The First Shift

The first thing Jude noticed was the smell. Damp wood, old perfume, and something metallic—like rust, or blood. His eyes opened slowly, finding a ceiling painted with cracks that formed strange, spiraling shapes. He didn’t recognize it. He didn’t recognize the room either.

His pulse stumbled. The last thing he remembered was falling asleep in his apartment in Riverton. But now… now he was in a stranger’s bed.

A shiver crawled up his spine as he sat up. There was a mirror across the room. What he saw staring back wasn’t his own face.

It was someone else’s.

Pale skin. Dark circles. Lips that looked like they hadn’t smiled in years. Jude pressed trembling fingers against his cheek—the reflection did the same, but slower, like it hesitated. For a second, the reflection didn’t match his movement at all.

The air grew heavier.

He stood, bare feet sinking into cold wood. The room looked untouched for decades—dust layered over everything except a single object on the bedside table: a playing card.

The Queen of Hearts.

He reached for it. The card was old, the edges frayed, the red faded to brown. Something pulsed beneath his skin as he touched it—an echo that wasn’t his own heartbeat.

And then—voices.

Whispers from the corner.

“Not him again…”

“Wrong soul… wrong time…”

He spun, but no one was there. Only a wardrobe door slightly ajar. His breath hitched. He moved closer, each creak of the floorboards sounding too loud. When he pulled the door open, a cold draft hit him like a ghost brushing past.

Inside hung a single dress, black as ink. Beneath it—a box.

Inside the box, more cards. Each marked with names written in delicate handwriting. Some crossed out. Some stained dark.

At the bottom of the pile, he found a photograph. A woman with sad eyes and a smile that looked too kind for this house. On the back, scrawled in messy ink:

“Find me before she finds you.”

The mirror cracked behind him.

He turned sharply—his own reflection was gone. Instead, a woman’s face watched him from the glass, her head tilted, her eyes filled with something that looked like longing… and hate.

“Who are you?” Jude whispered.

Her lips curved. “You already know.”

Then the world trembled.

Pain surged through his chest—fire, ice, static. The walls melted away, the mirror shattered completely, and suddenly, Jude wasn’t in that body anymore. He was falling—through darkness, through silence, through a thousand blurred memories that weren’t his.

He landed hard on cold tiles. His vision swam. The smell of antiseptic hit him this time. A hospital room. Machines beeping softly.

His reflection appeared again in the glass cabinet door. Another face. Another life.

Jude pressed his hand to the surface and whispered, “Why me?”

From somewhere far away, a voice answered, soft and familiar. A woman’s voice.

“Because you took her card.”

He froze.

The Queen of Hearts was gone from his pocket.

And outside the hospital window, someone was watching—her silhouette motionless in the rain, a smile flickering like a reflection that refused to fade.

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