Member-only story
Karina was sitting at her desk in the lobby of Smiley’s Funeral Home and Crematorium reading Frankenstein, when she heard the sound. It sounded like someone banging their head against a metal desk- that tarpy sound of thin metal being bent.
It was faint, and at first, she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard anything at all, but then it started again, louder this time. Then stopped. Then started. She rested her open book on her knees, still reclining with her feet on the desk. She cocked her head to listen to the sound. The back. It’s coming from the back room.
The ceiling fan turned lazily overhead in the silence, shifting dust motes around in the evening sun of the lobby. The coffee machine gurgled quietly. Then it came again, and Karina thought she heard some kind of muffled scream buried in the metallic banging. She looked around the quiet lobby and saw nothing. Nothing moved.
Slowly, Karina set her book face down on the desk and rose from her chair. All the tropes of all the horror stories she’d ever read or seen came rushing into her head. Teenage girl hears a noise- Investigates by herself, all alone, without telling anyone- gets murdered with an axe. But she made her way to the door that led to the back of house anyway and opened it.
