The sterile smell of antiseptic wafted into her nostrils as the woman awoke. A low hum filled her ears, the sound of distant machinery grinding away like clockwork in some unknown part of the building. Her head throbbed with a dull ache, her mind hazy, fragmented. Blinking against the dim light that filtered through yellowed windows, she pushed herself up from the cold, hard floor. The surroundings were unfamiliar. Rusted bedframes, peeling paint on cracked walls, and ancient medical equipment surrounded her. Dust hung in the air like a fog, muffling every sound, cloaking the hospital in an unsettling quiet.
She could barely remember anything. Her name? No. Where she was? Certainly not. Fear crept into her chest, squeezing her ribs like a vice. She stood, her legs trembling beneath her, eyes darting around the room for answers. The doorway yawned open, a corridor beyond it flickering under the harsh, weak glow of failing fluorescent lights.
“What… what is this place?” she whispered, her voice small and brittle in the eerie silence.
Her steps echoed faintly as she wandered into the hallway. Every footstep felt heavy, as though the very air was pressing against her, slowing her down. Shadows seemed to move at the corners of her vision, though whenever she turned her head to catch them, there was nothing. Just more decaying walls, more dust, more silence. Old, faded hospital signs pointed in different directions—’Operating Theatre,’ ‘Intensive Care,’ ‘Morgue.’
The last word sent a chill down her spine, a coldness that settled deep in her bones. Her instincts screamed at her to leave, but where would she go? She had no recollection of where she’d come from, no sense of who she even was. Her feet dragged her forward, deeper into the hospital’s labyrinthine halls. With each passing minute, the tension in her chest grew, like invisible hands tightening around her throat.
And then she saw them.
Figures. Human, or at least they appeared human. They stood scattered in the corridor ahead, their forms shrouded in shadow, moving slowly, as though lost. One of them—a man—turned toward her. His face was pale, his eyes wide with confusion. He took a step forward, a hesitant, halting movement.
“Do you… know where we are?” His voice was faint, almost pleading.
She shook her head, unsure how to respond. More figures shuffled out from adjacent rooms, their expressions vacant, their clothes mismatched—some wearing hospital gowns, others in street clothes, and some looking like they had just stepped out of another time altogether. They all had the same vacant, lost expression, as though they were unsure of their own existence.
“What is this place?” another figure asked, a young woman this time. Her hair hung in tangled strands, her eyes sunken. “I woke up here… I don’t remember anything.”
The woman’s breath quickened. These people were like her, adrift in this decaying shell of a hospital with no memory of how they got here.
“Is anyone in charge?” she asked, her voice shaking, betraying the panic that now clawed at her throat.
The man glanced around nervously, as if afraid of being overheard. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen anyone else. No doctors, no nurses… just more of us.”
The woman felt a strange, prickling sensation at the back of her neck, a sense that they were being watched. The sensation grew stronger with every passing moment. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Something was wrong—terribly wrong. She had to get out.
But where would she go?
A distant sound—a metallic clang, sharp and jarring—echoed through the halls. The group flinched, their heads snapping toward the direction of the noise. The woman could feel it in her bones: something was coming. A presence, heavy and dark, lurking just beyond the veil of sight.
Suddenly, a door at the end of the corridor creaked open.
A figure stepped out—tall, clad in a tattered lab coat, their face obscured by shadows. The figure moved slowly, deliberately, toward them. As it neared, the fluorescent lights overhead flickered and buzzed, casting the figure in erratic, stuttering glimpses. Its eyes glowed unnaturally in the dim light, and something about the way it moved was… wrong. Too smooth. Too fluid, as though it were gliding across the floor.
The others backed away, their faces contorted in fear. The woman stood frozen, a creeping sense of familiarity washing over her. Her breath hitched in her throat as the figure stopped in front of her, its empty, glowing eyes locking onto hers.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the figure rasped, its voice like the scrape of metal on bone.
“I—” The words caught in her throat. She could feel the icy grip of panic spreading through her limbs. “What do you mean?”
The figure tilted its head, a mocking gesture. “You’ve forgotten. They all forget.”
“Forgotten what?” she demanded, her voice trembling as her pulse pounded in her ears. But even as she asked the question, some part of her already knew the answer. A dark, nagging memory, like a splinter buried deep in her mind, began to surface.
The others backed further away, huddling together as the figure reached out toward her, its skeletal fingers grazing her arm. In that instant, her surroundings changed—just for a moment. The corridor shifted, rippling like water, revealing glimpses of something else beneath the surface. Figures in white lab coats, their eyes black voids, moved through the halls with purpose, dragging limp bodies behind them. And in the reflection of a cracked, dirty window, she saw herself.
But not as she was now.
In the reflection, she was dressed in a pristine white uniform. Her face was stern, cold, devoid of any compassion. The realization hit her like a punch to the gut: she was not a patient. She never had been.
She ran this place.
Memories surged through her mind, memories of death, of collecting the souls of the lost and the damned, of guiding them through this liminal space between life and death. The patients were the recently deceased, confused and scared, caught in a purgatory they didn’t understand. And she was the one who ushered them through.
The woman—no, the collector—staggered back, the weight of her forgotten duty crashing down on her. She was not one of the lost souls. She was the keeper of them. She had been doing this for centuries, guiding the dead, helping them transition.
But somehow, she had forgotten her own purpose.
“You see now, don’t you?” the figure rasped, a twisted smile playing on its lips. “You let yourself forget.”
She backed away, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She had been stuck in her own purgatory, wandering these halls, lost like the souls she was supposed to guide. How long had she been trapped in this false reality?
The other patients—the lost souls—watched her, their fear now mingled with confusion as they sensed the shift in her. She was not one of them. She was something else, something far more ancient and terrifying.
The figure in the lab coat bowed its head. “It’s time to resume your duties.”
The hospital around her seemed to pulse with a dark energy, as though the building itself was alive, waiting for her to take control again. The air grew thicker, the lights dimming further. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to remember. This was her realm. These souls were hers to collect, hers to guide.
She opened her eyes, and everything had changed. The shadows that clung to the walls no longer frightened her. The oppressive atmosphere lifted, replaced by something colder, more deliberate. The souls of the lost patients still milled about, confused, but now they looked at her differently, as if they could sense her true nature.
The hospital was hers, and the lost souls belonged to her.
With a deep breath, she straightened her back, a newfound sense of purpose settling over her. The figure in the lab coat watched her with approval, fading back into the shadows as she assumed her rightful place.
The woman—the collector—smiled, her mind clear for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
She turned to the patients, her voice calm, steady, and commanding.
“Follow me.”
They had forgotten who they were. But she would help them remember. After all, she was the one who ran this forgotten hospital, and no soul would leave until she had collected what was hers.
Want to read a bit more? Find some more of my writings here-
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