Simon Gatting, 35 years old, Security Officer.

Simon understood, in a detached and practical way, that thirty-five was not old. His body disagreed. Fifteen hours on his feet had ground that point home, leaving his joints stiff and his head heavy. The shift was finally over, his last for the week, yet relief arrived dulled and slow, buried under exhaustion that made him feel decades past his own age.

The day had taken its toll early and never eased its grip.

Two fights broke out with the same ugly predictability he had come to expect. A man collapsed clutching his chest, the kind of emergency that froze a room before panic spilled everywhere at once. Three others hovered at the edge of their own endings, each situation demanding patience, firmness, and a calm he no longer felt inside.

By the time it was done, Simon had stopped counting hours. The job had a way of stacking disasters back-to-back, as if sensing when a man was already worn thin and pressing harder all the same.

The paperwork dragged on long after the incidents themselves were done. Reports, signatures, protocol reviews. Every box had to be ticked before anyone could leave, which meant the officers on site were stuck waiting while the night stretched even further. By the time Simon was cleared to go, three extra hours had been carved out of him for no reason that felt useful.

Eight in the morning had been the original plan. Home, a shower, maybe a couple of hours of sleep before the day caught up with him again. Instead, the sun was already climbing higher by the time he turned onto his street, the clock edging toward eleven. Whatever rest he might have managed was already slipping away.

He eased the car into the driveway and noticed another vehicle sitting in the spare space. His girlfriend’s. That gave him pause. She had not mentioned stopping by, not a text or an offhand comment. The realization followed quickly enough. She still had his spare key.

Simon shut off the engine and sat there for a moment, staring ahead. Another loose end left unattended. Something he had meant to deal with weeks ago and never quite found the energy for. He added it to the growing list of things he would get to eventually, when the job loosened its grip.

Simon had never been comfortable with Emily letting herself in when he was not around. The apartment was his retreat, the one place that felt loosely under his control, and he guarded it out of habit more than sentiment. They were not living together, and on workdays he was gone most of the time anyway, swallowed by shifts that ran fourteen hours or more. The idea of someone drifting through his space while he was off dealing with other people’s crises left a sour taste.

Her being here now raised questions he did not have the patience for. He ran through the possibilities the way he assessed incidents on the job, quick and methodical. Maybe she had ended up here by mistake after a night out, muscle memory carrying her to the wrong address. The thought barely held together. Her friends would never have let that happen. At least one of them shared her flat and would have seen her safely home, no questions asked.

Another possibility settled in with the same dull logic he used at work. Emily could have arrived around nine or ten, expecting him to be home by then. When he was not, she would have tried the spare key without much thought. It fit well enough, which made it irritating rather than reassuring.

The last option carried more weight. She wanted something. The reason hardly mattered. Experience had taught him that wants usually came bundled with conversations he did not have the energy to endure. Whatever it was, it could sit untouched for a few hours.

Simon gathered his gear from the car with the slow efficiency of someone who had done the same motions too many times to count. The lift ride passed in silence, the hum of cables and the faint smell of stale cleaner barely registering as he keyed in his floor. By the time the doors slid open, his patience was already thin.

He was halfway down the corridor toward his apartment when something on the door caught his eye. A pale shape stood out against the wood, out of place enough to make him slow.

Up close, it turned out to be an envelope, neatly fixed to the door. His name sat on the front, written clearly enough that there was no mistaking the intent.

The fatigue fogging his thoughts thinned just enough to let unease slip through. Mail did not end up here. Letters went into locked boxes downstairs, sorted and contained. This meant someone had bypassed all of that. They had walked the corridor, stopped at his door, and taken the time to leave this for him.

Simon stared at the envelope for a long moment, cynicism hardening into something sharper. Whatever was inside had not come by accident, and that alone was enough to keep sleep at bay a little longer.

Simon peeled the envelope open and scanned the page inside. It did not take long. There was hardly anything there that resembled sense.

“Dear Simon Gatting,” it began, formal to the point of parody. The rest read like the ramblings of someone who had spent too long convincing themselves they were clever. His words would shape reality. Anyone over eighteen would be affected. Whatever he said would become true, enforced without resistance. People would agree because he would always be right. The ability required agreement and the listener being able to hear him. It ended with a neat sign off. A previous user.

A dry sound escaped him before he could stop it. Seventeen years in security had given him an instinct for nonsense, and this set it off immediately. Some kind of prank, then. Maybe a bored neighbour. Maybe Emily. He was too tired to care which. Still, habit took over. He tested things, even when he knew better.

“I am no longer tired or sleepy,” he said aloud, his voice rough in the empty hallway. “I am fully refreshed.”

He expected nothing. No jolt, no spark, no moment of surprise.

Instead, the weight pressing behind his eyes lifted. The ache in his legs loosened. The dull fog clogging his thoughts cleared as cleanly as if someone had flipped a switch. The exhaustion he had been carrying since before dawn simply vanished, leaving him standing there alert and awake, heart ticking faster as his body caught up.

That was when the humour drained out of it.

His scepticism shifted into something colder. If this was real, even partially, then every word mattered. Volume mattered. Who could hear him mattered. The thought settled in fast and unwelcome, already rearranging the way he looked at the world.

Still holding the letter, Simon unlocked the door and stepped inside. The apartment greeted him with familiar quiet. He barely had time to register it before a sound carried from deeper within, soft and unmistakably out of place.

He stopped, every sense sharpening at once.