It’s a mask, right? It’s gotta be a mask.

  Zara couldn’t help staring. The guy was tall, green, and—if she squinted—maybe handsome. Okay, maybe not handsome. His forehead was too wide, his brows too thick, his jaw too proud. And then there were the tusks: a pair of ivory can-openers sticking up from his lower jaw, like a bad joke glued onto his face.

  He looked carved out of confidence, but his eyes hadn’t gotten the memo. A shimmer of panic there—oh good, they were both freaking out.

  “What is it looking at? Hey—tell it to get the sick back to bed in the next room.”

  Who are you calling it? she tried to ask. The words rang sharp and clear in her mind—but outside, nothing. Her lips didn’t move. Her throat stayed still. The silence pressed down, heavy and wrong.

  The short green man just nodded. He was similar to the taller one, but softer, unfinished. Now that she looked, his face had something almost childish about it. His tusks were smaller too, barely poking past his lips, as if they hadn’t decided whether to grow at all.

  What…?

  *clack* *clack*

  As soon as the shorter man nodded, she turned and slowly walked toward the center of the room where three figures lay on tables.

  …can’t stop?

  She hadn’t chosen to move. Her body jerked on its own, like a puppet on strings. Her clothes still felt tight, squeezing, suffocating.

  *clack* *clack* *clack*

  What am I wearing? She tried to look down, only to realize she could only stare the way she was walking. A moment ago she could turn her head. Now she was just… advancing.

  No. No. No. No. What’s… happening? How are they doing this?

  *clack* *clack* *clack*

  Okay. Think this through. I can’t move.

  Wrong. I can, just not the way I want to.

  At least I don’t think I’m hurt. These clothes are too tight, but that’s mild compared to everything else.

  Stay calm. I’ve been through worse…

  Oh, who am I kidding? The worst thing in my life was a minor fender bender, sorted by the insurance company. I was just a passenger.

  On the table in front of her lay a person. Another of the green ones. This one looked older: a receding hairline, arms traced with scars. Unlike the tall green man she’d seen before, he looked almost human, if you ignored the green skin and the tusks. And he was naked except for a pair of worn-out shorts that barely covered his modesty.

  Wait a minute. Are these orcs?

  She’d read plenty of fantasy, played plenty of games. But rational thought wasn’t exactly her strong suit right now.

  This looks way too real to be makeup, it doesn’t look like a mask either.

  Orcs?! What is this? Middle-earth?

  *clack* *clack*

  And what’s with that annoying noi--

  As she reached the table, her sight was still pointed straight ahead so her view of the orc was blocked. She wasn’t in control of her body, she couldn’t help it.

  Then her body bent to lift him, and she saw—

  Not skin. Not hands. Shapes. Her arms spilled downward as a column of rocks, pebbles shivering into place as though they had agreed, somehow, to pretend they were flesh. Her “fingers” were only stacks of pebbles, tumbling into position, never quite still, always on the verge of collapsing into a heap.

  Her legs were the same, slabs masquerading as feet, every step a hollow clack that echoed like the tick of some immense clock. She couldn’t feel her own weight, not really; instead, there was the dizzying impression of falling forward with each step, like walking inside a dream where gravity had rules of its own.

  The more she looked, the less the body made sense, and the more certain she became that it wasn’t hers at all. She was only a thought sealed inside, carried along in a form that pretended to live.

  This was wrong. Worse than wrong. Wrong couldn’t even begin to describe it.

  No. This isn’t possible. I’m out on the street. I fainted. Yes, maybe… a hospital. Maybe I’m in the hospital. Maybe a car hit me. I remember waiting for the green light…

  Her memory of leaving work that evening already felt like it belonged to another lifetime. Left work. Walked past her favorite Italian restaurant. Checked her phone for missed calls from Mom. Called her and chatted for five minutes while passing that new supermarket. Saw a cat. Almost took a picture. Waited for the green light to cross.

  And now—she was here.

  Gah! I can’t even pinch myself. A fever dream? Am I in a coma somewhere in a hospital bed?

  Rage. Despair. Both clawing inside her, begging to be let out. But her body wouldn’t answer. No thrashing. No sobbing. Not even a whisper.

  With a hard screech, her stone body turned toward the door, the slow clack… clack… of its steps falling heavy on the floor. In its arms—her arms—she cradled the limp weight of the orc.

  Is he even alive? That tall one called them the sick. Sick with what? A flicker of dread caught in her thoughts. Please don’t let it be contagious.

  Alive or not, it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, I can’t fight it. I can’t fight any of this.

  The two men and the woman—no, the orcs—were gone. She hadn’t heard them leave. There were more pressing things. Too many, and not one of them under her control.

  Her steps slowly clacked into the hallway. Two doors: one stood open, dim candlelight stretching across the stone floor; the other stayed shut.

  Dark, ominous hallway? Naturally. Why not.

  Next stop… torture chamber. Or prison. Shackles on the wall, obviously.

  Fortunately, it was neither. This room was just slightly smaller than the previous one, four beds were placed right next to each other along the far wall.

  On the right side she could see a large table just like the one she picked up her current passenger from. Filled with various herbs, she could name a some of them. Mint, maybe peppermint? Lemongrass and a few other ones used in cooking.

  I can smell? Weird… That’s lavender, obvious. Something else maybe, but forget it—her body had already decided to move on.

  Her arms placed the orc gently on the bed, much more gently than she had thought stone arms could manage. The stone feet screeched around and carried her slowly back toward the entrance.

  Right. Tall orc guy said carry the sick. So… two more trips, I guess?

  Zara Silverhart, orderly extraordinaire. Do they even still call them orderlies?

  A full turn of the room revealed something missing: not a single window.

  Hmm. So we’re underground?

  Back in what she now dubbed the party room, the three figures on the floor had vanished. Probably carried off while she was hauling her orc.

  My very own dead orc. Every girl’s dream.

  Zara was a… mostly… certified nurse. Three years into a four-year program, which meant she wasn’t squeamish about sickness or dead bodies. Didn’t like them, sure, but she could handle them.

  That was how she’d ended up working for her father instead. A distant cousin had died—not close enough to wreck her, but enough to remind her that hospitals were depressing places where souls went to die.

  Second table. A man.

  A man. An actual human being, not some weird green one!

  The second patient sparked far more curiosity. She focused hard, trying to take in every detail before he too would be in her arms and out of sight. But her interest withered as quickly as it surfaced. His cheeks carried a blue-grey tinge, his lips the color of someone who’d lingered too long in cold water. He was dead.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Zara would never have called herself religious, never sure what to think about religion, but she still offered a prayer under her breath. “Sorry. Hope it’s better for you… somewhere.” Her body placed him carefully on the middle bed.

  One more to go. Then what? Wait—they mean me. Me! These rocks—just a day? One day?! Do I just die? Am I already dead?! What’s the point of even being alive if I’m nothing but a head full of thoughts trapped in stone?!

  By the time she reached the party room, the storm had passed. Not even allowed to panic. Can’t hyperventilate without lungs.

  Why do my clothes feel so tight? I’m not even wearing any. I’m just rocks. I rock. Ha… haha… hahaha… okay, stop. That’s not funny. Stop.

  This time she drifted toward the far end of the room, the last table. More time to look. Eyes—her eyes?—landed on a carved wooden K nailed to the wall. What even was that supposed to mean? Nothing else to see. Just a wall. Just a stupid K. Downward then, to the circle. Lines smudged, broken, stomped out. Whatever it had meant was gone.

  Orcs. What were they even doing here? Sacrificing people? Some back-alley cult nonsense? Yeah, sure, why not. That helps. Totally helps. No. No—he said sick. The sick. That’s what he said.

  She hoped this one would breathe. Just one. She was done carting corpses. The orc, if that’s what the first had been, she wasn’t sure about. But the man? No doubt. Dead.

  To her surprise, the woman on the table didn’t look dead. She seemed about Zara’s age, with fair skin that, while pale, still looked healthy. Her slightly curly red hair mirrored Zara’s own, and she wore something that looked halfway between a sundress and a sack of potatoes.

  The young woman she was about to pick up was beautiful, even beneath the grime. Pale skin, a trace of color in her cheeks, red hair tumbling in loose curls. For a moment Zara imagined leaning closer, brushing the dirt away, seeing her properly. She wanted her. Wanted to take her, to hide her away, to keep her. The thought lingered, warm and wrong, until it hollowed out into something heavier. Not affection. Possession. This one wasn’t just worth saving. This one was worth stealing.

  Wow. No. Wrong. What the hell was that? I don’t even like girls. I never have. And it made my skin crawl. Alive or not, there’s something deeply wrong with this one.

  Zara kept her eyes away, refusing to look at what little she could see of the woman as she carried her to the other room. She didn’t know what had just happened, only that she’d make sure it never happened again.

  With the final patient laying on the bed. Zara’s body again made a horrible noise as stone ground against stone and turned around to walk out the door back into the hallway.

  Where are we going now? What’s behind door number three? she wondered as she clacked along the dark hallway.

  The target, it seemed, were the stairs. She climbed them one step at a time, setting both feet on each step before moving on. Two flights passed beneath her, and though the staircase went higher still, her body stopped climbing here and entered the room.

  Nice and sunny. Let’s see what’s up here, at least.

  This room had windows on all sides. She must have been right about the basement, because this looked like the main floor of whatever this place was. To her left stood a single bed, screened off by a wooden divider, with a few pushcarts beside it stacked with things she couldn’t make out.

  On the right, a door. Beside it, rows of chairs lined the wall, the whole area cut off by a counter or really wide desk.

  And everywhere else? Shelves. Bottles in every color. Little tins filled with… who knew what.

  A business? The sick. A bed. A waiting area. Some kind of pharmacy?

  She hadn’t been sure where she was headed, but after a few steps to the right it became clear, the shorter orc’s head appeared from behind the counter. He’d heard her coming.

  “Oh, it’s y-you,” the young orc smiled.

  Who are you? Zara tried to speak, but no sound came.

  WHO ARE YOU? She screamed inside herself, as if sheer willpower could make up for not having a mouth.

  “I’m sorry, I c-can’t dispel you. M-master Khurak did this for me, but…” he trailed off.

  Master… Khurak? Master of what, exactly? Dingy hallways and half-wrecked rooms?

  “I d-don’t really have any more orders for you. Take this b-broom and mop, and go clean downstairs. Oh, and take this bucket of water too. Y-you can just wait around or c-clean whatever you want until the time’s up. Just… don’t come find me again. Y-you might mess up the stairs. The ones going up are w-wooden.”

  This orc wasn’t a man. Human? He’d barely pass for seventeen. And he sounded about ready to cry.

  No, no, no! Not again. Not down there. If I have less than a day to live, then I’ll spend it in the sun, not in the dark.

  It was already too late. The stone body moved without her. Tools clutched in one hand, the bucket in the other. One step forward, down into the dark.

  It felt like hours before she was finally done. The party room, swept. The other room too—the one she didn’t want to think about. She’d even tested the third door, locked, but her body wouldn’t break it down just to wipe a floor.

  Halfway through, the mop water had gotten so foul she couldn’t tell if she was cleaning or just smearing filth around. Didn’t matter. Her body kept mopping, every damn inch. Even the ritual circle—gone. Or maybe not gone at all. Maybe just redrawn in mud.

  Zara sighed inwardly. Was this her best shot at revenge for whatever they’d done to her? Silverhart Cleaning Solutions: now serving orcs. Poorly.

  All she wanted was to sit, to fold under the weight of too much too fast. She never expected her body to listen — but then, with a jolt of astonishment, it did.

  Huh?

  She raised her right arm. It obeyed. Her fingers flexed. She tried the other arm at once.

  Hold on. Did he just say no more orders? Does that mean—oh hell—does that mean I can move? I can move?!

  She shot to her feet and stretched again, still aware of the suffocating tightness. Then she tried a few experimental movements, eager to wring every drop from this tiny blessing of freedom.

  The excitement drained quickly. She slid down until her back hit the wall of the wrecked party room, the weight of it all pressing harder than stone.

  What now? If I’m really here.

  She racked her brains for the memory of the exchange between the orcs.

  Maybe a day?

  So… that means less than a day and I’ve no idea how long it’s actually been.

  She hugged her knees. The motion scraped out a terrible grinding noise in the otherwise silent room. She stared straight ahead at the empty tables and the wooden letter K hanging on the wall.

  Something was off. For a heartbeat it was a photo, frozen mid-scene, a movie paused on screen. As if time itself had stopped. Then the image buckled, edges folding inward, the whole picture crumpling like paper in a fist. It twisted tighter and tighter before it shot toward her, a jagged point aimed straight between her eyes. Darkness.

  Zara found herself in front of a house she knew. Her parents’ place, the suburban one where she had grown up. The three wooden steps to the porch, the flower planters on either side, her mom’s pride and joy. It was her childhood home. Except… not.

  It was her old home, a carbon copy, almost. But the porch was the pre-storm version, before the floorboards had been torn away and remodeled, and the windows? Just a little too big. Bigger than they ever were.

  She took a step, then froze. Looking down, her breath caught. Not stone. Not pebbles. Herself. She was back in her own body.

  Thank you. I’m back… I’m really back. No more stone. No more nightmare.

  She turned the knob. The door glided open, no noise at all. At home it always clattered into that ugly wooden coat rack her parents swore belonged right by the entrance.

  She knew this hallway. But it belonged upstairs, and never with so many doors branching off it.

  The hallway forked left and right, doors in eerie symmetry. On the right, golden light leaked from beneath two of them, like someone had stuffed the whole sun in there and slammed them shut.

  She tried the door straight ahead, the one that should have been the bathroom. Locked. She tested a few more, though they didn’t match anything from her memories. Also locked. Not just locked, but wrong, as if these doors weren’t meant to open at all.

  Okay, I’ll bite, she thought, and grabbed for one of the light-leaking doors.

  The door swung open. Her room. Sort of. The bed was there, the one she broke after years of trampoline-level jumping. The old desk, where she slogged through high school homework. And a bookshelf that had never existed. No windows. Nothing else.

  In the middle of the room stood… her.

  Or not quite her. A golden, translucent copy, glowing faintly.

  The double lifted a broom and swept a few strokes. The broom vanished, replaced by a mop. She scrubbed the air, then that too faded, leaving a rag in her hand. Wipe. Vanish. Again and again — the cycle of chores made sacred, ritualized.

  Zara gawked at herself, hypnotized by a few loops of the routine. Then it hit her. Nope. She backed out fast and slammed the door shut behind her.

  She opened the second door. The room beyond was identical, every detail a copy, and in the middle stood another ghostly golden version of herself.

  This version of ghost-Zara hauled a wounded person in her arms. Then she was spoon-feeding somebody in bed. Then — great — she was flicking a syringe and squeezing the air out of it.

  She watched the loop play out again, gave a firm nod, then backed away and slammed the door shut hard, just to be sure.

  What the hell does it even want from me? I’ve been scrubbing floors for hours, and oh yeah, dragging corpses around too.

  With her body back she could finally panic. And she did. She sprinted down the hall, knocking, pounding, banging, slamming. Shoulder-checking door after door after door.

  What if I just leave? she thought, heading for the front door.

  Her fingers brushed the knob and—boom. Pressure, everywhere, crushing, flattening, gone in a blink.

  “Choose.” The voice. The one she remembered from the crosswalk. A hundred voices tangled into one.

  “Choose what? Why do I have to choose?”

  No reply. The entrance felt as solid as the other locked doors. It would never open again.

  I think I know what it wants me to do. But I don’t like either option.

  She went to the nearest door. Opened it. Saw herself hold the syringe. Closed it. Kicked it.

  Back in the room with Cleaner-Zara, she glared at the ghostly form.

  I don’t want to be any kind of doctor. Hospitals are depressing. Forget it.

  Fine. Fine!

  She remained inside the room with cleaner-Zara and closed the door.

  The braided voices filled her head:

  “Maid class awarded.”

  “New proficiency: cleaning tools.”

  “Physical stamina increased.”

  Zara sighed. Superpowers in housekeeping.

  She opened her eyes and found herself back in the party room, hugging her stone knees by the wall. The same posture, the same silence, as if no time had passed at all.