Some weeks go on and on…
Monday began the same way most Mondays did: with the shrill cry of my alarm clock cutting through the darkness and the bitter taste of burnt coffee lingering on my tongue.
Rain tapped softly against the apartment windows while the television muttered in the background, cycling through weather forecasts, traffic reports, and the usual morning disasters that never seemed important until they happened to you. I moved through my routine half awake—shower, clothes, coffee, keys—like muscle memory was dragging me through another forgettable workday.
Normal.
Predictable.
Safe.
At least, that’s what I thought.
About halfway to work, traffic slowed to a crawl. Red brake lights stretched endlessly ahead of me, glowing through the gray drizzle like a trail of warning lights. The radio announcer mentioned a major accident up ahead, but by then there was nowhere to turn around.
As I inched forward between police cruisers and ambulances, the smell hit me first—burnt rubber and gasoline mixing with the damp morning air.
Firefighters moved frantically around what remained of a crushed sedan twisted against the guardrail. Paramedics shouted over one another while flashing lights painted everything in violent reds and blues.
I should have kept my eyes forward.
I know that now.
But against my better judgment, I looked.
And I saw them pulling a body from the wreckage.
Bloody.
Broken.
Headless.
A sick lump rose instantly into my throat.
“Oh no…” I whispered aloud, gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned white.
For a moment, the entire world felt unreal—the rain, the sirens, the smoke curling into the cold morning air. Like I had stumbled into a nightmare without warning.
The line of traffic finally began moving again, and I forced myself to drive away.
But even hours later, sitting at work pretending everything was normal, I still couldn’t stop seeing it.
The crushed car.
The blood.
The empty space where the head should have been.
That was Monday.
The rest of the day unfolded exactly the way every other workday did. Emails. Small talk in the break room. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead. I stocked shelves, answered questions, laughed politely at jokes I barely listened to.
After work, I drove home through the fading evening light, made dinner I barely tasted, and collapsed onto the couch with the television droning mindlessly in the background.
Routine.
Everything about the day felt painfully ordinary except for the accident.
Except for what I saw.
I told myself I’d eventually stop thinking about it. People witness terrible things every day. The image would fade. My brain would move on.
But then the nightmares began.
Monday night, the dream replayed the accident in horrifying slow motion. Twisted metal screaming against concrete. Flashing ambulance lights staining the rain red and blue. Firefighters struggling to pry open the crushed driver’s side door.
And the body.
Always the body.
I would wake up just as they pulled it free from the wreckage, my stomach twisting violently as I stared at the ruined neck where the head should have been.
But after Monday night, the dreams changed.
They became something worse.
The accident was still there at first, but each night something inside the dream felt… wrong. Distorted. Like reality itself was beginning to rot around the edges.
By Wednesday, the body was no longer motionless when the firefighters dragged it from the car.
Its fingers twitched.
Thursday night, it sat upright before they could touch it.
And Friday…
Friday was the first time it looked at me.
I know that sounds impossible because it didn’t have a head anymore.
But somehow, impossibly, I still felt it staring.
Every dream ended the same way after that.
The body turning slowly toward me while the world around us fell silent.
No sirens.
No rain.
No voices.
Just me standing frozen beside the wreckage while something inside that mangled corpse focused entirely on me.
And every single time, right before I woke up, I heard the same whisper:
“You should have kept your eyes forward.”
By Saturday morning, exhaustion clung to me like a second skin.
I barely recognized the person staring back at me in the bathroom mirror—dark circles beneath my eyes, skin pale from too many sleepless nights, nerves stretched thin from dreams I couldn’t escape.
But I never told anyone about the nightmares.
I convinced myself they were normal. Some kind of delayed trauma response from witnessing the accident. My brain trying to process something horrific the only way it knew how.
That explanation felt safer than the alternative.
So when my coworker texted me around noon asking if I wanted to go out that night, I accepted almost immediately.
Honestly, I was desperate for the distraction.
By evening, it had turned into a full girls’ night—music, drinks, loud laughter, crowded bars filled with warm light and voices loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
Exactly what I thought I needed.
For a few hours, it even worked.
I laughed.
I relaxed.
The nightmares almost felt ridiculous in the middle of all that noise and life.
But sometime after midnight, while we sat together in a dim booth nursing our second round of drinks, one of my coworkers suddenly stopped talking mid-sentence and stared at me strangely.
Not at my face.
Past me.
Toward the window behind my shoulder.
Her expression drained of color.
“What?” I asked nervously, turning halfway in my seat.
At first, I didn’t see anything except the rain streaking down the glass outside.
Then lightning flashed.
And for half a second, reflected faintly in the dark window behind me, I saw the outline of a person standing directly over my shoulder.
Tall.
Motionless.
Missing its head.
When I spun around, there was nobody there.
I froze so completely I forgot to breathe.
The noise of the bar faded into the background while my coworker kept staring toward the window behind me, her face pale and rigid.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
That was it.
Everything inside me cracked open at once.
I told her everything.
The accident.
The body.
The nightmares.
The sleepless nights.
The headless figure standing behind me in reflections and dreams.
I expected her to laugh nervously or tell me I was exhausted and imagining things.
Instead, she listened without interrupting, her expression unreadable the entire time.
When I finally finished talking, she sat silently for several seconds before speaking.
“You’re staying with me tonight.”
Not a suggestion.
A decision.
And honestly, I agreed immediately.
I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
The drive to her apartment was quiet at first. Rain hissed softly against the windshield while the freeway lights blurred through the darkness ahead of us. Neither of us spoke much after leaving the bar.
Then she suddenly stiffened beside me.
“What the hell is that?” she whispered.
My stomach dropped before I even looked up.
Standing in the middle of the freeway ahead of us was a tall figure.
Motionless.
Headless.
Lit for one horrible instant by the sweep of our headlights.
She screamed and jerked the steering wheel hard to the left.
The tires lost traction instantly.
I remember the violent shriek of metal scraping guardrail.
The spinning headlights.
The sound of glass exploding beside me.
Then darkness.
When I finally opened my eyes again, everything smelled like smoke and gasoline.
Sirens echoed faintly somewhere nearby.
My head pounded violently as I forced myself upright.
And then I saw where we were.
The guardrail.
The flashing emergency lights.
The stretch of freeway.
The exact same spot where I watched firefighters pull the headless body from the wreckage six days earlier.
Except this time…
the wrecked car was ours.
I turned slowly toward the driver’s seat.
And felt something inside me collapse.
My coworker’s body hung motionless against the seatbelt.
Blood covered the shattered window beside her.
And her head was gone.
I think I screamed.
Or maybe I only dreamed that part too.
Because the next thing I remember was the shrill sound of my alarm clock.
I sat bolt upright in my own bed Monday morning, gasping for air.
Darkness lingered outside my apartment windows.
My phone buzzed with work notifications beside me.
The television murmured weather reports in the background.
The smell of burnt coffee drifted from the kitchen.
My normal routine.
For a moment, I just sat there trembling, trying to convince myself it had all been a nightmare.
Then the traffic reporter’s voice crackled through the TV speakers.
“There’s currently a major accident causing delays on the freeway this morning…”
My blood turned cold.
“…reports say the driver was decapitated on impact.”
And somewhere deep inside the apartment—
I heard slow footsteps moving down my hallway.