate and wrong, like peering through a window into something not meant to be seen.
There was no man.
No shadow.
No reflection.
Just her.
She zoomed in, fingers shaking now. The camera caught the edge of her skirt riding up, exposing the bite on her thigh — bleeding, unmistakable.
“If you weren’t there,” she whispered at the screen, “then where the fuck did that come from?”
The scene continued to play out, her on-screen self arching in what could only be described as ecstasy, her face blank, her eyes wide and empty like a doll’s.
Her face went slack, eyes wide and empty, her movements precise and unnatural. She didn’t look present. She looked used.
Then it ended.
The laundromat door swung open by itself. The bells chimed faintly. Her head turned. She slid off the washer and walked out of frame.
Alone.
Heidi sat back, heart pounding.
“No,” she said aloud. “No, no, no.”
She replayed it.
Then again.
She adjusted contrast. Sharpened shadows. Zoomed in until the image pixelated.
Nothing changed.
“I didn’t make this shit up,” she said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t.”
Her eyes dropped to the D.A.R.E mug on her desk. The flash drive sat inside it.
She pulled it out with trembling fingers and plugged it in.
The loading bar crept forward.
Heidi’s finger hovered over the trackpad, then clicked to dig further into the footage archive. She scrolled to the timestamp from the night the bells had chimed with no one at the door. Her hand stilled, heart racing as she selected the file and clicked play.
Again, nothing.
Another timestamp caught her eye.
The morning she collapsed.
Her hand hovered. Then clicked.
The footage was grainier. Darker. Early light bleeding into frame.
She watched herself stagger out of her flat, movements loose and uncoordinated. Her face was pale, slick with sweat. Her lips moved, but she couldn’t hear what she was saying.
She stumbled.
She fell.
Her body hit the sand and didn’t move.
Heidi’s stomach twisted.
Seconds passed.
Then — slowly — her body began to rise.
Not stand.
Rise.
Her form lifted from the ground, limbs slack, head lolling, as if something invisible had hooked into her and pulled upward. She floated just above the sand, toes dangling.
Then she drifted out of frame.
“Oh my God,” Heidi whispered, clapping a hand over her mouth.
She dragged the file to the flash drive, her hand shaking so badly she nearly missed the icon.
What the hell is this?
Who is ever going to believe me?
The download finished.
She yanked the drive free and stood, breath shallow, heart hammering.
Whatever had happened to her was real.
And it wasn’t done.
She shoved the drive into her pocket and headed back downstairs, needing the open space, the noise, the machines — anything but the quiet of her flat.
The laundromat greeted her with its usual hum.
She grabbed a bag of laundry and froze.
Inside the pile of dresses she’d worn this week sat a small glass bottle.
Her stomach dropped.
Giselle.
She picked it up carefully.
The bottle was clear, delicate. Inside floated tiny bones — I hope those are not human, — tangled with dried leaves and bright petals. They shifted slightly as she tilted it, unnervingly fluid.
A smear of blood streaked down one side.
Fresh.
“What in the actual fuck,” Heidi breathed.
She held it up to the light, pulse thudding. The same pull tugged at her chest — the same sensation she’d felt that night. The bottle wasn’t decoration. It wasn’t a charm.
It was a marker.
She slipped it into her pocket beside the flash drive. The combined weight was uncomfortable, undeniable.
“I have a goddamn pocket full of crazy,” she muttered, a hollow laugh slipping out.
But it wasn’t funny.
She turned back to the machines and kept working, hands steadying through repetition. Towels folded. Loads transferred. The laundromat hummed on, indifferent.
But nothing felt ordinary anymore.
