Clara watched from the shadows of the hallway, her fingers resting lightly on the wooden frame of the door, just out of sight. The chapel was softly lit, golden sconces casting a flickering warmth that did little to soften the weight in the air. The scent of lilies—too sweet, too thick, almost suffocating—mingled with the low murmur of sorrow, quiet voices dipping in and out of the stillness.


    She was not meant to be here. Not in this way. Not as a guest. Not as a mourner. She only came to watch.


    The woman in the casket was the same one Clara had worked on two nights ago. The bruises had been erased, the skin given back its warmth, the lips restored with a delicate shade of rose. A small act of defiance against death.


    And now, as the family came forward in slow, hesitant steps, as trembling fingers reached out to touch the still, peaceful hands, Clara searched their faces for something—relief, gratitude, maybe even love.


    A younger woman, possibly a sister, stood the longest, fingers gripping the edge of the polished mahogany as if grounding herself. Clara saw the moment her breath hitched, a single sob swallowed before it could break free.


    Clara had seen it before—the shift in grief when the dead look almost alive. The hesitation, the brief flicker of doubt. She looks like she''s just sleeping. That was the point, wasn''t it?


    The work was not for the dead. It never had been. It was for them. For the ones left behind, the ones who needed to believe, even for a fleeting moment, that nothing had been stolen from them. That what they had lost was merely resting.


    "Morbid little habit, this," a voice murmured behind her. Clara flinched before composing herself, slowly straightening. She didn''t have to turn around to recognize the speaker.


    Mr. Halloway, the funeral home director, was standing with his hands tucked into his pockets, posture easy, but gaze knowing. He was an older man, dressed impeccably as always, his greying hair neatly combed, his tie a shade too dark for the somber event. Clara glanced at him, then back at the chapel, where the murmurs of the grieving filled the silence like waves lapping against a shore.


    "I was just—"


    "Admiring your handiwork?" Halloway finished for her. He exhaled through his nose, shaking his head with something between amusement and pity. "You do good work, Clara. But watching them won''t change anything."


    She said nothing. He sighed. "You spend so much time with the dead, you forget you belong with the living."


    Clara turned her gaze back to the casket, to the family that clung to the illusion she had carefully painted. She understood what Halloway meant. Instead of answering, she stepped back from the doorway, slipping into the dim light of the corridor. "I should get back to work."


    Halloway studied her for a long moment, then shook his head with a wry chuckle. "One day, Clara, you''re going to realise you can''t spend your whole life waiting in doorways."


    She didn''t reply. She only walked away, leaving behind the scent of lilies, the murmurs of the mourning, and the small, fleeting moment where death looked almost beautiful.


    As she made her way down the hall, she could still feel Halloway''s gaze on her back. When she reached the end of the corridor, she hesitated, then glanced over her shoulder.


    "If I did belong with the living," she mused, more to herself than to him, "I''d be a terrible fit." Halloway let out a short, dry laugh. "No arguments there. But at least they tip better."


    Clara smirked, shaking her head as she pushed through the side door, stepping out into the cool air of the afternoon. A fine drizzle had begun to mist over the pavement, dampening the already grey city. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders, contemplating whether to walk straight home or find an excuse to delay returning to her apartment.


    Maybe she''d stop for coffee. Maybe she''d sit by the river for a while and watch the water ripple, shifting and restless, like something that had never known stillness. She exhaled, tilted her face up toward the sky, and let the rain settle over her skin.


    The café by the river was half-full, the scent of fresh espresso mingling with the crispness of spring air. Clara cupped the warm paper cup in her hands as she leaned against the railing, steam curling against the damp chill of the afternoon. She took a slow sip, the chocolate rich and just a little too sweet—an indulgence she rarely allowed herself.


    A small family sat on a nearby bench, their little girl tossing crumbs to a cluster of swans gliding through the water. Their pristine white feathers ruffled as they jostled for the scattered pieces, their dark eyes watchful, calculating. Among them, smaller bodies paddled eagerly—their cygnets, still dappled in grey fuzz, new life unfurling on a river that had seen more endings than beginnings.


    She watched, bemused at the irony. She spent her nights giving the illusion of life to the dead, and here was the world, stubbornly reminding her of how effortlessly it created the real thing.


    Her phone buzzed against her palm. She glanced down, already suspecting the name before she saw it.


    Jack: Gonna be late. Gym after work xx


    Clara sighed through her nose, rubbing her thumb against the side of the cup. She hadn''t expected a dinner together, but she also wouldn''t have lingered here if she knew she''d be coming home to an empty flat.


    Her first instinct was to text back something neutral. Okay. See you later xxx


    Instead, her fingers hovered over the keyboard.


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    She could say it.


    Why didn''t you tell me earlier? I could have stayed at work longer.


    But then he''d apologise, say he didn''t think it was a big deal, that she should use the free time to do something fun. And what would she say to that? Jack, I prepare bodies for funerals. I make dead women look like they never died. The closest thing I have to fun is seeing if their families think I did a good enough job.


    So instead, she just sighed and typed: Okay. See you later. xxx


    She slipped the phone back into her pocket and took another sip of her hot chocolate, eyes following the ripples in the water. The swans had started to drift further away, the crumbs all gone. The little girl on the bench whined in protest, but her mother murmured something soothing, pointing toward a squirrel darting across the path. The child''s attention shifted, her grief short-lived.


    Clara envied her for that.


    With a final glance at the water, she pushed off the railing and started the slow walk home. The streets had emptied.


    Clara had walked this route countless times before—past the low glow of the bookshop that closed early on Mondays, the café with its chairs stacked behind the glass, the florist that still smelled of damp earth even after its doors had locked for the night. The city at this hour was quieter, softened by the hush of a world winding down.


    But tonight, it felt different.


    At first, it was small things—subtle, almost imperceptible shifts in the air. The weight of the silence. The way the streetlights flickered, not in their usual stuttering pulse, but in a way that felt almost... deliberate.


    She rolled her shoulders and adjusted the strap of her bag. Kept walking.


    The damp scent of spring clung to the pavement. Somewhere in the distance, a car door slammed, a dog barked, a man laughed too loudly on a street over. Normal sounds. Familiar sounds. But beneath it, something less explainable. A thread of static crawling along her skin, needling at her senses. She exhaled slowly. You''re imagining it. Still, her pace quickened, just slightly.


    Her boots struck the pavement in an even rhythm—click, click, click—but as she passed a darkened shop window, something made her glance sideways. Just a fleeting, flickering instinct, but her gaze caught the warped reflection of the street behind her. And for half a second, she thought she saw movement. Not the shadow of a passing car. Not the rustling of leaves. Something. She stopped.


    Her pulse drummed beneath her skin, but when she turned fully to look, the street was empty. The wet asphalt gleamed under the orange streetlights, slick and undisturbed. Nothing there.


    Clara exhaled sharply through her nose, shaking off the ridiculous weight of unease settling in her chest. Stop being stupid. You''re tired. She kept moving.


    The wind had picked up, pulling at the loose strands of her hair, lifting the scent of damp stone and rain. She turned the next corner, and the unease bloomed into something sharper. The feeling had followed her.


    It wasn''t paranoia. It wasn''t the ordinary wariness of walking alone at night. This was different. More like the sensation of a hand hovering just above your skin, not touching, but close enough that you can feel the presence of it. Close enough that you know it''s there. She didn''t look over her shoulder. Didn''t stop. Didn''t falter. Just walked. Faster now.


    And yet, no matter how much she quickened her pace, the thought was already there, clawing its way through the damp corridors of her mind. The worst thought. The one women were conditioned to entertain before dismissing, like a reflex, like an old wives'' tale meant to scare little girls into being cautious. The thought of what people could do. What they had done.


    The newspapers always called them horrors—exceptions, outliers, But she had seen them up close, those horrors, laid out on cold metal slabs, turned into bodies with stories carved into their skin. Bruises shaped like hands around a throat, lips split where a struggle had failed, defensive wounds on soft palms that never stood a chance. The unnatural dead, she called them. The ones who should still be walking. Most of them were women.


    She used to wonder if it was something broken in those men, some defect in their design. But the more bodies she had prepared, the more she had begun to wonder if it was something else entirely.Not a flaw. A feature.


    Her fingers curled into a fist, the weight of her keys pressing into her palm. She should have been safe. It was broad daylight. But daylight had never stopped people before. She thought of the woman on her table that morning, how she had gently smoothed the dark rings from her throat, and wiped away the last evidence of terror.


    Would someone do the same for her? She clenched her teeth, shoved the thought away. Keep moving. She adjusted her grip on the keys, pressing them between her fingers like claws, a habit as instinctual as breathing. The pavement was slick under her boots. The air, too thick. She rounded the corner and the feeling changed. A heartbeat behind her own. A shadow where there should have been none. And then—impact.


    She collided into something solid, and small, and human.


    A frail hand caught her wrist before she could stumble. "Oh, my dear," the old woman murmured, her grip cold as winter. "Your friend ought to slow down."  Clara stiffened. She felt the response crawl up her throat, the instinct to correct, to insist—but the words stuck, caught in the tangle of her thoughts. Instead, she said nothing.


    The woman''s eyes—clouded, pale as sea glass left too long in the tide—drifted beyond Clara''s shoulder. She squinted slightly, as though focusing on something just out of reach. And then, after a beat too long, she smiled. Not unkindly. Not eerily. A warm, knowing thing, meant to comfort. The kind of smile a grandmother might give to a nervous child, promising that there was nothing to fear in the dark.


    But something about it made Clara''s skin prickle. A slow, crawling unease coiled around her spine, urging her to step back, to pull free. She didn''t. She refused to. Instead, she exhaled carefully and willed the tension from her shoulders, forcing herself to focus on what was in front of her. The woman was old, nothing more. Senile, maybe. Harmless, definitely. And yet—the words still curled inside her like smoke.


    Your friend ought to slow down. She wet her lips, and almost said something. Almost. Then the old woman gave a small, satisfied nod, as if she had heard an answer that had never been spoken, and gently patted Clara''s wrist. A farewell. A dismissal.


    And then, without another word, she shuffled past her, disappearing into the city''s dusk-lit hush, her shawl trailing behind her like a wisp of unraveling mist.


    Clara stood frozen. Her breath came slow and steady, but her heartbeat hadn''t settled. She glanced back, searching the street—not for the woman, but for anything. A sign that she wasn''t just imagining things, that there hadn''t been a shape where there shouldn''t have been, a presence that lingered too long. But there was nothing. Only the wet gleam of the pavement. The dim glow of streetlights. Just the city and her shadow.


    She clenched her jaw and turned back toward home, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag. You''re being ridiculous. A stranger says something strange and suddenly she''s reading ghosts into it. It was exhaustion, that was all. Too much time spent around the dead, too many nights smoothing colour into cheeks that would never flush again, too many mornings wondering how long she''d let herself drift between the living and the lost. She exhaled sharply through her nose.


    Tomorrow, she told herself she''d leave work early. Go somewhere loud. Somewhere full of life. Tonight, she''d go home. Lock the door. Shake this feeling. And forget about it. Even if, somewhere deep in her bones, she already knew she wouldn''t.