I’m standing there, working at the register, when someone strolls up and I notice their face change into that of one of the monsters I’ve seen around before. The spine chills barely had time to warn me on this one, though, and it does something I’ve never observed them doing before: it spoke to me.

“Memento mori. You’re looking awfully tasty today, stranger...” The voice, little more than a whisper, but raspy, only intensified my spine chills. I felt palpitations as I simply looked down from the ‘customer’ and did my work on the register. I finished up scanning and have to pause a few times to get the bagging right on account of my own spine chills distracting me from making sure the eggs don’t end up on the bottom of any bag in particular. After facing my own personal nightmares at my job is done, a manager steps forward. Guess he saw my skin go pale or something.

“Hey, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Sorry, just… got reminded of my dead friend. Again. Perhaps I should stick to stocking shelves instead?”

“That sounds okay, we’ll do that after this shift. Still… could you try and let me know next time? I don’t want you suddenly unsettling customers.”

”It comes on suddenly, unpredictably, but I’ll keep it in mind for the future.”

The manager nods. “I understand.”

This manager’s actually a pretty good guy. Then again, the other manager’s (mostly) pleasant as well, but can be a little more hard-edged at times.

[Later that day...]

It’s been getting really bad recently.

When I was first on medication, my incidents curbed from once every 2 days to once or twice a week. It was unpleasant, but manageable. Recently, though, they’ve been happening every day. That, and I noticed they simply walked around me before. Now, they’re aware of me. They taunt me, passively, in broad daylight and nobody else is any the wiser because they can’t see their true faces.

Sometimes they whisper to me, vaguely threatening my demise in a way that nobody else hears, either. I can’t ignore it anymore. I think they’re coming to get me, and the medications don’t do anything except twitch me up and weigh me down, so I’m going cold turkey.

It would perhaps be safer for me to assume that I’m insane, but I’m not taking that chance just yet. I’m keeping my eyes quite open from here on in.